Peter J. Leithart

In a long footnote in his brilliant Ordering Love: Liberal Societies and the Memory of God (p. 257) , David Schindler gives this lengthy quotation from W. Norris Clarke’s Explorations in Metaphysics: Being-God-Person : He refers to the “profound dimension of receptivity, hence . . . . Continue Reading »

Drawing from John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body (pp. 246-50). Shame means hiding, withdrawal from visibility, withdrawal from communion (Genesis 3:7). God created us with bodies so we can share ourselves with one another - with touch, with speech, with mutual . . . . Continue Reading »

In a 1996 Communio article, Joseph Ratzinger argues that the child in the womb is the basic model of human existence: “For what is at stake here? The being of another person is so closely interwoven with the being of this person, the mother, that for the present it can survive only by . . . . Continue Reading »

I have some reflections on the political character of liturgical music at http://www.firstthings.com/ this morning. . . . . Continue Reading »

Christian worship is inherently political. As Bernd Wannenwetsch points out, this isn’t because worship is a tool for ginning up enthusiasm for a candidate or for stirring the fires of patriotism. On the contrary, “It is just because Christian worship is not a means to an end that it is political.” Worship is political because it “opens out into” the kingdom of God, and because in her worship the Church “anticipates the city of God” with its eternal liturgical assembly… . Continue Reading »

In his lecture at the Biblical Horizons Summer conference this morning, Jim Jordan pointed out that the rivers that flow out of Eden are connected with commerce and economy. The rivers flow from the garden, where there are good things to eat, to the outer lands where there are minerals and gems. . . . . Continue Reading »

The third trumpet blows, and a star named Wormwood poisons the rivers and springs (Revelation 8). Since the trumpet sequence is following the sequence of creation days, we would expect a judgment on the land or the grain and trees at the third trumpet. Instead, we get a judgment on rivers. The . . . . Continue Reading »

A few epistemological reflections on John Paul II’s meditations on Genesis in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body . John Paul makes much of the fact of Adam’s original solitude. In that state, before he found a helper corresponding to him, he came to know himself in . . . . Continue Reading »

Lewis Hyde ( The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World ) traces the history of modern economics by recounting a history of usury in the Western world. In the Torah, Hyde argues, a boundary is drawn between the brothers within Israel and strangers; within Israel, there is no usury but . . . . Continue Reading »

The New Testament writers use two closely related Greek words for “salvation”: soteria and soterios . The former is common, used 45 times throughout the New Testament, mostly in the epistles. Soterios is used only a handful of times (Luke 2:30; 3:6; Acts 28:28; Ephesians 6:17; Titus . . . . Continue Reading »