Review of Peter Leithart’s “Against Christianity” - Part 2

I’ve been spending much less time writing and a lot more time reading but I hope to get back into writing some more. Reading doesn’t help anybody but myself – that is, at first.

Continuing from where I left of...

Leithart goes on to say that we have made the Church strange and alien to the world. Strange in the sense of being something completely different than social and political institutions. Of course, the Church is strange. She is “a city whose town square is in heaven” (pg 17), a “polity without sword and shield. Of no other society can that be said.” (pg 17-18). But at the same time the Church is a culture just like any other culture. She “fits” in this world. God “did not intervene in a world of rituals and meals with spatuals and gleals”, nor did He “enter a world of books with blurks” (pg 18). Instead of throwing something utterly foreign into this “world of stories, symbols, rituals, and community rules” (pg 18), (Here comes N.T. Wright stuff) God introduced “into this world of stories, a rival story; into the world of books, God came with His own library; into a world of symbols and rituals and sacrificial meals, the Church was organized by a ritual bath and a feast of bread and wine; in the midst of cultures with their own ethos and moral atmosphere, God gathered a community to produce the aroma of Christ in their life together.”(pg 18) Althouogh Leithart is not denying the spiritual nature of Christ’s kingdom he is showing that its spiritual nature does not make it foreign or outside of this world. In fact, he claims that “if the Church is God’s society among human societies, a heavenly city invading the earthly city, then a territorial conflict is inevitable.”

Through the use of a story about Peter, Paul, John, and Barnus (a religious marketing consultant) Leithart makes the excellent point that God’s law and Christ’s Lordship are not merely private – instead they rule over all of the polis (in other words, the realm of politics is not outside of God’s law and Christ’s Lordship). At the end of the story Barnus says “Gentlemen, I’m very sorry. I can’t help you. You have completely misunderstood what we’re doing here. I don’t think you’re starting another religion; you’re doing something else entirely. I am a religious consultant, not a political revolutionary.” (pg 24)

On page 25 Leithart makes an interesting statement. He says, “Heaven is in our midst, and we are in the midst of heaven. Responding with homage and worship to the authority of the risen and ascended Lord, the Church is formed as a polity”. If we look at the endnote we read “…the Church is the true polity or commonwealth, and the phrase “political society” is analogously applied to other political communities.” (pg 145) If I understand him correctly then I think he’s saying that the Church’s government and form is of the truest form and other political groups and whatnot take their cues from Her – of course they probably don’t realize that that is what they are doing, but that’s another point.

According to Leithart, in the Greek world, when a general assembly of the polis was gathered together in a public space the name given to that assembly was ekklesia. Of course, this is the same word that is used to describe the general assembly of the Church and Leithart infers from that (and other data of course) that the “Church presented herself not as another “sect” or cult that existed under the umbrella of the polis; she was an alternative governing body for the city and the beginning of a new city.” In my mind this seems to conflict with Rushdoony who makes a clear distinction between the Church and state yet (rightly) sees God’s law governing both. If Leithart is saying that the great triumph of the church in the end will mean the coming of power of the Church over the city then I think I would have to disagree. I don’t believe that the power of protection through force is given to the Church - but maybe Leithart doesn’t believe that either. At this point in the book he is still doing much more tearing down then building up. It won’t be until the last chapter that he unveils his vision for how all this is going to fit together. Do doubt that many others will be wondering in like manner as I as they read this part of the book. It would seem that Leithart is arguing for a reinstitution of catholic rule but we will see that that is not exactly true.

This ends my review of the first chapter. I’ll finish with some quotes and comments.

Interesting quotes:

“If Christ has not restored human community, if society is not “saved” as much as the individual, then Christ has not restored man as he really is. Salvation must take a social form, and the Church is that social form of salvation, the community that already (thought imperfectly) has become the human race as God created it to be, the human race that is becoming what God intends it to be.” (pg 32)

“Today, McDonaldization is a challenge to Christians because it involves the spread of Western idolatry of mammon on a global scale, the United Nations is a threat because it is a false church, claiming a false catholicity. Globalists are enemies because they preach a false gospel, an eschatological message of international peace and plenty that will be achieved through liberal political and capitalist economic institutions.” (pg 34)

Concluding comments:

Leithart claims that if we are going to stand for the true gospel we must stand against Christianity. Of course, what he means by “Christianity” is that philosophy which is only mental and private concerning “eternal truths” taught in the scriptures. If that is ones’ definition then I too must stand against Christianity, but I would not make it matter of membership in the true visible church. I make that point because I think that many, upon reading this first chapter, might be under the impression that Leithart is claiming that all those adherents to Christianity are not truly part of the church. Of course, this is not true but it would be an easy pit to fall into. This book is especially hard hitting to Baptist who tend to preach a privatized religion and have a low view of Baptism and covenant community – they seem to be very much in the “grips of Christianity”. But this is also true of those super reformed Presbyterians (Trinty Foundation) who misunderstand the nature of Christ’s kingdom.

Over all I think the point Leithart is making is good. The controversial manner in which he is making it is over the top.

Review of Peter Leithart’s “Against Christianity” - Part 1

Done at the request of Jason


Most of the reviews or comments I’ve found for this book have been nothing more than a copy of the comments on the back of the book. Helpful, but hardly critical. In this review I want to state both what I like and what I didn’t like about this controversial book.

And I’ll start with that, the fact that this book was made to be controversial. On the first page Leithart writes

“Christianity is the heresy of heresies, the underlying cause of the weakness, lethargy, sickness, and failure of the modern church”.

Of course, it’s catchy, it makes the curious person want to read on but it is, in my opinion, very much an overstatement done to get the reader to be shocked and draw him in. It’s a form of trickery, and I don’t like it. But when he gets around to making the point about what Christianity actually means, I actually agree with him. Leithart writes,

“Christianity sometimes refers to a set of doctrines or a system of ideas…By this definition, Christianity is what Christian people believe about God, man, sin, Christ, the world, the future, and so on. The Bible, however, never speaks of such beliefs except as all-embracing, self-committing confessions of God’s people. The Bible gives no hint that a Christian ‘belief system’ might be isolated from the life of the Church, subjected to scientific or logical analysis, and have its truth compared with competing ‘belief systems’.”

Of course, he is not opposed to a logical analysis of the Faith (like a systematic theology book) but he is trying to make the point (as I understand him) that if one is to analyze the Faith is a system it must be a complete analysis including the Church, her rites and rituals, and a full orbed covenant view that puts it all together – with Christ as its focus. This is right and good. The Christian faith is not simply a cool idea. By using the word “faith” in describing our “religion” we are saying that it is a belief that Must and Always bring about “works”, not simply a mental accent.

“’faith’ stretches out to include one’s entire ‘stance’ in life, a stance that encompasses beliefs about the world but also unarticulated or inarticulable attitudes, hopes, and habits of thought, action, or feeling…the Church is united not only by one faith but also by one baptism, manifests her unity in common participation in one loaf, and lives together in mutual defense, submission, and love”.

This is the same the thing that N.T. Wright makes clear in the first 300 pages of his “The New Testament and the People of God”. I would encourage anyone to read it to get a good understanding of what a Worldview really is and how it works (praxis, symbol, story, questions).

I have to go back to work now. This post is my introductory analysis of the first chapter, Against Christianity. I’ll go through the other chapters (Against Theology, Against Sacraments, Against Ethics, For Constantine) later.

Perelandra - C.S. Lewis

By far the most influential book I've read this year. The main character, Ransom, is sent to another world where he finds floating islands, beautiful creatures, and a women untainted by sin. Satan, via the body of a science professor, hitches a ride to the same world and finds Ransom and the woman. Predictably the reader finds himself in a Garden of Eden reenactment with a thousand times more detail. The imagery and storytelling is amazing.

Through the course of the events the reader is taken into the mind of Ransom and returns with a better understanding of knowledge, rhetoric, exhaustion, and even predestination. One might also get at Lewis' understanding of the good life, that is, a life untouched by sin and in total dependence to one's Maker.

Lewis writes the following about gluttony and overindulgence.

Concerning normal food consumption Lewis writes this:

As he let the empty gourd fall from his hand and was about to pluck a second one, it came into his head that he was now neither hungry nor thirsty. And yet to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual seemed an obvious thing to do. His reason, or what we commonly take to be reason in our own world, was all in favor of tasting this miracle again. Yet something seemed opposed to this "reason". It is difficult to suppose that this opposition came from desire, for what desire would turn from so much deliciousness? But for whatever cause it appeared to him better not to taste again. Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day.

Later Ransom experiences an unearthly refreshing pleasure...

Looking at a fine cluster of the bubbles which hung above his head he thought how easy it would be to get up and plunge oneself through the whole lot of them and to feel, all at once, that magical refreshment multiplied tenfold. But he was restrained by the same sort of feeling which had restrained him overnight from tasting a second gourd. He had always disliked the people who encored a favorite air in the opera that just spoils it, had been his comment. But this now appeared to him as a principle of far wider application and deeper moment. This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards... was it possibly the root of all evil? No; of course the love of money was called that. But money itself - perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defense against chance, a security for being able to have things over again...

Afterwards Ransom finds some "plain food"

It turned out to be good to eat. It did not give the orgiastic and almost alarming pleasure of the gourds, but rather the specific pleasure of plain food. But the meal had its unexpected high lights. Every now and then one struck a berry which had a bright red centre, and these were so savory, so memorable among a thousand tastes, that he would have begun to look for them and to feed on them only, but that he was once more forbidden by that same inner advisor which had already spoken to him twice since he came to Perelandra. "Now on earth", thought Ransom, "they'd soon discover how to breed these redhearts, and they'd cost a great deal more than the others." Money, in fact, would provide the means of saying encore in a voice that could not be disobeyed.

Lewis' insight on common life is breathtaking. I highly recommend this book.

against CHRISTIANITY - Peter Leithart

In this short work Peter Leithart smashes evangelical notions of culture, church, and state with a freakin’ bigmomma sledge hammer. But, thankfully, he doesn’t leave the reader thinking “ouch, I quit” instead he reveals a much larger vision of Christian society one that is in agreement with N.T. Wright’s categories of stories, symbols, praxis, and theology. This book reminds me of New-Christiandom ideas that I’ve found scattered on the internet yet it is different at a few levels. Leithart tends to be more politically minded and lacking in his concern for the arts and culture. Never-the-less this is a great book if you can follow his no show kick your ass reasoning skills. I was stuck re-reading a good portion of just so I could “get it”. It’s most assuredly a different way at looking at this world, one that, in my opinion, is good and refreshing.