Peter J. Leithart

Robert Barron (in an essay in Sacramental Presence in a Postmodern Context ) writes of the “radical non-violence” in Thomas’s theory of casuality and especially of creation: “In any causal relationship between finite things, there is some sort of intrusion of one being upon . . . . Continue Reading »

Eckhart writes, “This image is the Son of the Father and I myself am this image and this image is wisdom.”  It is a characteristic formulation: The Son of God is born in believers such that the Son and believer become “identical.” At the same time, Eckhart insists that . . . . Continue Reading »

In his Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought , Peter Augustine Lawler says that “Postmodern thought rightly understood is human reflection on the failure of the modern project to eradicate human mystery and misery and to bring history to an end.  One . . . . Continue Reading »

Eckhart says in his second German sermon that the “whole of Scripture was written” and “God created the whole world and all the orders of angels” so that “God may be born in the soul and the soul be born in God.” He adds: “It is the nature of every grain of . . . . Continue Reading »

It was inevitable, I suppose, that someone would work to rehabilitate the reputation of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, perhaps the most prominent neo-Thomist assaulted by the nouvelle theologie .  Aidan Nichols does a fine job of it in his lucid  Reason with Piety, Garrigou-Lagrange in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Marcus Pound ( Zizek: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Interventions) ) summarizes the Kabbalist account of creation that he finds analogous to the move of “withdrawal” that Zizek thinks is fundamental to Schelling, German Idealism, even, in a different register, Descartes: . . . . Continue Reading »

“The principles of philosophy are certain truths within the immediate ken of every human person,” writes Ralph McInerny ( Praeambula Fidei: Thomism And the God of the Philosophers ).  His first example: “Who could fail to grasp being, since it is grasped in anything we . . . . Continue Reading »

Weston Hicks responds to my post on Joyce Appleby’s book on the history of capitalism: “The state used to be a tool of the powerful to entrench themselves and press their advantage, but Christendom transformed it into an arbiter of fair play, unleashing the . . . . Continue Reading »

When Reformed thinkers reject the “primacy of the intellect” that is often endorsed by the Reformed tradition, they are rejecting the primacy of discursive reason and the “laws” of logic.  That is not what John means when he announces the eternal Logos. But what if . . . . Continue Reading »

Joyce Appleby begins her The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism with a discussion of the definition of her subject.  Is capitalism an expression of a basic, immutable human nature (Smith: everyone exerts “uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort . . . to better his . . . . Continue Reading »