Leithart II

Leithart's thesis is shaping up a little more nicely, despite the fact that he often contradicts himself rhetorically
[ EG., He inveighs early on against any attempt to view the Church as "Christianity", as if it were one of many alternatives to be imposed or superimposed on an existing structure, but then on page 50 he implies that Saint Paul preached an "alternative" Judaism. On page 52, he endorses NT Wright's claim that Christians were "Israel in a new way", which also seems to go against his claim that we ought not to adopt "alien tongues". Page 58 - "Contextualization be damned". I suppose he would want to make an exception for Judaism, as he endorses the "Hebraizing" (versus Hellenizing) of our theology, but he brushes off Paul's effort in Acts 17 to speak the language of Mars Hill and Athenian philosophy as singularly and Providentially doomed to failure. Given that he also rejects "anti-supercessionism" (the view that Jews are still in covenant with God to some degree), I can only assume he is steering a middle road between anti-Semitism and the view that God speaks to all cultures to some degree as He spoke to the Jews. Since the Jews were supposed to be the high priestly nation for the entire world, and since strangers were always welcome, I am unsure of where this leaves him. It certainly doesn't entitle him to a carte blanche rejection of Saint Paul's effort at Mars Hill, especially given that elsewhere Saint Paul says he becomes all things to all men, Jew to Jews, Greek to Greeks, etc. But these are minor misgivings and quibbles. As a good, pragmatic American, I wait to see where all of this is headed. Where are you ending up at Leithart? I agree with most of Nietzsche's analyses - just not his conclusions.]
On page 48, he blames Augustine for taking the debate to the philosopher's forum rather than the town square, although he heartily approves of the City of God and most of all, Augustine's method of doing theology. He wants to return to Typology, the principle that "Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother" (page 58).
All of this scattershot and shotgun style of theology I could endorse, as I am thoroughly entranced with literary theology myself. But I get suspicious when Leithart begins to talk about "the [monlithic] Church leaning into life" in a way that demands that "my concept of existence demands that all of society be transformed to that concept" (p.62). Just how is this to come about? If Jesus' saying that "my kingdom is not of this world" means anything, it would at least have to imply some sort of Western-style separation of church and state. http://www.acton.org/programs/students/essay/2003/first.html
Leithart is sailing, to me, uncomfortably close to what Oswald Spengler would call the "caliph" view of government, in which some sort of universal, "Magian" religious body imbues the entire world, both state and society and private practice, with its ethos (or Ekklesia). While I agree with his bashing of modern secular liberalism on many counts, I fail to see exactly how he proposes to deal with the solution in a way that would preserve a Western "right of conscience" (the Reformation entails at least that). At least, so far. The only "Magian" style culture thus far the world has seen originated in Arabistan.

THE SHORT VERSION:
In otherwords, the short version of all this is that, in his zeal to be "anti-modern" and "anti-liberal", it would appear to me he might be drifting into either postmodernism or archaism. And I find it strange that anyone would advocate a deliberate shunning of common language in favor of a dichotomized preference for one's own. This can only mean less communication, or worse communication, or no communication. The solution is not less theology, but better theology. And I also find it odd that his dialogue is only made possible under the auspices of "liberal culture". Furthermore, the pagan language belongs to us. The most effective way to undercut it is to redefine it, as Augustine (his patron theologian) knew well, and as (no doubt) he also knows. In doing anti-theology, he is doing theology. Some of this reduces to the difficulty (similarly) of ranting intellectually against "intellectualism". It's a nice rhetorical flourish, but somewhat problematic if one isn't careful to define more of the actual argument. But I shall continue to read, and we shall see.

I just think he hasn't read the right "modern" theologians. Rosenstock-Huessy, perhaps, or Leddhin. The little that either did is stunning. Though primarily historians, they were both capable of fleshing out their worldview. Leddhin, if memory serves, said he was a Thomist influenced by phenomenology and Christian existentialism. If that confuses too much here is his watchword: With God, anything is possible. Without Him, anything is permitted.

In light of Narnia...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/978031/posts
Read this, fantasy fans!

The Germans

Along with Nietzsche ( whom I regard as the first deconstructor of liberalism - including liberal Christianity), these are the must read Germans...
I propose this as an alternate list to the "harmful" Germans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Rosenstock-Huessy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Rosenzweig
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_spengler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_von_Kuehnelt-Leddihn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonhoeffer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Barth Yes, I know, I know...Jimmy Carter's endorsement notwithstanding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Rauschning
Bonhoeffer was the best man of them all, with Leddihn and Rosenstock-Huessy closely following.
I include Barth for, at the least, his incredible influence on both Protestants and Catholics. Personally, Van Til's reading of him is a bit unfair, at best. Van Til's concern to defend a pre-apologetic "Christian Theism" lead him to insist upon a God-centered theology (his rhetorical choice of words) as opposed to man-centered Barthianism with its "God" which was "Wholly Other". A more sympathetic reading of Barth (and a Van Tillian reading of Van Til) might point out that Barth was concerned to defend the unknowability of God's essence (as opposed to His energies and His revelation and His Incarnation) as well as asking Van Til if "man" and "God" dichotomies were the best place to begin theology in a post-Incarnation world. This is not an endorsement in toto of Barth, or a blanket recommendation, just a suggestion that Barth deserves more recognition than he was received so far.

And of course, I would be remiss not to recommend this man:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe.
Read Faust. It ain't Job, but it's updated and humanized for people who can't make the imaginative effort to fathom the tragi-comedy of Job.

Peter Leithart's Against Christianity

I received Peter Leithart's latest for Christmas, and since I am a big fan, am doing a review. Here are some online reactions I read to give me an idea of what I was getting into:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591280060/qid=1135644116/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-9444830-8792624?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
One of the things I have consistently been leery about since my involvement in the Reformed movement is "Christian Reconstruction". To me, it sounds uncomfortably something like the concept of jihad, minus the meanness. It's only fair my reader knows my presuppositions before he reads the review, so here are some more reservations. Credenda/Agenda (Leithart is their resident scholar) is often too combative, too critical, and just too ornery for my tastes (though I agree with them a great deal). On a more serious side, I do have serious reservations about their rejection of "Modernity" and "Postmodernity" in favor of what they would like to call Medieval Protestantism (something that never existed, and for good reason). In otherwords, they tend to overrate the ancients and never read the moderns, in my opinion, or to be ignorant of them altogether. This, I would say, is not, on balance, a good thing. But this is not unique to them, and, to a degree, characterizes all Reformed intellectuals. Anyone who thinks they can skip the Modern sequence of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rosenzweig, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Spengler, and Rosenstock-Huessy (to name the Teutons), or some similar sequence in Anglo or French thought, has got another think coming. They will reinvent the wheel, ineluctably. But I haven't finished it, so this will be an ongoing arguing with myself, and whoever else deigns to join in.
So far, this is my impression:
I am on page 36, and already he has picked a fight with Paul Tillich for saying that "culture is religion externalized" (and so implying that the Bible is a book of morals and religion, and not politics or culture). Au contraire, demurs Leithart, Paul chose the word ekklesia because that was Aristotle's word for the lawmaking assembly of the polis, thus implying that the Church (Ekklesia) was a rival and potent polis who was subsuming or replacing the ancient polis. He wants to argue that Christ did not found a competing religion called "Christianity" (why he didn't just call it Churchianity, I am not sure), but instead a replacement City of God to supersede the City of Man. I am wondering aloud if this was Augustine's thesis, and will have to check with Ben House.
What he wants to say is not that Christians ought to be involved politically, but that they can't help but go beyond "involvement" into replacement. Thus, Saint Paul would say it is a shame to go to the pagan law courts with Christian disputes. "I tell you boys what," says he, "let the weakest, most immature Christian decide. He will do a better job." Now I would agree with Dr. Leithart that the project of Christendom failed in Europa (mainly due to the retainment of self-glorification and tribalism which became nationalism, all under the auspices of the Catholic Church). But I get the distinct impression that he thinks that this would entail some sort of out of hand rejection of pagan categories of thought, which would seem to kind of undermine the whole idea of Saint Paul's argument, phrasing it, as he did, in the language of Aristotle. Supernature perfects nature, but in perfecting it, will not obliterate it. Thus, the statecraft of Bismark, the philosophy of Nietzsche, the sociology of Rosenzwieg, the heroism of Churchill, et al are valid. Science, politics, and other activities are not sealed doors to pagans. Einstein, precisely because he wasn't Christian, may have insights and achieve discoveries that are sealed to Christians, who, I demur, are committed to other more important pursuits. This is not to say that someone like Reimann might not do a great deal of good scientifically due to his faith.
But it does seem to me that Leithart is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I do not want to say that Christ is not Lord over Science. But it is undoubtable that pagans, in God's grace, are used and used up to achieve many things that Christians are spared the agony of uncovering (one thinks of the antique Danish heroism on the Eastern Front of World War II). And that, also undoubtedly, pagans deserve their share of glory and justice in these pursuits. I think it specious to imply that the Ekklesia is to be a rival polis. Better theologians have debated this, in fact, than myself or Leithart (Karl Barth, von Balthasar, Rauschning). And this sort of thing, I think, has been tried by men just as pious, intelligent, and dedicated as we, and it ended in the Christmas true of 1914. America, indeed, is built, not upon the idea that we are a Christian nation, but upon the idea that it is possible for everyone to participate in the justice, equity, and mercy of God. The liberalism of the West, I believe, is not invalid, nor is it futile. To say otherwise, I think, places oneself outside of the Western tradition and certainly outside of the exceptional American experiment.
It may be that we Americans will have to leave our individualism, just as our European ancestors came across the seas in baptism, and fled their tribalism. But, for now, we remain the last, best hope of earth. Such is not to be cast aside lightly, nor in the name of even faithfulness to Christ. I may be reading into Leithart, so I will continue this review and modify my conclusions, perhaps.

Russian Genius for Suffering, Part II

Much of what I have to say in this post is derived from Rosenstock-Huessy, in his magisterial Out of Revolution, a History of Western Man. However, it can be substantiated quite easily by reading a history of the last two centuries of Russian Literature. Believe it or not, the genius of literature was not snuffed out under Bolshevism, but survived in spite of itself, even in devoted Communists. Pasternak and Mayakovsky (Stalin's favorite poet, whom Lenin admitted he didn't understand) make this quite clear. In Soviet Russia, and before, literature somehow managed to be both tenditious (as Dostoevksy hated and eschewed) and yet also aesthetically pleasing. In a word, literature in Russia is revolutionary. For France, it was rhetoric and pamphlets and theatre that had incendiary purposes (one thinks immediately of Beaumarchis' the Wedding of Figaro). In Russia, literature was where the malcontents named Judas and Ishmael and Azael found their redemption in an inspired struggle against, not an ancien regime, but the very concept of regime itself. The early Russian literature was anarchistic, inspired, and deeply Christian (although both they and Christians would deny it).
Dostoevsky was too spiritually oriented to delve into politics, but his novels had political implications, or rather, possibilities, which the radical revolutionaries were quicker to exploit than the Social Revolutionaries, Kerensky's Democrats, or the Czarist reactionaries. I can do no more, at points, than quote Rosenstock-Huessy:
Tolstoy (the wizard of Yasnaya Polyana) and Dostoevsky together composed a new creed...one gave to is his doctrine of the weak and trembling individual, the other enriched it by his faith in the majesty of the people, which reacts like the ocean, the cornfield, the forest, because it is patient, passive, obedient...the men (he) describes have nothing to do with the hilarious and creative geniuses of the West (Don Quixote)...they are as dirty and weak and horrible as humanity itself...but they are highly explosive...in this inner vision...the prodigal son is the central figure (man between 14 and 30)...our demons are faced without the fury of the moralist or the indifference of the anatomist, but with a glowing passion of solidarity in our short-comings...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_literature
Which, by the way, is why Reformed Christians love Dostoevsky so much. Sin is presented as potentially redemptive. The underbelly of the underbelly is the tapestry of deathless Light.
There is no convention, no concealment here in this literature, and yet there is still hope. That is the point of Varlaam Shalamov's horrible vignettes of the death camps, Solzenitsyn's entire corpus of work, and Pasternak's saga of Revolution. And it is no less true of Sholokhov's stories about the Don and the Cossacks. Humanity, said William Faulkner in his acceptance speech, shall not only endure, but prevail. That is the true creed of Russian (and Southern literature), and also of men like Herman Melville, who, along with O'Connor, may be the closest thing America has produced to literature of this grandeur and calibre.
Even the "official" Communist literature could not escape the nachtenshein of this Light. They, like their giant predecessors, know that denying God does not cut one off from His grace, His uncreated energies. In fact, the biggest deniers of all may be those closest to the kingdom, certainly more than the small affirmers.
It is worthwhile noting that Derrida and Stanley Fish would have had a hard time "deconstructing" Dostoevsky. That would be like "updating" or "modernizing" Don Quixote. It not only simply isn't done, but can't be. The two geniuses have already explored that possibility in their own works. Dostoevsky deconstructs himself. Cervantes modernizes his own history as a knightly hero of Lepanto. Good luck, haters of all that is good and beautiful and true. You will need it.

Peace on Earth

A writer of admirable scholarship and historical expertise recently posted that the correct translation of the promise from the angels was peace on earth to men of good will. Baron Ledhin once commented that those who cannot speak Greek (or have access to someone who does so very well and is justly impartial) have tremendous difficulties with Scripture. I need to verify the accuracy of this translation, but, if it is correct, it places the proclamation in a strangely interesting and new light.
Those of bad will will, of course, not have peace this Christmas. And those of good will, struggling as they may be, can count on it. This translation puts more emphasis upon the old paradox: on earth, as it is in heaven...in heaven, as it is on earth.

Spiritual Roots of Communism

It is quite natural to wonder if communism is a fluke, an eternal temptation, or part of the odds and the gods. Communism prevailed in countries as diverse as Cuba and China. It threatened Greece and France and England. It triumphed in regimes all over Africa. During the 1960s and 1970s, looking at a map colored red for Socialism (instead of the defunct British Empire that couldn't keep the Suez Canal) would have convinced you that Communism was the goal of history. It is significant that Lenin's corpse was enshrined in Red Square, like an Orthodox saint, that the masses might see his incorruption and rejoice. Red Square is the spiritual epicenter of communism. One can easily imagine the communist regime of Angola falling without effecting the history of socialism one way or the other. But when Paul McCartney shook Gorbachev's hand and played the Beatles' tunes in Red Square in 2003, one can be sure that the dream is over. The video of the event, by the way, is worth watching, with the Kremlin in the background. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2935244.stm
China, for instance, is slowly reforming its economy along free market lines. The Chinese love Christmas, because they love to shop. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FL21Ad03.html
Their revolution was under the aegis of Soviet Russia, and without Stalin, undoubtedly Chiang Kai-Shek might have easily been re-armed and sent back to the mainland backed by American Flying Tigers. Cuba, of course, was also under the aegis of Russia, as the missile blockade made evident. Socialism would have existed, but could have enjoyed no such power or influence without the Great Revolution of 1917, and the immense thought and suffering and daring that dared to transform that wintry and immense continent into a pre-eminent and almost super power. (The fact that communism fed off of a decayed Christian culture is, in my opinion, no insult to Orthodoxy. It is, in fact, a testimony to the power of that culture even in decay. Any type of theological culture can fall apart. Some may be more prone to, possibly, but the key point is that none is immune to the rule of all good things must end. Christ's power has to endlessly regenerate culture, and the Spirit blows where it lists.)
Much as the rise of Hitler was impossible with the inversion of a pre-existing Imperial and Latin order (the secular emperor and spiritual pope became a secular pope and spiritual emperor), so 1917 was prepared for well over a century by the writers and thinkers and sufferers of Russia. The Chinese learned socialism in the new Western universities at the turn of the century, and, of course, Western thought had tended towards socialism at this point, despite the inoculation against it with the Bourgeoise Revolution of 1789 and the suppression of Babeuf.
One can argue, naturally, that it was China that was essentially the lynchpin of Communism, because without it's seconding vote and the Korean War, the USSR would have shriveled up. Or that Castro was the indispensable poster child of propaganda, without which the Soviets would have not survived in a post-modern world of image and icon. But these are, to right reason and common sense, quite specious. Communism might very well have occured with or without Red Oktober. But one can certainly not understand much of the depth of Socialistic thought without delving into Russian literature. In history, the opposite of Ockham's razor applies. Science seeks for the simplest explanation. History, on the other hand, is more complex. It favors the thesis which gives the most depth, coloring, passion, and even alternate angles. The best theory of history is the one that calls forths the most adversaries, the one most fruitful of opposition. That is why Western thought will retain its preponderance beyond postmodernism. It is to Rasputin, Saint John of Kronstadt, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Marshal Kutozov, Borodino, and to the women revolutionaries rotting in Czarist gulags that we must look in order to understand, appreciate, and (eventually) "see through" communism. For communism is nothing but primitive Christianity without Christ. Our Western varieties pale before the collosus of martyred Russia, with its thousands of new-martys like Lydia, sainted and demonic Czars, and the Orthodox spires of the Kremlin.

The Russian Genius for Suffering

Part I

During the Eastern Front War of WWII, Stalin dropped his honorifics, and called his people to defend "Holy Mother Russia". This is difficult for us to grasp in the West, but it has to do with Eastern Orthodoxy. The faith of Orthodoxy teaches that man is born to suffer physically and emotionally, in order to achieve spiritual comfort and peace, oftentimes not till the next life or the death agonies, when the soul achieves a vision of God. Some are "vouchsafed" this vision during their crucifixion, which Orthodoxy teaches is very difficult outside of monasticism.
It is very difficult to imagine, for us, the extent to which Communism is really only possible in such a cultural environment. This is emphatically not to say that Orthodoxy leads to Communism. That would be as unfair as to imply that Protestantism leads to secularism (which of course the Orthodox do believe). All it proves is that the worst type of culture is an apostate Christianity, which, although with greater possibilities for good, must necessarily imply greater possibilities for evil. Merely recall that most good movie villains are more intelligent, more charismatic, and stronger than (many times) even the good guy. The collapse of Christian culture of whatever variety leaves huge holes which create much greater evil than the mere collapse of another minor pagan civilization. The World Wars and the Religious Wars prove this.
All of this is to say that Orthodoxy regards man's body as needing very little in the way of care, and that this spiritual discipline inclined the Russians towards the creative possibilities of suffering, made evident in the novels of Dostoyevsky. Fyodor took this one step further than even the Orthodox. He believed that the hellfire of unregenerate man in his heart could be used for good, to build up a society, if it were harnessed like dynamite and also embraced by the source of the evil himself. The titles of his books tell the story - The Idiot, The Possessed, etc. The Soviets secularized this hybrid theology and treated man as a brick in the wall, calculating his spiritual energy much the way we would calculate our electric bill. They then proceeded to accomplish a prodigious and astounding amount of self-destruction, followed by rigorous discipline, in the building up of a colossus that might have destroyed Europe, had Hitler and Stalin not bled each other dry at Stalingrad.

In Part II - Relating these salient "Russian" facts to literature and theology

Answer with Grace

Grace gets her very own blog post, because she is the first to post a question here. Thank you, Grace.
If you want to phrase it Biblically, you are correct - answer the fool by his folly.
If you want to phrase it in more general terms: do not let people abuse language. It is not merely a tool of talking, but of thought, and has a tendency to do our thinking for us. If we are not careful, we will end up being a slave to thoughts, as the uneducated, foolish, or ignorant often are, and even the wise at times. We have to know how our own minds work, and others. Do not let unbelievers (or Christians for that matter) use words one way over here, and another over there. Don't let people mythologize when it suits them against your strong argument, and be objective and subtle when it favors their own weaker argument. For example, Christians tend to think Milton was orthodox, while unbelievers try to read all kinds of Satanic approval into his work, or make him into Prometheus, or just throw him out of the canon so they can talk about the latest hot topic. Don't let either side do this. It's the only way to do good scholarship. Hold people's feet to the fire about the way they use words, because, generally speaking, its abuse of language that precedes abusive language, and murder of accepted meanings that leads to murder outright. This means that Milton ought to be read as he intended, as close as we can get. Anything else is laziness at best. So intention holds, and it ought not to change from argument to argument, or text to text. Christians will benefit far more from the fair use of language, logic, and facts than their opponents. This may entail repentance, on our part, from intellectual sins like distorting language, but, in the long run, will undermine our opponent far more.
Cheers and God bless.

How to Argue with the Revisionist Historians

It's actually far simpler than you would imagine. Rather than bogging down in an endless battle of quotations, theories, facts, and obscure references, just keep them honest with their language. For example, if they want to say that Western Christianity has killed more people than anyone else in the world put together, just insist that we also get credit for all the good things in Western culture as well. In otherwords, they can't take Voltaire as their hero, and give us Frederick the Great (an atheist) in order to blame us for European religious wars. Just ask them to be consistent. If they make sweeping generalizations about "the Dark Ages" and "the Church" and burning heretics, crusades, etc., then they should have no problem with a sweeping generalization like "well, Protestant America has repented of the sins she never committed and cleaned up all of Christendom's past mistakes". If they have their myth about the Dark Ages, then we should be allowed our myth about the Modern Dark Age. It's that simple.

The Final Frontier? Theosophy and Miracles

http://www.theosophical.org/theosophy/questmagazine/marchapril2000/icons/
This article raises the interesting question of how matter relates to spirit and how both relate to the Trinity. Does one agree with Watchman Nee, and say that while the soul is actually alive (with preternatural powers and latent abilities), it is not life-giving, and that therefore the cultivation of it will lead to spiritual ruin? That Satan uses it as a means to tempt man to accomplish, in his own power, what we can only expect of God? Are latent spiritual powers an ersatz for the Holy Spirit? Is this a false dichotomy?
Or is Orthodoxy right, that perhaps body and soul and spirit (accepting a tripartite division) are all meant to be brought to God through suffering, and suffused with Divine energies?
I have the uncomfortable feeling that there may be other answers out there, and perhaps other ways of viewing the problem. I for one am uncomfortable with myrhh-weeping icons and stigmata and miracles.
This is an area of theology that has been ill-addressed in the classical Protestant Church, and, consequently, we are ill-prepared to give an answer with grace.
Supernature perfects Nature, and does not obliterate it, that is certain. But it is very difficult to discern the spirits, and even more difficult to discern the Sovereign Spirit.
Perhaps we need more spiritual gifts in order to judge spiritual gifts.
That's a Will Ferrell dilemma if there ever was one.