Peter J. Leithart

Austin Farrer commented, in an essay on CS Lewis’s apologetics: “though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroyed belief.  What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned.  Rational argument does . . . . Continue Reading »

Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle claim that nationalism is a religion.  In particular, American civil religion is a religion, sustained by violence and blood-letting, focused on the sacred “totem” of the American flag ( Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American . . . . Continue Reading »

William Cavanugh notes ( The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict ): “although Jefferson was responsible for the complete separation of church and state in Virginia, Jefferson wrote in the language of medieval Christianity about the preservation of . . . . Continue Reading »

Sarah Ruden’s Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time examines Paul’s ethical pronouncements in the context of Greco-Roman morals and literature, with some interesting results.  Paul comes off as revolutionary and subversive on precisely . . . . Continue Reading »

Huston Smith once lectured on world religions to highly enghusiastic officers at Maxwell Air Force Base.  Why were they so enthusiastic? he wondered.  His answer: “as a unit they were concerned because someday they were likely tyo be dealing with the peoples they were studying as . . . . Continue Reading »

Charles Keyes writes of the imposition of Western conceptions of “religion”on Asia: “In pursuit of ‘progress’ free from primordial attachments the rulers of [the] modern states[s] of East and South East Asia have all instituted policies toward religious institutions. . . . . Continue Reading »

What does language do?  Refer?  Communicate concepts?  Affect action?  Yes, but, according to Merleau-Ponty, with all of these doings of language it never loses its basic link to gesture and sound.  Language never loses its affective dimension, never loses its musicality. . . . . Continue Reading »

Imagination, David Abram argues (following Merleau-Ponty), is not “a separate mental faculty” but “the way the senses themselves have of throwing themselves beyond what is immediately given, in order to make tentative contact with the other sides of things that we do not sense . . . . Continue Reading »

Having spent time among shamans and magicians in Nepal and Indonesia, David Abram ( The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World ) concluded that magicians are marginal figures, but in a different sense than is usually understood.  Rather than standing at the . . . . Continue Reading »

Faustus doesn’t believe that the Old Testament provides testimonies of Christ, and Augustine sets out to prove him wrong: “The ark was three hundred cubits long so that, all told, it was six times fifty cubits, just as all the time of this world is stretched out over six ages, in all of . . . . Continue Reading »