Peter J. Leithart

The message to the church at Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6) is framed by several word repetitions. The word “name” appears in v 1, and three times in verses 4-5 (trans. once as “people” in the NASB). Jesus says at the outset that the people of Sardis have a “name” for . . . . Continue Reading »

In The Gift , Nabokov recounts this legend about Chernyshevsky’s What To Do? (Or, What Is To Be Done? ). Chernyshevsky wrote the novel in prison and gave proofs of each section to his friend Nekrasov. But “Nekrasov, on his way home (corner of Liteynaya and Basseynaya streets) in a . . . . Continue Reading »

Verhey has a nice discussion of the nature/supernatural distinction that locates the difference in eschatology. He points out, for starters, that “the regularities of the world we name as ‘natural laws” are not regularities of a self-contained machine but rather then ways God . . . . Continue Reading »

Ted Peters points out the duplicity of genetic determinism: “The growing myth of genetic determinism blows first in one direction: if we are programmed totally by our DAN< then what we think is human freedom is in fact a delusion. Then the myth blows the opposite way: if we can apply our . . . . Continue Reading »

In his discussion of the “Baconian project” in his recent Nature and Altering It , Allen Verhey makes the common-sensical, but often ignored, observation that mastery of nature doesn’t necessarily mean improvement: “Knowledge, in Bacon’s view, is power over nature, and . . . . Continue Reading »

If there was any doubt before, it has become very clear in recent scholarship that Greek mythology is indebted to Ancient Near Eastern predecessors. The most massively detailed treatment of this point in recent years is ML West’s The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry . . . . Continue Reading »

Philippians 3:7-8: Whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish . . . . Continue Reading »

Hebrews 12:7: God deals with you as with sons. One of the privileges of membership in the body of Christ, one of the privileges sealed and effected by baptism, is the privilege of double-fatherhood. Today in baptism, God the Father marks your son as His son; by his baptism, Ezekiel receives an . . . . Continue Reading »

In his introduction to Plato: Timaeus (Focus Philosophical Library) , Peter Kalkavage writes that Timaeus’ “likely story . . . depicts making, poiesis , as an activity that starts with the highest things and proceeds to the lower.” In that is contained all the pathology and pathos . . . . Continue Reading »

The purportedly Egyptian writings of Hermes Trismegistus, understood as an obscure historical figure in the time of Moses, played a crucial role in the Renaissance. Collected together in the Corpus Hermeticum, it was published in 1463 in a translation by Marsilio Ficino and reprinted 22 times over . . . . Continue Reading »