Leithart argues in Against Christianity that “ekklesia” has been de-politicized. It is better understood and translated as the, “called-together ones.” The Church was not under the “umbrella of the polis; she was an alternative governing body for the city and the beginning of the new city.”
Festal Laughter
Peter Leithart quotes sections of Mikhail Bakhtin’s Dialogic Imagination and Rabelais and his World. In his discussion of laughter in the Medieval Ages, Bakhtin talks about how laughter invaded certain celebrations in the Church Year. In particular, he references the paschal laughter:
During the paschal days laughter was traditionally permitted in church. The preacher permitted himself risque jokes and gay-hearted anecdotes from the church pulpit in order to encourage laughter in the congregation — this was conceived as a cheerful rebirth after days of melancholy and fasting.
The problem with most American churches is that laughter is a part of the overall message conveyed on Sunday morning. However, it is not a laughter grounded in a historic event–such as the resurrection–but a laughter grounded in the silliness of random events in the news or sports. Laughter, when synonymous with biblical joy, must always be grounded in paschal joy. Only the resurrection permits us to laugh without the after thought that our laughter is in vain.
Joyful Parenting
Leithart writes a great piece on the joyful parenting. He concludes:
As we look in hope to the peaceable fruit of righteousness that God says He will bring, the whole of our parenting is suffused with coming joy. Joy is eschatological, but in Christ we have entered into the new creation. Joy comes at the end, but since we are post-Pentecostal parents, we have received the Spirit of the age to come; we see the fullness of joy at a distance, but also know it now. The age to come has dawned, and as we parent in hope and faith its light already beams through our windows and fills our homes.
Grammar vs. Text
I read this gem from Leithart today:
Some commentators claim that John 6 cannot be talking about the Lord’s Supper because the verbs (in vv. 52-59) are aorist. This is very implausible to me. John recorded a discourse of Jesus in which he speaks of eating flesh, drinking blood – both resonant with Eucharistic associations, and he wrote this discourse to churches that commemorated Jesus with a meal of Jesus’ flesh and blood. And yet, we know that John didn’t intend to talk about the Eucharist because of the verb tense! If John didn’t intend his readers to think of the Eucharist, he’s chosen a singularly odd way to do his business. It almost seems like a trick: Everything in the chapter SOUNDS like Eucharist, but John leaves us the subtle clue of the verb tense to let us know it’s not. A wider point about grammatical-historical exegesis: This is an example of grammar trumping the text; the verb tense controls what the passage means, rather than the whole passage controlling what the passage means. This is not the way we normally use language; when we use rich and resonant imagery, we expect our readers to notice it, and not to focus on verb tenses and not to let the verb tenses control (or cancel out) the imagery. (This is not to say that the verb tenses of Scripture are irrelevant or unimportant. They are, as is every jot and tittle. But there is not reason to make the verb tenses controlling.)
Leithart on Peter putting on the garment in John 21
Some oddities of the narrative of John 21. Peter, we’re told, has stripped, apparently to make it easier to do his fishing. When he hears that Jesus is on the shore, he puts ON his outer robe and throws himself into the sea. As a practical matter, this doesn’t make much sense; he’d be able to swim better without the outer robe. As a symbolic act, it makes a lot of sense at a number of levels: Peter is about to be re-installed as an apostolic shepherd, and prior to that he puts on a robe of investiture; the sea being an image of the Gentiles, Peter is a Jonah throwing Himself into ministry to the world; it appears also to be a baptismal scene, with Peter restored by washing and investiture to table fellowship and ministry with Jesus.
Leithart and Postmillennialism
To be postmillennial is to be committed to the claim that the state of creation, over time and in time, will be recognizably as the prophets predict: Zion will be raised as the chief of the mountains, nations will beat tanks into tractors, chemical weapons into fertilizers (napalm – a sign of millennial bliss?), peoples from the four corners will be eager to hear the instruction of Jesus, and will live by it. Wildernesses will turn to gardens, wild animals – and bestial humans – will be pacified.
The Nature of God vs. God
Does the phrase “nature of God” mean anything other than “God”? What is added by adding “nature”? If the phrase refers to God’s attributes, well and good, though I prefer the more personalist connotations of “attributes.” But the phrase can hint that there is some reality that we can call “nature of God” that is different from the Sovereign Person we call “God,” and that hint is dangerous and heretical if pressed. I suspect that “nature of God” is often used for rhetorical effect, since it sounds more weighty and philosophical than “God.” But that rhetorical reach is also dangerous. I suspect too, sinners being sinners, that some prefer “nature of God” to “God” (or, even more, “Yahweh”) precisely because of its de-personalizing implications, because they believe the phrase can be a shield against the righteous, personal Judge. A frail defense. Trinitarian theology forces us to refine our speaking about God in a way that highlights rather than suppresses His personality, His personal promises and demands.
What must the Religious Right do?
Leithart answers the following question:
What would have to happen, humanly speaking and “under the sun”, for the Christian Right and the Christian Church in America to recover a clear and present cultural mission? Is there some kind of contemplative vision that could possibly give roots and unity to the furious but desultory evangelical activity in the modern Church? Continue reading “What must the Religious Right do?”
Leithart and Capitalism
Leithart writes:
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 condition”)? Is it exploitation, the seizure of the means of production from farmers by the new lords of production, and the confinement of the rest to the status of wage laborers (Marx)?
Neither. Following Weber more than Smith or Marx, Appleby argues that capitalism is not the natural form of human enterprise, nor fundamentally as an economic system, but a “cultural system” that took form in seventeenth-century England. Through an thorough examination of pamphlet literature of that period, she was able to trace the development of new views of human nature, which amounted to a shift from Calvinist man to economic man. Capitalism expanded as England did (she nicely notes that for much of the world capitalism, like English, is a second language). Continue reading “Leithart and Capitalism”
Yahweh’s Burning Nose
Leithart writes:
Yahweh’s nose burns a lot. You can’t see it in English translation, but that’s what the Hebrew says whenever Yahweh’s “anger” burns: What’s actually burning is His nose.
His nose burns first, though, not at Israel but at Moses. Exodus 4:14 is the first use of the idiom in the Hebrew Bible, and there Yahweh’s nose is burning at the mediator. In this, as in so many other ways, Moses’ personal history anticipates Israel’s communal history, for later, also at Sinai, Yahweh’s nose will burn at His people (Exodus 32:10), and Moses, the one against whom Yahweh’s nose first burned, will stand to intercede, to pacify Yahweh’s nose.
Yahweh’s burning nose at Moses thus anticipates not only Israel’s history, but that of Jesus.