Peter J. Leithart

For the ancients, the week was a tuned cosmos. According to ancient astronomy, the planets were in crystal spheres that formed a seven-stringed lyre in the sky. Moving from earth outward, the seven strings are: moon, Mercury, Venus, sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. If you ascended from earth all the way . . . . Continue Reading »

Developing some observations and ideas from James Jordan’s lectures and writings on Revelation. Cherubim have four faces: ox (sometimes calf), lion, eagle, man. And from Ezekiel we learn that these four faces correspond to the four points of the compass: The ox stands at the east and looks . . . . Continue Reading »

Leviticus 2:4: When you bring an offering of a grain offering baked in an oven, it shall be of unleavened cakes of fine flour mixed with oil, or unleavened wafers spread with oil. The Lord’s Supper fulfills the feasts and sacrifices of the Old Testament. Long ago, Israel offered tribute . . . . Continue Reading »

If you stop breathing for a few minutes, you’ll die. If you don’t eat or drink for a time, you’ll die. You are porous. Bits of the world go in and out of you all the time. If they stop, you can’t last long. This physical fact is a clue to what it means to be human. We are . . . . Continue Reading »

Bonnie MacLachlan ends her fascinating The Age of Grace (p. 147) by suggesting that the starting point for the Greek idea of charis is that it is a “social pleasure.” In some of the poetry she examines, though, “the accent was placed on the element of reciprocity, on the . . . . Continue Reading »

Twice in the New Testament, people appear crying out to God for salvation, or praising Him for accomplishing it, holding palm branches. Why palm branches? The Hebrew word “palm” is tamar , the name of Judah’s daughter whose husband die and who has to disguise herself as a temple . . . . Continue Reading »

“My belived” ( dodi ) is as a cluster ( eshchol ) of camphire or henna from the vineyards (Song 1:14). The word eshchol is typically used for bunches of grapes. The dream of the cup-bearer that Joseph interpreted involved wine from eshchols of grapes (Genesis 40:10), and the spies . . . . Continue Reading »

The Hebrew word “give” ( natan ) is used in a wide variety of senses in Scripture. It is used in contexts where it means “teach”: Wisdom is given to the wise man (Proverbs 9:9). Words are “given” as well as “spoken.” Privileges are . . . . Continue Reading »

Reflecting on the precipitous decline in Lincoln’s reputation in the last third of the twentieth century, Barry Schwartz ( Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth-Century America , pp. 258-9) notes in passing: “Before the 1960s, textbook writers . . . . Continue Reading »

In the last week, I posted a tweet where I raised the question whether “doctrines of substance and natures” constitute a form of idolatry. Some friends have suggested this is too complicated a subject to twitter about. They are right. It’s a subject too complicated and fraught to . . . . Continue Reading »