Peter J. Leithart

“I am black but lovely,” the bride of the Song insists to the daughters of Jerusalem.  That judgment runs against the aesthetics of the time, according to which white, untarnished skin was a sign of beauty, as well as a sign of class distinction. She is black because she was burned . . . . Continue Reading »

Deuteronomy 4:20 uses an arresting image to describe the exodus: “Yahweh has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be a people for His own possession.” The context is crucial.  Yahweh is warning about making graven images (vv. 16-18, 23) and about . . . . Continue Reading »

Nicholas of Cusa broke with traditional Aristotelian views of uniform substance and motion.  No two things are ever exactly the same: ”two or more objects cannot be so similar and equal that they could not still be more similar ad infinitum . Consequently, however equal the measured . . . . Continue Reading »

In his book on the origins of German Romanticism and idealism ( Mystical Sources of German Romantic Philosophy (Pittsburgh Theological Monographs) ), Ernst Benz notes that, in contrast to France where philosophical terminology could be smoothly translated from Latin, German philosophy drew its . . . . Continue Reading »

As Zizek explains Hegel’s answer to the Anselmian question, it is a political question: “why cannot we conceive a direct passage from In-itself to For-itself, from God as full Substance existing in itself, beyond human history, to the Holy Spirit as spiritual-virtual substance, as the . . . . Continue Reading »

According to Slavoj Zizek, German idealism is characterized by the combination of two insights that appear contradictory: “(1) subject is the power of ‘spontaneous’ (i.e., autonomous, starting-in-itself, irreducible to preceding causality) synthetic activity, the force of . . . . Continue Reading »

In his commentary on the Song of Songs, Jenson makes the startling claim that “the Bible’s God is sheer contingency.”  He elaborates: “He is the one who chooses what he chooses because he chooses it; he is the one who is what he is because he is it; and for whom the . . . . Continue Reading »

Milbank again: “thought, as Eckhart also pointed out, is a kind of jullity precisely because (after Augustine) it is intentional.  To think something is kenotic - it is to let that thing be and not to try to be that thing, even not to try to be oneself when thinking oneself.  Hence . . . . Continue Reading »

In a discussion of the divergence of “romantic” and “classical” modes of contemporary theology, Milbank highlights the central role of the Scripture.  More fundamental than reason, or the “rational consideration of the propositions of faith” is . . . . Continue Reading »

At the heart of Milbank’s response to Zizek is the insistence that Christianity is fundamentally paradoxical, but not fundamentally dialectical.  For Milbank, the latter partakes of the ontology of violence that he sniffs out beneath classical, modern, and postmodern systems.  In . . . . Continue Reading »