Peter J. Leithart

It’s a common assumption today that literary structure and factual accuracy are at odds with one another. If a text displays some artistry, it’s a signal that we shouldn’t take it seriously as a historical source. The assumption is baseless on the face of things. All historians . . . . Continue Reading »

Rousing Soviet songs surround us as we pass through a gloomy gauntlet of titanic statues on our way to Kyiv’s Museum of the Great Patriotic War. My friends, a Polish and a Ukrainian pastor, remember the songs, which played incessantly on the radio during their childhood. The sculpture complex depicts lunging soldiers and hardy peasants in dignified poses, men pointing guns and women handling bombs, boys and girls, all united in a total war effort to defeat the Nazis… . Continue Reading »

Pastor Jeff Meyers writes to correct my quotation of Kuyper on Christian conversions to Islam, and points me to Rodney Stark’s The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (204-5). Stark disputes the “widespread belief that Muslim . . . . Continue Reading »

Why the firm? Ronald Coase, a Nobel economist who died last week at the age of 102, was among the first to ask the question, in a 1937 article on the nature of the firm . His starting point was to notice the discrepancy between the way economic systems were described in theory and the reality of . . . . Continue Reading »

Wittgenstein said ( Philosophical Investigations (3rd Edition) , 363), “We are so much accustomed to communication through speaking, in conversation, that it looks to us as if the whole point of communication lay in this: someone else grasps the sense of my words—which is something . . . . Continue Reading »

Fearing Israel, the Gibeonites put on disguises, pretend to be strangers from a distant land, and deceive Joshua into making a covenant with them (Joshua 9). Old wineskins and dry bread prove they came from a far country. Without consulting Yahweh, Joshua swears to protect them and they become . . . . Continue Reading »

When David returns to his Philistine outpost in Ziklag, he finds it demolished and empty (1 Samuel 30). Amalekites have attacked and taken all the women and children captive. While in pursuit, David’s men come across an Egyptian in the field. Like the hosts in the Odyssey , David feeds first . . . . Continue Reading »

In his Problems in General Linguistics , Emile Benveniste criticizes Saussure’s claim that the relation between the signifier (the sound sequence) and the signified (the concept) is arbitrary, often using Saussure’s own work to advance the critique. Benvenist argues that, Saussure to . . . . Continue Reading »

In a 1907 treatise on Islam , the Reformed theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper denied that Islam’s power could be attributed to sheer deception or manipulation. He found a spiritual power in Islam’s relentless monotheism, and suggested that Islam’s conquest of previously . . . . Continue Reading »

A couple of days ago, Rusty Reno offered one of the most astute analyses of the Pope’s recent comments on gay marriage, abortion, and contraception. Reno said that the comments were in themselves innocuous, but the fact that Francis expresses himself in the rhetoric of progressivism creates . . . . Continue Reading »