Peter J. Leithart

Lewis Ayres gave a wonderful paper on early church hermeneutics at a recent conference at Regent College. Part of the point was to place the early fathers - Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, and Tertullian - in their original context, and ask what they were responding to. Predominantly, they were . . . . Continue Reading »

The NASB renders Deuteronomy 30:9 this way: “Then the Lord your God will prosper you abundantly in all the work of your hand, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your cattle and in the produce of your ground, for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good, just as He . . . . Continue Reading »

Genesis ends with Jacob blessing his sons (Genesis 49). Deuteronomy ends with Moses blessing the tribes that have descended from Jaob’s sons (Deuteronomy 33). Moses is a new Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel as Jacob was the father of the tribal ancestors. As the father of a new . . . . Continue Reading »

Deuteronomy 23:14 warns the Israelite army to maintain a sanitation system in the war camp so that Yahweh, who walks in the midst of the camp, will not find any “thing of nakedness.” The very same phrase appears in Deuteronomy 24:1, but there is describes a “thing of . . . . Continue Reading »

Jeremy Begbie has pointed out that, though a physical phenomena, music has different spatial qualities than solid objects. Music is present in a place, but it’s not localized in a way a visually perceptible object is. I can give my attention to listening to the sound, but I can’t say . . . . Continue Reading »

In his World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (A John Hope Franklin Center Bo) , Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the modern world-system is fundamentally a capitalist economic system, the states being within in. On this model, he explains why the various efforts at modern world-empire (Charles V, . . . . Continue Reading »

Jenson has a neat summary and response to the Palamite distinction between energies and essence. Gregory, he notes, aimed to defend “Byzantine monastic teaching that the sanctified truly participate in God; that grace is not a mere matter of God’s effects upon us or our knowledge of and . . . . Continue Reading »

In his Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God , Jenson ponders why Barth’s Trinitarian theology so often seems to collapse into a binity: “the inner-divine community of the Father and the Son is, explicitly [in Barth], ‘two-sided.’” Since the Spirit is the . . . . Continue Reading »

INTRODUCTION Isaiah’s series of burdens ends with a prophecy against the Phoenician city of Tyre. With its twin city Sidon, Tyre was one of the great trade cities of the ancient world. It will be destroyed, and all the cities that prospered from her trade will lament (vv. 1, 5, 14; cf. . . . . Continue Reading »

Though he doesn’t deny that medieval cities had their forms of oppression and ugliness, Timothy Gorringe argues that the medieval city lived up to its claim: “the city makes one free.” The city was a place to “escape from the oppression of feudal bonds,” and during the . . . . Continue Reading »