Crucifiable cruciformity

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 at 7:38 pm By Peter Leithart

Everyone today wants to talk about the cruciformity of Christian politics. Much to the good there. But, despite narrative theology and NT Wright and everything, there’s an odd abstraction of the cross from the rest of the gospel narrative. Cruciform politics is often translated as a politics of sympathy and co-suffering. It sometimes merges into a kind of politics of toleration. It’s essential to include Wright’s question of crucifiability in any political theology that pretends to take its cues from... Read more

Educated in love

Last updated on: April 4, 2013 at 7:00 am By Peter Leithart

Spirit – that is, the human person – cannot be conceived simply by the sexual union of a man and woman. It is “the work of God Himself” ( Love and Responsibility , 55). Sex thus participates in God’s ongoing creation of persons, a creation that must, John Paul II thinks, be continuous because “the world is made up of creatures, or in other words entities which have no existence of and by themselves, since they do not themselves contain... Read more

Sexual frui

Last updated on: April 4, 2013 at 6:50 am By Peter Leithart

In spite of its intentions, what John Paul II calls “sexual puritanism” or “rigorism” ends up cozy with utilitarianism, the notion that persons can be used as means to achieve certain egocentric ends ( Love and Responsibility ). According to the “puritanical” view, “the Creator Himself uses persons as means to [the end of existence of the species]. It follows that conjugal life and sexual intercourse are good only because they serve the purpose of procreation. A man therefore does... Read more

God or the Multiverse

Last updated on: April 4, 2013 at 6:38 am By Peter Leithart

Sheldrake ( The Science Delusion , 10-12) explains why physicalism – the hope that physics will finally vindicate materialism – is doomed. One reason is the “Cosmological Anthropic Principle,” which claims that “if the laws and constants of nature had been slightly different at the moment of the Big Bang, biological life could never have emerged, and hence we would not be her to think about it.” One might suppose that there was a creator fine-tuning the universe at the... Read more

Die to Live

Last updated on: April 4, 2013 at 6:33 am By Peter Leithart

During his PhD research, Rupert Sheldrake ( The Science Delusion , 1-2) made an original discovery about plant cells: “dying cells play a major part in the regulation of plant growth, releasing the plant hormone auxin as they break down in the process of ‘programmed cell death.’ Inside the growing plants, new wood cells dissolve themselves as they die, leaving their cellulose walls as microscopic tubes through which water is conducted in stems, roots and veins of leaves. I discovered... Read more

Constantine and Constantinianism

Last updated on: April 3, 2013 at 12:45 pm By Peter Leithart

Constantine permitted transfer of legal cases from civil to ecclesiastical courts, and also permitted ministers to manumit slaves. Both, Potter says ( Constantine the Emperor , 181 ), were steps that effectively turned clergy into civic authorities. On the first decision, Potter notes that “The main problem with Constantine’s decision, from a Christian perspective, was that Christians traditionally had a very different understanding of the role their bishop ought to play: ideally he was a person who aimed at restoring... Read more

Turning point

Last updated on: April 3, 2013 at 12:36 pm By Peter Leithart

TD Barnes has vigorously contested popular ideas of the Edict of Milan: It was not issued in Milan and didn’t affect Italy; it didn’t legalize Christianity, which was already legal; it was not an edict. This can leave the impression that the declaration of Licinius on June 13, 313 was no big deal. Though recognizing that Barnes is right about details, Potter thinks that it truly was “the official beginning of a new era in the relationship between church and... Read more

What Did Constantine Do?

Last updated on: April 3, 2013 at 12:29 pm By Peter Leithart

Potter ( Constantine the Emperor , 95) asks what Constantine was doing during the great persecution. His answers are speculative; we don’t and can’t know for sure, since Constantine’s feelings and thoughts were never recorded. But it is a worthwhile speculation: “He was a visible member of the court; many years later he would feel the need to reintroduce himself at length to the Christian community at Nicomedia. Did he have a guilty conscience, a memory of things that he... Read more

Burkhardt redux

Last updated on: April 3, 2013 at 12:22 pm By Peter Leithart

David Potter’s Constantine the Emperor has many virtues. Potter is hugely well-informed about Roman history, and is able to place Constantine in his context like few others. His discussion of Diocletian’s “interventionist” policy (his Price Edict and his edicts regarding Christianity) is superb, as is his sense of the limits of imperial power (often due to the recalcitrance or laziness of local officials, on whom the emperor had to depend for enforcement of his decrees). He has clear opinions on... Read more

Winking at sin

Last updated on: April 1, 2013 at 3:04 pm By Peter Leithart

Summing up a survey of the Bible’s use of combat myths, Jon Levenson ( Creation and the Persistence of Evil , 24) says: “God’s visible victory over the enemies of order is in the past. The present is bereft of the signs of divine triumph. It is a formidable challenge to faith and a devastating refutation of optimism.” Yet the perspective is not simply one of accepting pessimism: “The absence of the omnipotent and cosmocratic deity is not accepted as... Read more