Peter J. Leithart

Throughout the 40s of Isaiah, Yahweh promises to do something unprecedented, something new, for Israel. He will bring them from bondage - but he’s done that before. This time, he will bring them back by using Gentiles as agents of Israel’s liberation. That’s a new thing, better . . . . Continue Reading »

Linda Colley doesn’t think that the United Kingdom can remain united. In Acts of Union and Disunion, she following Benedict Anderson’s lead in claiming that nations are Imagined Communities, formed from myths and, as Colley says, “an attractive idea of what they are.”As . . . . Continue Reading »

In his TLS review of Andrew Sanders’s In the Olden Time: Victorians and the British Past, AN Wilson suggests that Dickens was representative of his age in his “open hatred of the post, and his perky lower-middle-class joy in nowadays.”Not all Victorians shared Dickens’s . . . . Continue Reading »

A sketch of a Jensonian critique of historical criticism of Scripture:The Bible must be understood in its historical context. In practice, this means that the Bible’s historical claims are relativized to the discoveries of ancient historical investigation, archaeology, etc. If the bricks and . . . . Continue Reading »

John Howard Yoder’s now-classic The Politics of Jesus sparked a revolution. For centuries, Jesus’ lordship had been foundational to Western political thought. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jesus had become irrelevant. Locke doesn’t use the name “Jesus” in either of his two treatises on government. Adam Smith mentions Jesus only once in Wealth of Nations, in a footnote reference to the “compagnie de Jesus.” There isn’t even a footnote reference to Jesus in Theory of Moral Sentiments. . . . Continue Reading »

Trinity House Institute is delighted to announce our first annual series of Nevin Lectures. Timothy George, Dean and Professor of Church History at Beeson Divinity School, will deliver four lectures on Sacramental Theology from a Baptist Perspective on February 7-8, 2014 at Trinity Presbyterian . . . . Continue Reading »

Turkle (Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other) was shocked when a Scientific American reporter accused her of standing in the way of same-sex marriage. She doesn’t oppose gay marriage, but the reporter was unhappy that Turkle objected to “mating and . . . . Continue Reading »

Turkle (Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other) recounts a visit to a museum where she and her daughter Rebecca viewed some Galapagos tortoises. Some of the kids would have preferred a robot: “A ten-year-old girl told me that she would prefer a robot . . . . Continue Reading »

Two high tech developments symbolize the disquieting trends that Sherry Turkle identifies in Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other(xiv): “These days, parents wait in line to buy their childreninteractive Zhu Zhu robotic pet hamsters, advertised as . . . . Continue Reading »

Beginning next year, “Israel will pay for abortions for women aged 20 to 33 regardless of circumstance . . . health officials said Monday, adding that they hope to make eligibility for state funding universal in the future.“The new rule opens it up for 6,300 more women to have a . . . . Continue Reading »