Peter J. Leithart

Why is Dr. Who’s time-traveler ship, the Tardis, shaped like a British police box? Jill Lepore answers in a New Yorker piece marking the fiftieth anniversary of the TV show’s first episode. In fact, there were several answers. One was faux-scientific: “The outside appearance of . . . . Continue Reading »

The rise of geohistory did not, argues Martin JS Rudwick in his (literally) massive Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution , produce a conflict of “Science” and “Religion.” That paradigm for understanding eighteenth-century . . . . Continue Reading »

Wright ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God ) provides a superb summary of Paul’s teaching concerning baptism, starting with the essential point: “Baptism is a community-marking symbol, which the individual then receives, not first and foremost as a statement about him- or herself, but as . . . . Continue Reading »

In a recent online piece from the Atlantic , Tara Isabella Burton makes a case for theology as a university discipline, pointing out along the way the inherently interdisciplinary nature of theology: “As Oxford’s Dr. William Wood, a University Lecturer in Philosophical Theology and my . . . . Continue Reading »

In his classic study of The Paschal Liturgy and the Apocalypse , Massey Shepherd points to what he claims is a recurring pattern in Revelation’s heptamerous sequences: Apart from the seven letters at the beginning there is an “interlude” between “the sixth and seventh . . . . Continue Reading »

NT Wright observes ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God , 385 ), “It it still common to find ‘the church’ and related topics tucked away towards the back of studies of Paul, the assumption being that what mattered was sin and salvation and that questions about church life were . . . . Continue Reading »

Should Roman Catholics have a monopoly on the word “catholic” or on capitalization? I think not . . . . . Continue Reading »

The Reformation isn’t over. But Protestantism is, or should be. . . . Continue Reading »

“Whoever has anything to say, let that person say it once, or carry the discourse regularly forward, but not repeat forever. Whoever is under the necessity of saying everything twice shows that one has but half or imperfectly expressed it the first time.” So Alciphron objects to Hebrew . . . . Continue Reading »

In his excellent Arguing with God: A Theological Anthropology of the Psalms (39-40), Bernd Janowski quotes this wisdom from Ottmar Fuchs: “Recognition of disastrous realities that does not go through the lament is lethal and irresponsible. An association with God in which no conflictual . . . . Continue Reading »