Peter J. Leithart

In an essay written during World War II, C. S. Lewis raised the question of learning during wartime. What, he asked, is the use of pursuing arcane knowledge when the world is collapsing about us? Isn’t this like fiddling while Rome burns? Since I teach at a Christian liberal arts college, this . . . . Continue Reading »

“For all the radical talk,” Stanley Fish concludes in a summary of the political theory of William Corlett, “what we have here is liberalism all over again.” Something similar might be said of this collection of Fish’s essays: though he does not, to be sure, revert to . . . . Continue Reading »

A millennium ago, Europe faced the dual prospect of economic and social collapse on the one hand and spiritual awakening on the other. From 970 to the mid-eleventh century, there were forty-eight years of famine. Trade and communications broke down, and travelers were threatened by bands of roving . . . . Continue Reading »

For more than two decades, Psalm 139:13 has served as a slogan for the anti-abortion movement, adorning banners and picket signs from Boston to the Bay and everywhere in between. And the text is entirely appropriate to the sermon. One can hardly imagine a clearer affirmation of God’s care for . . . . Continue Reading »

Over the years, through the diligent encouragement of friends, I have acquired something of a taste for science fiction. Admittedly, I am still lost much of the time, bewildered by a world of gadgets and gizmos, (sometimes literally) angular characters, and events that defy normal canons of cause . . . . Continue Reading »

One of the contributions of twentieth-century Catholic “nouvelle théologie,” and of Henri de Lubac and Jean Danielou in particular, is a rehabilitation of the typological exegesis of the Bible practiced by patristic and medieval theologians. Typological interpretation assumes that events and . . . . Continue Reading »

In the second chapter of his letter to the Galatians, Paul recounts how on a visit to Antioch he publicly rebuked Peter’s “hypocrisy” in withdrawing, under pressure from a delegation of the Jerusalem church, from table fellowship with Gentile believers. The New Testament scholar James D. G. . . . . Continue Reading »

In his book No Place for Truth , David Wells tells a tale of two declines”the first of which occurred in Protestant liberalism. What began as an effort to commend Christianity to its despisers ended with the loss of everything distinctively Christian. In the Kantian intellectual universe in . . . . Continue Reading »

Several years ago, I did some research on Roman Catholics who had converted to conservative Protestant churches. What intrigued me most about those who shared their experiences with me was the large number who said that they left the Catholic Church because they became Christians or that they became . . . . Continue Reading »

Sitting at the breakfast table one morning, Whittaker Chambers looked at the intricate design of his daughter’s ear and felt inchoate stirrings of doubt about the atheistic foundations of Communist ideology. Following his example, I watch my daughter as she becomes aware of her hand and find . . . . Continue Reading »