Antique and Postmodern Violence

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm by Peter Leithart

Antique and Postmodern Violence 2017-09-06T22:46:31+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.

A summary of Part IV of Milbank’s book.

Milbank argues that a proper theological response to postmodernism must be discriminating. He accepts the postmodern critique of “substance,” and thinks that Christianity can get along without employing this notion. But other aspects of the postmodern attack on traditional philosophy cannot be admitted by theology.

His critique of postmodernism proceeds by three steps: first, he argues that genealogy requires an ontology of violence; second, he claims that this ontology has no claim to being anything more than another myth, another way of telling the story: ahs no justification for claiming to be more than just another contingent description of the world; third, he concludes that this is “an entirely malign mythology.”

Genealogy first: According to Nietzsche and Foucault, their historical method exposes what is really going on in history. Nietzsche tells history in a way that everything is reducible to an exercise of the will to power. Christianity is especially perverse precisely because it masks its will to power under an apparent renunciation of power. But there is a basic difficulty with genealogy. On the one hand, it posits that all cultures are rationalizations of power and violence, while arguing on the other hand that certain cultures are closer and more overt in their commitments to power and violence than others.

Milbank argues effectively that genealogy is just another way to tell the story, and does not have any privileged position among the various ways one could tell the story of history. How can genealogy justify its claim that power and violence is the basic reality of history? Not in terms of genealogy, but only by a prior metaphysical commitment. Though Nietzsche announces the end of metaphysics, he in fact only offers a different metaphysics. In fact, the only reason why genealogists focus on power and violence is because they have assumed a particular ontology, an ontology of violence.

Thus, Milbank moves into the second stage of his analysis of postmodernism: genealogy requires an ontology that makes violence ultimate. Milbank charges that post-Heideggerian philosophy is essentially Gnostic in that it treats creation as inherently, metaphysically fallen, conflicted, violent. No redemption is possible. A second factor is the belief that all difference is conflicted difference. There is no ontological basis in Heidegger or his followers for a harmony of difference. Violence and conflict are “ontologized,” projected as the ultimate reality. For Derrida, for example, all interpretation is a matter of doing violence to the original text; interpretation is always subversive. Milbank asks, Why? And thinks that the answer is that subversion and conflict has been presupposed as the most fundamental reality.

Like sociology, genealogy ultimately ends up with an ahistorical account of history. For sociology, “society” is a basically unchanging something that is productive of the religious, cultural, and political shape of things. For genealogy, power is reified and becomes an ahistorical, unchanging reality, the bedrock underneath the shifting patterns of history. Milbank is here more “postmodern” than Nietzsche, in that he doesn’t think there is any unchanging “bedrock” of history, but only continually shifting patterns.

Third, Milbank wants to show that this mythology is entirely malign. Genealogy ends up being complicit with and approving of the violence it claims to expose and unmask. As noted above, Nietzsche and Foucault begin with the belief that all culture is ultimately about power and violence. They claim that even Christianity, which seems to put a premium on peace, is really just a clever way of covering real intentions and goals, power. Christianity is the real enemy for Nietzsche precisely because it veils its will to power under a cloak of renunciation of power. But if power and violence is the real and basic story, then we should conclude that those societies that are open about their commitment to power and violence are in some sense “truer” than those that veil that commitment. Fascist regimes are more honest, and therefore more moral, than Christian societies, and so too for ancient heroic societies. Milbank suggests that Nietzsche read Augustine back to front: He agreed with Augustine that pagan virtue was merely self-assertion and violence, but revels in that discovery instead of condemning it, as Augustine does, in the light of an alegernative configuration of human life.

Milbank argues that, for all their differences, postmodernism and antique philosophy share a commitment to violence. There is a hidden continuity between antique virtue and postmodern chaos. Thus, a revival of antique virtue cannot meet the challenge of postmodern nihilism. We need a wholly new ontology, one that rejects the ultimacy of violence. The only alternatives left are nihilism and Christianity.

Here Milbank, though appreciative of MacIntyre’s work, is also critical of what he sees as an effort to revive antique virtue. MacIntyre treats the philosophy of Aristotle as a universal, while Milbank insists that rationality is not equivalent to Aristotle. Aristotle’s was contingent philosophy, and it was tied to the oppressive structures of the ancient polis. Try as we might, we cannot detach Aristotle from this social and political setting.

Milbank also suggests that MacIntyre is not sensitive enough to how radically Christianity revises even the form of ethics. For Aristotle, Milbank says, what made virtue real was phronesis, prudence. Prudence regulates love. For Aquinas, as for Christianity generally, love is the highest virtue, and love regulates prudence. Further, the primacy of the “mean” in Aristotle’s philosophy is tied to notions of virtue as victory, victory in this case over passion, and thus makes violence inherent to ethics. Ethics, for Aristotle as for Kant, is an “overcoming” of chaos, the chaos of natural inclinations or passion.

Milbank appeals to Augustine’s City of God as a “deconstruction” of antique Roman virtue since Augustine shows that even the virtues of the pagans were “splendid vices.” According to Augustine, even the virtues of pagan Rome reduce to an exercise of violence. Virtue, as MacIntyre points out, originally was connected with excellence in an agonistic, a conflict situation: had to do with conquest. This association with violent suppression was never removed from conceptions of virtue. For Romans, the virtuous man is one that suppresses and gains victory over his passions. Politically, this translates into empire: By controlling his passions, the Roman gained glory and pre-eminence. Virtue was still a matter of conquest in a conflict, and the Roman peace is Roman virtue writ large, a process of limiting power by power, limiting violence by alternative violence. This is all rooted in cosmologies that conceive of “creation” as a matter of the demiurge controlling chaos. For Milbank, ontology, politics and ethics are of a peace, for both ancient thought and for Christianity. At each level, there is violent conquest of chaos in ancient thought and culture. As Milbank strikingly puts it, for antiquity, there can be no virtue without conflict and competition, and thus no virtue in heaven, where conflict has ceased. For Augustine, virtue is preeminently found in heaven, since virtue is harmony and love.

What Christianity thus provides in response to modern social theory, postmodern nihilism, and antique virtue, is a “counter-histor
y,” a “counter-ethics” and a “counter-ontology.” The counter-history is the history of Christ and his church. This is the Christian “metanarrative” within which all other stories and events must find their meaning and place. The church “defines itself as both in continuity and discontinuity with the community of Israel; later on it defines itself as in still greater discontinuity with the ‘political’ societies of the antique world. This account of history and critique of human society is in no sense an appendage to Christianity — on the contrary, it belongs to its very ‘essence.’” This implies “a gigantic claim to be able to read, criticize, say what is going on in other human societies,” which “is absolutely integral to the Christian Church.” In fact, “for theology to surrender this claim, to allow that other discourses – the ‘social sciences’ – carry out yet more fundamental readings, would therefore amount to a denial of theological truth. The logic of Christianity involves the claim that the ‘interruption’ of history by Christ and his bride, the Church, is the most fundamental of events, interpreting all other events. And it is most especially a social event, able to interpret other social formations, because it compares them with its own new social practice.” Augustine was able, from the perspective of this history, to redescribe the whole history of paganism, and expose it as based on violence, pursuit of self-interest and dominion for its own sake.

The counter-ethics is the church. Milbank challenges common claim that Augustine is the precursor of liberal and individualistic Christianity and shows that Augustine’s Christianity is inherently social. Augustinian Christianity did not wholly reject the ancient association of ethics and the polis. For Christianity, ethics is still located and fulfilled in community, but the community was the new community of the church.

Within this counter-society a new social practice takes place. Instead of rivalry and victimization, the church is a place where priority is placed on forgiveness of sins and bearing of one another’s burdens. Moreover, the new polis of the church offered another form of rule: Instead of the rule of coercion, it offered a pastoral model of rule. There is still, Milbank argues, a place for coercive means under certain circumstances but this is not to be domination for its own sake, but always, as Augustine argued, for the good of the one who is coerced. Even coercion is infused with and qualified by love.

In this new city, peace is not the mock peace of Rome. Augustine said that the peace of Rome was not really peace. In Rome, power limited and kept power in check. True peace is a matter of absolute harmony and love. True peace as a consensus in love. For Christianity, too, virtue is not a suppression of the passions, not a suppression of desire, but a redirection of desire to its proper object. Neither peace nor virtue rests on violence.

Under counter-ontology, Milbank stresses several Christian teachings that undermine both antiquity and postmodernism. Essentially, he wants to show that Christianity posits the ultimacy of peace over conflict, and that the ultimate reality for Christianity is a harmony of difference. Unlike postmodernism, Christianity does not see difference as inherently conflicted difference but rather sees difference as the essential obverse of communion and harmony. Milbank employs a musical analogy, drawn from Augustine’s De Musica.

The ultimate reality is the Triune God. Milbank is unashamedly Trinitarian, and for him the philosophical implication of the trinity is that ultimate reality is a matter both of difference and of harmony. God is not an undifferentiated monad: He is Three, and thus difference is not threatening. Difference is a principle that describes the highest reality of all, yet this difference is not a difference of antagonism and violent conflict. It is a difference in unity, a difference united in love, a harmony of difference.

The other important point here is that Christianity does not teach that violence and evil are inherent in the creation, and more than they are inherent in the Trinity. Christianity teaches an originally good and harmonious creation, a peaceful kingdom, which was destroyed by a historical fall. Violence and evil and death are not therefore inherent in creation but are in this sense contingent, and because of this it is possible for the world to be redeemed. Augustinian Christianity gives violence and evil “no ontological purchase,” since evil is simply the privatio of some good. Because evil is located in the will, it doesn’t exist as a thing.

Finally, he returns to his earlier points about “poesis.” The great failure of Christian ontology, he claims, is the failure to challenge the modern concepts of the “made” as a sphere of secularity. This failure has meant a failure of Christianity to provide a cultural and political perspective that could challenge modernity. Trinitarian theology can, however, provide a robust constructivist perspective that is not secular. Christianity teaches that there is a “making” within God Himself, since the Father “begets” the Son. This kind of begetting is mirrored in the creation. Making is not an alienation from God, no merely practical or instrumental activity, but is the fulfillment of the imago Dei.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

February 5, 2010

Sociology

Next Post

February 5, 2010 Proverbs 28:12-16

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

True or False: Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman.

Select your answer to see how you score.

TRUE FALSE