Peter J. Leithart

Grotius ( Defensio Fidei Catholoicae: De Satisfactione Christi Adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem , 4.10) insists that punishment of one for the “delict” of another is just, and is customary among many peoples, ancient and modern. Part of his argument turns the question upside down to . . . . Continue Reading »

Sovereign rulers, Grotius argues ( Defensio Fidei Catholoicae: De Satisfactione Christi Adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem , 3.12) are free to relax certain laws and punishments if they have sufficient reasons to do so. Because of the fall God has more than sufficient reasons to relax the law that . . . . Continue Reading »

Biblical and Hellenistic philosophical monotheism were unified in their rejection of myth and polytheism. But the direction of their critique was different. For Plato and Platonism, the world of sensible things and change is a distraction: “Physical sensations and poetical imitations of them . . . . Continue Reading »

For Trinitarian theology, the Father, Son, and Spirit who act in the events recounted in the gospel are “real, distinct agents, not signs of something else.” Trinitarianism denies that “the saving action that transpires among the three is not some kind of symbol pointing to . . . . Continue Reading »

For the church fathers, God’s impassibility was substantial. It mean “that God is the One Nature, simple and uncompounded, that cannot morph, so to say, into some other substance or disintegrate into some more basic elements,” and this involved “freedom from . . . . Continue Reading »

Gerald Hiestand of the Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology examines Paul’s teaching on sexual idolatry at the Trinity House site. . . . . Continue Reading »

In his 2010 Divine Complexity: The Rise of Creedal Christianity , Paul Hinlicky presents a nuanced summary of both the commonalities and the differences between Middle Platonism and early Christian thought. Citing C.J. De Vogel, he lists several shared assumptions: visible things don’t exist . . . . Continue Reading »

In the past couple of weeks, several articles have quoted Christian activist David Lane quoting my Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective , most recently here . The most damning thing from my book seems to be this: “Americanists cannot break Babelic or bestial . . . . Continue Reading »

Nelson Mandela is a titanic figure on the world stage, but in a recent TNR piece Eve Fairbanks observes that many younger South Africans view him as a traitor who sold out the cause. One reason for this perception is the economic disproportion in South Africa since apartheid: “white South . . . . Continue Reading »

Peter Kivy is known mainly for his work in the philosophy of music, but in his 2006 The Performance of Reading: An Essay in the Philosophy of Literature he suggests that silent reading also has a musical quality: It is a performance by a performer to an audience of one who happens to be identical . . . . Continue Reading »