Peter J. Leithart

What follows is a summary of the first part of Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Political Profiles) . Once, Milbank begins, there was no secular. And the appearance of the secular is not merely a matter of removing something superfluous, as sociology generally . . . . Continue Reading »

Milbank again, summarizing Hegel’s critique of Fichte’s political views: “In a political world where anything can be made of anything, the only common standard is protection of the finite ego, which, according to Fichte, must extend not only to the prohibition of deliberate crimes . . . . Continue Reading »

Milbank criticizes Hegel for the philosophical “error” in his “myth of negation.”  The issue is how difference arises, the logic of difference.  Milbank points to Leibniz by way of contrast, who “conceived logic as a ‘series,’ which unfolded by . . . . Continue Reading »

Milbank notes in Theology and Social Theory that there are two modern responses to skepticism.  One is the Cartesian view that “thinks of the known object both as something ‘beneath’ the subject, and so as under the subject’s control, like the instruments of technology, . . . . Continue Reading »

John Ratzinger offers this neat summary of the relation of local and universal church: “the Church is realized immediately and primarily in the individual local Churches which are not separate parts of a larger administrative organization but rather embody the totality of the reality which is . . . . Continue Reading »

The Eucharist makes the church.  How? This is not the whole of the answer, but: Through anamnesis and anticipation.  Eucharist is a memorial of the death of Jesus; Eucharist is an anticipation of the marriage supper of the Lamb. The church is a people of shared time, of shared past and . . . . Continue Reading »

The woman of the Song of Songs is too overwhelmed with passion and longing for her man that she gets up from bed and roams around looking for him, until she can “arrest” him and bring him back home (3:1-5).  As Keel points out, her actions are not unlike the adulteress of Proverbs . . . . Continue Reading »

In a chapter on Yves Congar, Fergus Kerr (in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians ) says that the question of religious freedom had to be on the agenda for Vatican II because “it was a major issue inherited from the First Vatican Council.  It was even the major issue: the point of . . . . Continue Reading »

No, says Milbank.  But then he often sounds pantheistic, to his contemporaries as well as to us.  How does Milbank defend him?  Here’s what I think I’ve figured out: 1) God is transcendent, and this means (in Milbank’s Cusan theology) that He transcends oppositions; . . . . Continue Reading »

What should we say about the traditional notion of the analogy of being, rejected vigorously by the very different Reformed theologians, Karl Barth and Cornelius Van Til?  Some initial thoughts follow: 1) The Bible gets along just fine without saying God is “Being itself.”  So . . . . Continue Reading »