Peter J. Leithart

Alan Jacobs reviews Stanley Hauerwas’s Against the Grain of the Universe in the current issue of Books & Culture , and Hauerwas talks about Barth’s insight that natural theology can never be “first” theology: “Barth discovered early in his career that the great error . . . . Continue Reading »

Exhortation for October 26: We pray every week that God’s kingdom would come. This is a very general prayer, that God would extend His righteous rule to the ends of the earth. But since we live everywhere, our prayer that God’s kingdom would come is a focused prayer that His kingdom . . . . Continue Reading »

We speak of “sacred cows,” and think that we are using a dead and meaningless metaphor. But the “sacred” of “sacred cow” is very real. Lay a finger on the sacred rights of the individual to do anything he likes with his genitals, tread on the sacred ground of . . . . Continue Reading »

Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees’ concern with the “outside” is remarkable. He condemns them for cleaning the outside of the plate and cut without concern for the robbery and wickedness within. That looks like a simple opposition of inner v. outer purity, however much . . . . Continue Reading »

One way to make the point above about Michael Denton and Philip Johnson is to say that they are “prophets” in the sense that Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Jim Jordan use the term: They create a new future with their words. . . . . Continue Reading »

In Luke 11, the charge that Jesus is in league with the devil comes immediately after Jesus’ teaching on prayer, and there are verbal connections between the two sections of the chapter. One of the most important is the fact taht some of the people in the crowd “test” Jesus by . . . . Continue Reading »

Thomas Woodward has written a fascinating history of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement in Doubts About Darwin (Baker, 2003). His focus is on the history of the rhetoric of the debate (examining the ethos of each participant, the appeals to pathos, as well as the logos). Along the way, he . . . . Continue Reading »

In her introduction to the current Semeia volume, Eskenazi argues that the biblical writers rarely use ring or chiastic constructions. The ones that are “found” are, in her opinion, usually unconvincing. But she offers a more philosophical reason for the Bible’s avoidance of . . . . Continue Reading »

The current issue of Semeia , edited by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, is devoted to studies of the influence of Levinas on biblical studies and the influence of the Bible on Levinas. Ezkenazi’s introduction lays out the basic categories and the fundamental flow of Levinas’s thought. Reading it, . . . . Continue Reading »

A very interesting article in the same issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas by Rod Preece of Wilfrid Laurier University. He examines the effect of Darwinism on moral debates about treatment of animals during the 19th century, and concludes that Darwinism had little appreciable effect. Many . . . . Continue Reading »