Peter J. Leithart

Every great civilization has some equivalent of what the fifth-century (BC) Athenians called polupragmosune . As defined by William Arrowsmith, that word “connotes energy, enterprise, daring, ingenuity, originality, and curiosity; negatively it means restless instability, discontent with . . . . Continue Reading »

Sermon outline for October 5: Toward Jerusalem and the Cross, Luke 9:1-62 INTRODUCTION Luke 9 marks the great turning point in Luke’s account of Jesus’ ministry. Luke 9:1-9 forms the climax of the Galilean ministry, and later in this chapter, Jesus begins His journey toward Jerusalem, . . . . Continue Reading »

Virgil seems nearly to have come to the Augustinian insight that the Roman empire is nothing more than civil war writ large. Aeneas, the pius hero, has to combat furor , which is passion, anger, rage, everything that causes disorder in the world. But during the battle scenes in the second half of . . . . Continue Reading »

The multi-faceted David Gelernter offers a rousing call to the Bush administration to defend their Iraqi policy on a moral rather than strategic basis in the October 6 edition of the Weekly Standard . He compares the debate over Iraq today with the debate between Chamberlain and Churchill in the . . . . Continue Reading »

In the September 29 issue of the Weekly Standard , Sam Munson reviews Peter Carey’s novel, My Life As a Fake , a fictionalized account of a famous Australian literary hoax. As Munson summarizes the (true) story: Over a single wet weekend on an army base (or so at least the legend of their . . . . Continue Reading »

Exhortation for September 28: We sometimes think of the church as a collection of families, and in some respects that is true. More fundamentally, though, the church is a family. We are brothers and sisters of one another because we are all brothers and sisters of Jesus, whose Father is also our . . . . Continue Reading »

The Twelve apostles are all men of Galilee, but as soon as Acts opens they are based in Jerusalem and remain there, even after the stoning of Stephen and the dispersal of the church. Perhaps there’s a connection with the remnant typology mentioned in an earlier post: The remnant has moved . . . . Continue Reading »

I don’t have my sermons taped, and have been asked why. Here’s a couple of reasons: 1) Jeff Meyers pointed out a number of years ago that taping sermons tempts a pastor to preach to a group other than the church in front of him. Instead of addressing the specific local concerns, he will . . . . Continue Reading »

Listening to Jim Jordan’s tapes on Daniel has helped me to put some pieces together in Luke. Jim discusses the “remnant covenant” at some length in the first couple of tapes, and points out some of the main features of that period of Israel’s history. In many respects, these . . . . Continue Reading »

The gods in Euripides are savage, unpredictable, random, liable to sneak up and destroy you at a moment’s notice. No wonder that Paul’s announcement that Jesus had defeated the principalities and powers came as such great good news. . . . . Continue Reading »