Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Leithart

Home
Evangelical
More on Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite

More on Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am by Peter Leithart

More on Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite 2017-09-07T00:10:11+06:00 Peter Leithart

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Hart has previously discussed various postmodernism options for aesthetics, showing how postmodernism reduces to an ontology of violence or a discourse of the sublime. Now he turns to Nietzsche to ask whether he provides a possible future for thought.

III. The Will to Power.

Hart suggests that in Nietzsche, the church faces ?a philosophical adversary whose critique of Christianity appears to be as radical as the kerygma it denounces.?EMore than even the ancient opponents of Christianity like Celsus, Nietzsche has grasped how thoroughly Christianity subverted the values of antiquity, and this allows ?theology to glimpse something of its own depths in the mirror of his contempt.?ENietzsche thus ?does faith honor?Ewhile attacking it.

At the same time that theology recognizes the value of Nietzsche?s critique of Christianity, it should also respond to his challenge. While doing this, theology must recognize the character of Nietzsche?s attack, which is ?first and foremost a virtuoso performance, a rhetorical tour de force?Erather than a reasoned argument. Hart examines Nietzsche?s development of three points: his attack on Christian morality; his views on the person of Christ; and finally an assessment of the force of his critique. This response does not focus on the historical accuracy of Nietzsche?s critique, since the force of the critique does not depend on accuracy but upon the rhetorical power of the narrative subversion that Nietzsche attempts. The church must meet Nietzsche?s challenge on the field of rhetoric and narrative.

Christian morality. Nietzsche objection to Christianity is not so much intellectual as aesthetic; it is a matter of taste. Christianity inverts all noble values of antiquity, and represents a strategy of ressentiment, the resentment of the weak against the strong. Christianity is an enemy of life, natural life with all its urges and pains and violences; Christianity is a withdrawal from the world, a poor man?s Platonism that urges men to see life here as impure and to yearn instead for eternity. It is the religion of masculation. Christianity is an enemy of life, false to the world, a cruel denial of sensuality and joy.

As an alternative, Nietzsche offers Dionysus, the god of ecstasy, life, power, joy. Dionysus represents the celebration of life as it is, while the cross of Christ represents the condemnation of this life as it is. For the Dionysian, being needs no justification, it is in Nietzsche?s words ?holy enough to justify even a monstrous amount of suffering.?EThe cross renders life guilty and unjust, while the suffering of Dionysus, his dismemberment and restoration, is the justice of being.

Christianity thus arises from a slave mentality, where the weak undermine the values of nobility in favor of the their own values ?Ethe values of pity, relief, comfort, and consolation. A specifically Jewish spite for the strong thus drives Christian morality, a kind of ?aggressive impotence.?EHart points out how effectively Nietzsche evokes the psychology of resentment, exploiting a specifically Christian tendency to examine and suspect motives, and to anticipate hypocrisy lurking in even the purest hearts.

Positively, Nietzsche claims that ?life simply is will to power.?EMan is to conform to nature, and nature teaches continuous agon. Suppression of this natural strife is the work of world-despising priests, the villains of Nietzsche?s narrative (as also, curiously, of the liberal Protestant narrative). Consonance with nature is the standard against which all moralities are judged, Christianity especially; and Christianity is an inversion of nature. (Hart acknowledges Jaspers?s point that Nietzsche may be self-contradictory at this point, since he presents an ?absolute?Estandard in the course of attacking absolutes.)

Christianity?s invention of the soul ?Ea stable presence underlying action and change ?Eas the greatest inversion of nature brought to man. The invention of the soul created a ?moral interval?Ebetween force and its exercise; the notion of a soul leads to a divided self, such that the pursuit of natural instincts and the will to power has to be ?checked against?Ethe underlying reality of soul. The invention of soul gives a man the opportunity to withdraw from his act, ?recoil from his own force.?EA man with a soul might be guilty of pursuing his natural force. But the moral interval is not naturally there, Nietzsche claims, but is an invention of priests. Birds of prey is not free to be passive, nor is it guilty for preying on its prey. Civilization depends on sublimating the will to power into socially constructive uses ?Esacrifice, self-discipline, the internalization of law. This sublimation is actually necessary for the full development of power. Of this sublimation, however, Christianity is a parody, sublimating aggression not into socially useful pursuits but creating bad conscience, the internalization of morality that involves man?s most aggressive instincts being turned against himself. Christianity further refuses to acknowledge that it is involves in this dissumlation, refuses to acknowledge that Christianity is itself a manifestation of the will to power. Priests rule ?through the invention of sin.?E

Hart offers a series of criticisms of this genealogy of morals. First, there is a contradiction at the heart of Nietzsche?s account, in that he speaks of ?life?Eand ?nature?Eand ?instinct?Eas if they were absolutes, all the while claiming that all truths are culturally contingent. Second, Nietzsche?s construct depends on an absolute metaphysics in which life is ?essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering.?ENietzsche, in short, is evangelizing for an ontology of violence of a basic kind. For Hart, this is no more ?natural?Ethan an ontology of peace and gift; Nietzsche?s preference for the agon is simply an aesthetic preference, a matter of taste. Third, while Christianity early on adopted a Platonic language, it quickly found that it could not maintain it in its original form. Already with Plotinus, in fact, Platonism had moved in a ?Christian?Edirection, in that Plotinus substituted emanation for the original Platonic notion of a ?specular relationship between the apparent world of chaotic materiality and the ideal world it imperfectly imitates.?EFor Plotinus, the infinite was no longer fearful or chaotic, but the ?positive plenitude of the goodness of the One.?EChristianity pressed further, declaring the Trinity to be equal persons in perichoretic unity, thus undermining the Neoplatonic hierarchy of diminishing being and destroying finall the ?last trace of an ontological space of the simulacral.?EChristianity thus affirmed that created difference is good. Fourth, for the church fathers, the fact that creation means the formation of another difference is not the same as creation as the formation of ?another world.?EChristianity does not really teach that there are ?two worlds,?Eeternity and time, but rather that the world is much larger and more expansive than we realize. Were this not the case, Christianity could not have spoken of the world as good, as participation in the good, or as manifesting the glory of God. Prior to modern Protestantism, only gnostics spoke of ?another world?Eof ?spiritual (or existential) interiority.?EFor ancient Christianity, the cosmos joined heaven and earth seamlessly.

Fifth, the church can actually join Nietzsche in his enmity to every faith that distracts from or hates life, but this view, however often it manifested itself in Christianity, actually arose within ancient paganism. By the time of Christianity?s appearance, it had been recognized that ancient religion was a religion of strife, and two alternatives presented themselves ?Eempire, which would suppress strife by the triumph of one god or power, and retreat from the world. Insofar as Nietzsche?s critique applies to the church, it really applies to gnosticism, which the church rejected long before Nietzsche. Christianity, by contrast, came onto the scene affirmi

ng flesh in all kinds of unseemly ways ?Eincarnation, resurrection of the body, transfiguration of the cosmos. Christianity came on the scene claiming, with Judaism, that the world was good, a manifestation of the glory of God. Nietzsche never grasps Christianity?s view of creation, nor the corollary that evil is not a substance. Even the cross is not a renunciation of the world; Christ renounced wine as he went to the cross, and with wine he rejected all the abundance and joy of creation, but he renounced with the promise that he would drink it new in the kingdom. In a brilliant excursus, Hart suggests that the whole contrast of Dionysus and Christ can be summarized through a consideration of wine. For Dionysus, wine is ?repeatedly associated with madness, anthropophagy, slaughter, warfare, and rapine,?Ewhile the wine of Christianity is ?the wine of agape and the feast of fellowship.?EBut how would Nietzsche know the difference? He ?was a teetotaler and could not judge the merit of either vintage.?E

Sixth, what of the soul? Citing Milbank, Hart suggests that there is no need to project moral judgment to a permanent ?self?Eunderlying action, since ?within ?noble?Eactions there is always already a metaphorical tension.?EThat is, the noble are always already formed by cultural codes, by narratives, by mimesis of some totem. The slaves who challenge noble morality might simply recognize the metaphorical nature, that is the contingency, of noble morality and wish to offer an alternative metaphor. Nietzsche, Milbank recognizes, cares little about the codes that function within ?noble?Esocieties, taking them, contradictorily, as an expression of pure nature.

This suggests, further, that Nietzsche is operating with an anthropology every bit as essentialist as Descartes. If the warrior is nothing but his own actions, and each action is an immediate expression of the self, ?what would he be other than an egological substance?E If there is no interval between action and identity, then ?is this not still the concrete reality of a self, invariable and absolute, the Cartesian ego transposed into a phenomenalist key??EA soul that is at the surface, even if it is called an ?event?Erather than a substance, is still a mythical, and a phenomenalized substance is still a substance. The moral interval that Nietzsche wants to reject is actually a delay or opening that divides the will, reason, and desire, and where the self ?finds itself always subject to the bearing over (METAPHEREIN) of metaphor.?EChristianity?s interiority is ?an inward fold of an outward surface,?Ea place where the self might be reinterpreted and rewritten. Against Nietzsche, ?only an essential self could be immutable and resistant to every renarration.?ENature and totemism arise together, metaphor is always present, and therefore there is no tracing back beyond culture and language. This means that within human action, there is always an absence within every presence (because of the ?gap?Eopened by metaphor). Nietzsche again is merely declaring his preference for certain kinds of totems.

What of the charge that Christianity is so bound up with an account of the self that the postmodern destruction of the subject is a frontal attack on Christianity? Hart suggests that Christianity is in fact a much more radical critic of an invariable, essential self than Nietzsche is. Nietzsche, after all, finds will to power and only will to power in every surface intention that he examines; he always seeks something deeper than the surface, and each time the depths are the same. Admiration of saints is for Nietzsche only an admiration for their will to power. Hart points out that saints can evoke a whole range of responses, and might open the viewer to the form of Christ that has shaped the saint. Nietzsche?s account is reductive, and hence essentialist; interiority is a fixed reality, fixated on power.

Early Christianity did not in fact invent or even teach that the self is a timeless substance that remains fixed and stable despite all eternal changes. For Augustine, often cited as the inventor of subjectivity, the self has no center in itself, but is constituted by its longing for an infinite that it cannot possess. The imago Dei is in fact precisely this, not a possession so much as a desire for the infinity of God, a hope. For Gregory of Nyssa, the soul is ?an always outstretched, open, and changing motion, an infinite exodus from nothingness into God?s inexhaustible transcendence.?E

In the end, the main charge against Nietzsche?s historicist genealogy is that ?it simply is not nearly historicist enough.?E

Jesus. Exposing the fact that Nietzsche?s historical accounts are guided by a monist metaphysical position does not really undermine his critique. Again, aesthetics is the key. Nietzsche takes the position that ?truth?Eis in service to evaluation, and his goal is to identify an aesthetic disposition (noble virtue) from which to wage a war of stories. Christianity has long understood this, that it cannot offer any more fundamental ?argument?Efor the faith than the form of Christ Himself, than the narrative of the gospel. Thus, while Christianity can acknowledge that its own history has been in some measure a history of apostasy, it cannot accept an assault on the form of Christ. Hence we come to Nietzsche?s account of Jesus.

Nietzsche finds it difficult to fit Jesus into his story of will to power and ressentiment. Jesus renounces power, but not out of resentment. What to do with him? Nietzsche makes two key moves, first cutting off Jesus from the church and asserting his utter uniqueness, and second arguing that Jesus was decadent and life-denying to begin with.

Nietzsche?s account of Jesus depends heavily on the biblical scholarship of his time, but is more honest that he is pursuing an imaginative construct of Jesus, rather than what he considers an inaccessible historical Jesus. He attempts to describe the psychology of Jesus, but he does so without much real attention to the gospels?Eaccount of Jesus. With the gospels no more than a palimpsest, Nietzsche is free to create a Jesus for his own purposes. Hart argues that Nietzsche?s account is ?exceeded in every direction by the uncanniness of the Christ of the Gospels.?EJesus outfoxes Nietzsche.

What kind of psyche does Jesus possess? He has no capacity for enmity, and therefore cannot be a hero. Instead, he ?lived in a sweet delerium, in which a life of eternal love seemed present in each moment, in which all men appeared as equal, the children of God; an inner world of his own creation, one to which he fled principally on account of his excessive sensitivity to touch and abrasion, his morbid dread of reality?s sting; his was a child?s evangel, an exhortation to simple faith, a devotion to an inner light and an immunity to all concrete realities.?EThis Jesus is not Jewish; he is not an apocalyptic prophet; he is not one to drive money-changers from the temple. All such sharpness and edginess is a Jewish falsification of the gospel. Nietzsche?s Jesus is the Jesus of liberal Protestantism, the beautiful soul of Hegel, operating by a kind of angelistic retreat from the world. This is amazing: Nietzsche finds nothing in the gospels except what is given by liberal Protestantism. Nietzsche even repeats the liberal Protestant separation of Jesus and Paul. Jesus was the first and only Christian, but Paul restores Jewish resentment to Christianity in his interpretation of the cross, in an effort to assert his sacerdotal control of the masses. Radical? Harumph.

Hart charges that Nietzsche?s Jesus is not only an historical failure, but more importantly an imaginative one. His psychology is formed simplistically between the poles of action and reaction, and he cannot imagine a responsiveness that is creative, which is precisely the Christian notion of agape. Even if Jesus is the dreamer that Nietzsche claims, this is not necessarily at the expense of creativity, suggesting instead that ?a certain distance and oneiric cast of mind, is required for any cre
ative action; a new practice requires a new imagination of the world.?EJesus was re-imagining the world not according to the grammar of power but the grammar of agape. The church is the social realization of this re-imagining of the world, ?a partial realization and imperfect enactment of this new creation.?EBut this is precisely what Nietzsche cannot allow. Perhaps there can be one man who renounces the will to power with sincerity, but if there is a community that is governed by love rather than power, Nietzsche?s ontology of violence, his monism of the will to power, must be false. The very existence of the church gives the lie to Nietzsche?s metaphysics.

Force of Critique. Nietzsche in the end serves the ?wisdom of totality,?Ealbeit a totality that, like Dionysus, rends itself in order to be reborn. But Christ sends tremors through totality, subverting both Dionysus and Apollo, and showing that ?every claim to power and to rights [is] not only provisional, not only false, but quite simply absurd.?EThe Christian claim that the beauty of Christ appears among the outcasts and slaves is not a sop of comfort nor an endorsement of weakness or ugliness; the beauty of Christ radiates from the slaves because Christ dwells in them. If this is to be believed, it will require a far more radical antiessentialism and historicism than Nietzsche?s: ?it would require the belief that nothing in the world so essentially determines the nature of humanity or the scope of the human soul that there is no possibility of being reborn.?E

Again, taste is the key issue. Nietzsche?s disdain for Christianity does not follow from his critique; it is the force of the critique. Postmodern disciples of Nietzsche thus fail to mount so serious a challenge as their master when they focus on his metaphysics rather than his evangelistic rhetoric. And his aesthetic preferences run against the preferences and tastes of the gospels. Nietzsche finds it ?laughable?Ethat the gospels show God interested in and involved with ?the pettiest troubles?Eof the fishermen and petty officials of the gospels. He is most offended that the gospels could record Peter?s tears after his denial as if they were meaningful or profound. No self-respecting ancient writer would have shown a fisherman?s tears without mocking them. The gospels thus mark a revolution indeed, a revolution of taste, and this is where the battle between Nietzsche and Christianity must be joined: ?The most potent reply a Christian can make to Nietzsche?s critique is to accuse him of a defect of sensibility ?Eof bad taste.?E

Theology

Previous Post

March 9, 2005

Alter on Douglas

Next Post

March 18, 2005 Response to Mississippi Valley Report

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 1 Corinthians 1-2 Samuel 1968 Abelard Abortion Abraham Acedia AD 70 Adam Smith Addiction Advent Advertising Aeneid Aesthetics Africa African Christianity African Church African religion Age Aging Agriculture Airline industry Alabama Alasdair MacIntyre Albania Alcohol Allegory Alms Alternative Medicine Ambrose America American Christianity American culture American economy American Evangelicals American Foreign Policy American history American Literature American Military American Politics American Religion American Revolution Anagogy Analytic Philosophy Anamnesis Ancient Egypt Ancient Greece Ancient history Ancient Near East Ancient Religion Angels Anglican Church Anglicanism Animism Anointing of the Sick Anselm Anthropology Anthropomorphism anti-Catholicism Antiquities Antonio Lopez apocalypse Apocalyptic Apocalyptic language Apostles Creed Aquinas Archeology Architecture Arianism Aristotle Ark of the Covenant Art Art History Ascension Aseity Assurance Athanasius Atheism Athens atonement Attention Attributes Augustine Austin Farrer Authority autonomy Avant-garde Awe Bach Ballooning Balzac Banking Bankruptcy Baptism Baptists Baseball Basketball Bavinck Beatitudes Beauty Behavioral Economics Being Benedict XVI Benjamin Benjamin Franklin Beowulf Berkeley Bernie Sanders Bertrand Russell Bestiary Bible Bible - criticism Bible - NT Bible - NT - 1 Corinthians Bible - NT - 1 John Bible - NT - 1 Peter Bible - NT - 2 Corinthians Bible - NT - 2 Peter Bible - NT - Acts Bible - NT - Colossians Bible - NT - Ephesians Bible - NT - Galatians Bible - NT - Gospels Bible - NT - Hebrews Bible - NT - James Bible - NT - John Bible - NT - Jude Bible - NT - Luke Bible - NT - Mark Bible - NT - Matthew Bible - NT - Paul Bible - NT - Philippians Bible - NT - Revelation Bible - NT - Romans Bible - NT - Thessalonians Bible - NT - Timothy Bible - OT Bible - OT - Amos Bible - OT - Chronicles Bible - OT - Daniel Bible - OT - Deuteronomy Bible - OT - Ecclesiastes Bible - OT - Esther Bible - OT - Exodus Bible - OT - Ezekiel Bible - OT - Ezra-Nehemiah Bible - OT - Genesis Bible - OT - Habakkuk Bible - OT - Hosea Bible - OT - Isaiah Bible - OT - Jeremiah Bible - OT - Job Bible - OT - Joel Bible - OT - Jonah Bible - OT - Joshua Bible - OT - Judges Bible - OT - Kings Bible - OT - Lamentations Bible - OT - Leviticus Bible - OT - Malachi BIble - OT - Micah Bible - OT - Nehemiah Bible - OT - Numbers Bible - OT - Pentateuch Bible - OT - Proverbs Bible - OT - Psalms Bible - OT - Ruth Bible - OT - Samuel Bible - OT - Song of Songs Bible - OT - Torah Bible - OT - Zechariah Bible - OT - Zephaniah Biblical Law Biblicism Billy Graham biography Biology Biololgy Biotechnology Blasphemy Blindness Blog news Blogging Blogroll Bloomsbury Group Bob Dylan Body Body symbolism Boethius Boko Haram Bonhoeffer Book of Common Prayer Books Botany Boundary Brexit Britain British History British Politics Bruce Springsteen Buddhism Bureaucracy Burial Business C. S. Lewis C. S. Peirce Calendars Caliphate Calvin calvinism Camille Paglia Canon Capitalism Cappadocians Carl Schmitt Catholic Social Teaching Catholicism Catholicity Causation cemeteries Cervantes Charism Charismata Charity Charles Dickens Charles Hodge Charles Simeon Charles Taylor Charles Williams Chaucer Chermistry Chess Chesterton Chiasm children China Chinese Exclusion Act Chivalry Chopin Chretien de Troyes Christendom Christian Democracy Christian reconstruction Christianity in Britain Christianization Christmas Christology Chronology Church church and state Church architecture Church Calendar Church history Church of England Church Year Cicero Circumcision Cities City of God Civil Religion Civil Society Civil War Civility Classical Theism Classics Climate Change Clothing Coleridge Colloquy of Marburg Colonialism Color Comedy Comenius Commodity Communio Communism Community Comparative religions Computer Science Confederacy Confessionalization Conflict Congregations consciousness Consecration Conservatism Constantine Constitution consumerism Contra Faustum Conversion Coriolanus Cormac McCarthy Cosmology Cosmopolitanism Council of Trent Counter-culture Counter-insurgency Courage Courtly love Covenants Crafts Craftsmanship Cranach Creation Creativity Creator-creature Credit Crime Crime and Punishment Crisis Critical scholarship Criticism Cross Cubism Cultural theory Culture Culture War Dance Daniel Dennett Dante Darwin Dave Eggers David David Foster Wallace David Hume David Jones Deadly sins Death Debt Dechristianization Decolonization Deconstruction Defoe Deja vu Democracy Denis de Rougemont Denominationalism Derrida Descartes Developmental psychology Devils Diocletian Discipleship Disenchantment Disgust Diversion Diversity Divine energies Divine Impassibility Divine Simplicity Divine Warrior Doctrine dogma Dominion Donald Trump Dostoevsky Douglas Campbell Douglas Farrow Dreams Dualism Durkheim Dystopia E.M. Forster Early Christianity Early Modern Europe Easter Eastern Europe Eastern Orthodoxy Ecclesiology Ecclesiology Economics Economy Ecumenism Eden Edgar Allan Poe Edmund Spenser Education Egypt Election Elites Emergence Emma Emotion Empire England English History English Reformation Enlightenment Entertainment Entrepreneur environmentalism Envy Epic Epiphany Episcopals Epistemology Epistles Equality Erasmus Ernst Kantorowicz Eros Eschatology Eternity Ethics Eucharist Europe Evangelicalism Evangelicals and Catholics Together Events Evil Evolution Exile Face Fairie Queene Fairy Tales Faith family Family and Marriage Fantasy Farming Fashion Fasting Fatherhood Fear Femininity Feminism Fertility Fetishization Feud Feudalism Feuerbach Fiction Figs Film Finance Finland Fire Flag Flags Flannery O'Connor Flood myths Folly Food football Foreign Affairs Foreign Policy Foreknowledge Forgiveness Foucault Fracking France Francois Mauriac Franz Rosenzweig free will Freedom Freedom of God French Revolution Freud Funerals Future G. K. Chesterton Gambling Gaming Gay Marriage Gender gender identity Genealogy Geography George Berkeley George Eliot George Herbert; Poetry George Romanes Gerald Manley Hopkins Germany Gethsemane Gift Gifts Giorgio Agamben Global Christianity Global economics Globalism Globalization Glorious Revolution Gnosticism God's sovereignty Gods Goethe Golf Good Friday Gospel Gospels Gothic Gothic architecture Grace Grammar Gramsci Gratitude Greek Literature Greek Philosophy Greek Religion Greek Science Gregory of Nyssa Guillermo del Toro H. Richard Niebuhr Haiku hair Hamann Hamlet Handicap Handles Hands Hans Urs von Balthasar Happiness Harold Bloom Harper Lee Harvest healing Heaven Heavenly treasure Heavenly treasure Hebrew Bible Hebrew language Hegel Heidegger Hell Hellenism; Judaism; Revelation Henri de Lubac heresy Herman Dooyeweerd Hermeneutics Herod Heroic Heroism Hesiod Hidegard of Bingen Hierarchy Hieronymus Bosch Historicism Historiography History History - Early Modern History - Middle Ages Hoaxes Hobbes Holiness Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Home Homeless Homer Homosexuality Honor hope Horror Hospitality Housing Hugh of St. Victor Human Rights Humanism Humor hylomorphism Hymns Hypocrisy. Iago Iconoclasm Identity Ideology Idleness Idolatry Iliad Images Imagination Immigrant churches Immigrant Religion Immigration Imperialism Improvization Imputation Incarnation Incest India Individualism Indonesia Inequality Inerrancy Infant Baptism Infant mortality Infanticide Ingratitude Innovation Inspiration Institutions Insult Intellectual History Intellectuals Intelligent Design International Politics Internet Intimacy IQ Iran Iran-Iraq War Iraq Ireland Irony Islam Islamic State Islamism Ismail Kadare Israel Ivan Illich J. Gresham Machen J.N. Figgis Jacob Jacques Lacan James Bond James Jordan James Joyce James KA Smith James Wood Jane Austen Jane Jacobs Jealousy Jed Perl Jeff Koons Jeroboam Jesus Jewish War 66-70 AD Jihad Johann Georg Hamann Johannine Epistles John Ashbery John Behr John Bunyan John Calvin John Donne John Frame John Howard Yoder John Knox John Milbank John Milton John Owen John Rawls John Ruskin John Stuart Mill John the Baptist John Webster John Wesley John Williamson Nevin Jonathan Edwards Jorge Luis Borges Joseph Conrad Joseph Ratzinger Journalism Joy Judaism Judaize Judgment Judith Butler Jurgen Moltmann Justice Justification Kalevala Kant Karl Barth Karl Marx Karl Polanyi Karl Rahner Kazakhstan Kazuo Ishiguro Kenneth Lonergan Kierkegaard King Lear Kingdom of God Kitsch Knighthood Knowledge Korea Labor movement Lactantius Lamech Lament Landscape Language Latin America Laughter Law Law and Punishment Leftism Lent Les Murray Levi-Strauss Levites Leviticus Liber Mundi Liberal arts Liberal Theology Liberalism Light Lighthouse Linguistics LIstening Literacy Literary structure Literature Liturgics Liturgy Locke Logic Love Luther Lutheran Lutheranism Lying Lytton Strachey Macbeth Machiavelli Machines Madness Mainline Manhattan Manicheanism Manners Manufacturing Manuscripts Mao Zedong Maps Marcion Marilynne Robinson Marketing Marriage Martha Nussbaum Martin Bucer Martin Chemnitz Martyrdom Marx Marxism Mary Mary Douglas masculinity Mass Materialism Mathematics Maundy Thursday Max Weber Media Mediation Medication Medicine Medieval Church Medieval exegesis Medieval Literature Medieval theology Medieval Thought Medievalism Memory Merchant of Venice Mesopotamian Religion Messianic Metaphor Metaphysics Methodist Mexican-American War Michel de Montaigne Michel Faber Middle Ages Middle East Midwifery Mikhail Bulgakov Military Millennium Mind Miracles Miscellaneous Mission missionaries Mixed constitution Modern self modernism Modernity monasticism Monotheism Monroe Doctrine Monsters Montaigne's Essays Moral philosophy Mormonism Moses Mother Teresa Motherhood Motive Mount of Olives Movies Multiculturalism Murder Music Musicals Mutability Mutability Mystery Mysticism myth N. T. Wright Narrative Nation-State Nationalism Natural Law Natural-Supernatural Nature Nature and culture Nature and Grace Nazi Nazirite Necrophilia Nero Nestorianism Neuroscience Nevin Lectures New Atheism New Testament New York City Newbigin News NGOs Nibelungenlied Nicholas of Cusa Nicholas of Lyra Nietzsche Nigeria Nihilism Nobel Prize Nobility Nominalism Norbert Elias Norman MacCaig nostalgia Novels Numerology Obama Objectivity and subjectivity Occasionalism Odysseus Oil Old Testament Oliver O'Donovan Ontology Origen original sin Orthodoxy Othello Owen Barfield Pacifism Pactum salutis Paedocommunion Paganism Pain Painting Paleoconservatism Palm Sunday Pannenberg Parenting Pascal Passions Passivity Pastoral Care Pastoral theology Patrick Modiano Patristics Patronage Paul Peace of God Peace of Westphalia Penal substitution Pentecost Pentecostalism Perichoresis Pericles Persecution Person Peter Peter Enns Petrarch Philip K. Dick Philip Melanchthon Philosophy Philosophy of Action Philosophy of History Philosophy of language Philosophy of science Phone booth Photography Physics Pictures Pierre Bourdieu Place Planned Parenthood Plants plato Play Plot Plotinus Pluralism Pneumatology Poetics poetry Poetry & Stories Poland police Political Philosophy Political theology Political Theory Politics Pop Culture Pope Francis Popular Culture Populism Pornography Porphyry Post-Colonial Theory Post-Structuralism Postmodernism Postmodernity Potential Poverty Power Practice Pragmatism Prayer Preaching Predestination Prediction Prehistory Premillennialism Presbyterian Priesthood Prince Charles Prison Reform privacy Private Prodigal Son Progress Progressivism Property Prophecy Prophet Propitiation Prosperity gospel Prostitution Protectionism Protestantism Providence Prudentius psalms Pseudo-Dionysus Psychological Warfare Psychology Public intellectual Public Life Public Philosophy Public Theology Publishing Punk Rock Pure nature Puritanism Purity Pushkin Putin Pythagoreanism R.J. Rushdoony Race Racism Radical Orthodoxy Rape Rationality Reactionary reading Realism Reason Red State Blue State Reformation Reformational Catholicism Reformational Philosophy Reformed theology refugees reinhold niebuhr Relationality Relativism Relics Religion Religion and science Religions Religious Freedom Religious Liberty Religious Right Renaissance Rene Girard Republican Party Resurrection Resurrection. Revelation Revelations Revenge Revivalism Revolution rhetoric Richard Flannagan Richard II Richard III Richard Wagner Richard Wilbur Righteousness Ritual Robert Frost Robert Herrick Robert Jenson Robert Mugabe Robert Spaemann Robinson Crusoe Rock n' Roll Rod Dreher Rodin Roman Catholicism Roman Empire Roman Religion Romance Romanticism Rome Rootedness Rosenstock-Huessy Rousseau Rowan Williams Rural America Russia Russian literature Russian Orthodoxy Rusty Reno Rwanda S. Y. Agnon Sabbath Sacrament Sacramental theology Sacraments Sacred Sacred Space Sacrifice saints Salt Sam Harris Same-sex marriage Sanctuary Satan Satire Saudi Arabia Scapegoat Scarcity Schism Schleiermacher Scholarship Science Science and Theology Science Fiction Scopes trial Scotland Scott Adams Scott Cairns Scottish Reformation Scotus Scripture and tradition sculpture Sea Second temple Secularism Secularization Self-Help Self-trust Semiotics Semper reformanda separation of church and state Sermon on the Mount Sex Sex Trafficking Sexual abuse Sexual Politics Sexual Revolution Sexuality Shakespeare Shame Culture Shema Sherlock Shopping Silence Simone Weil Simplicity Simpsons Sin Sincerity Sixties Skepticism Slavery Slavoj Zizek Sleep Sloth Social capital Social change Social Imaginary Social Science Socialism Socialization Sociology Sociology of Knowledge Sociology of Religion Sola scriptura Sonnets Sophocles Soteriology Soviet Union Space Spain Speculation Spinoza Spirit Sport Sports Star Trek State State-formation Stephen Masty Steven Bannon Strangers Structuralism structure Subject-object Substitution Suburbs Suffering Suicide Super-Rich Superheroes Supersessionism Supplication Supreme Court Surveillance Symbol Synagogue Taberancle Tabernacle Tax Taxes Tears Technology Teens Teleology Television Temple Ten Commandments Terence Terrence Malick Terrorism Thanksgiving The South The West Theodore Roosevelt Theogony Theological Education Theological Language Theology Theology - Anthropology Theology - Christology Theology - Covenant Theology - Creation Theology - Ecclesiology Theology - Eschatology Theology - Liturgical Theology - Pneumatology Theology - Soteriology Theology - Trinity Theology proper Theopolis Theopolis Institute Theosis Theresa May Thomas A. Clark Thomas Aquinas Thomas Carlyle Thomas Mann Threshing Thucydides Time Tocqueville Tolerance Toleration Tolstoy Tom Wolfe Tools Torah Torture Toscanini Totalitarianism Trade Tradition Tragedy Transhumanism Translation Transubstantiation Travel Trees Trinitarianism Trinity Trinity House Tristan Troilus and Creysede Trump Trump Truth Turkey Twelfth Night Two Kingdoms Typology Ukraine Ulysses Uncanny Uncategorized Uniform Union with Christ United States Unity University Usury Utilitarianism Utopia Value Vatican II Vengeance Vico Victorian Age Victorian Literature Vienna Violence Virgil Virgin Birth Virginia Woolf Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Solovyev Vladimir Solovyov W.H. Auden Walls Walt Disney Walt Whitman Walter Benjamin Walter Lippmann War Wars of Religion Washington DC Wealth Weddings Will William Carlos Williams William Gilpin William Golding Wine Wisdom wonder Word of God Wordsworth Work Works World Council of Churches World History World War I World War II Worldview Worship Wrath Writing Youth Youth Ministry Yuja Wang Yves Congar Zimbabwe Zwingli Zygmunt Bauman

Select a Month January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who built the Ark of the Covenant?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Bezalel Moses Joshua Aaron