Peter J. Leithart

God is a spring. So says Gregory of Nyssa: “As you came near the spring you would marvel, seeing that the water was endless, as it constantly gushed up and poured forth. Yet you could never say that you had seen all the water. How could you see what was still hidden in the bosom of the earth? . . . . Continue Reading »

Neuhaus makes the cogent observation that American patriotism has been regularly refreshed by the influx of immigrants who find that the American dream is still realizable: “Perhaps taken-for-granted Americanism needs to be regularly refreshed by the Americanism of those who discover America . . . . Continue Reading »

Back in 1975, Richard Neuhaus wrote in Time Toward Home that “America is an imperial power,” elaborating that “Suppose we could drop from our history all our self-images, ideals, notions of destiny and everything else that makes up what we have called America’s public piety. . . . . Continue Reading »

In his American Providence: A Nation with a Mission , Stephen Webb describes Arnold Toynbee as a “prophet” who foretold the rise of religious pluralism that inhabits Religious Studies departments and is the religious drive behind globalization. Toynbee saw that religion was the central . . . . Continue Reading »

Subtract the Hegelianism, and Nicholas Boyle ( Who Are We Now?: Christian Humanism and the Global Market from Hegel to Heaney ) gives a profound insight into recent church history: “The theology of the spirit, which Hegel rightly saw as the distinctive new impetus which the Reformation gave . . . . Continue Reading »

In his Against Establishment: An Anglican Polemic , Theo Hobson points to some hidden reasons why some fear disestablishment for the Church of England: “In a permissive society, the established Church is necessarily a permissive Church; otherwise it advocates social policies at odds with the . . . . Continue Reading »

In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul gives his apostolic resume, his reason for boasting, and it is mostly a catalog of suffering and opposition. It is also a rhetorically and symbolically rich catalog. He begins with a fourfold summary of his privileges and status, and at each point he emphasizes that he . . . . Continue Reading »

Von Balthasar, not Greg Boyd, writes: “a world that is full of risks can only be created within the Son’s processio (prolonged as missio ); this shows that every ‘risk’ on God’s part is undergirded by . . . the power-less power of the divine self-giving. We cannot say . . . . Continue Reading »

Francesca Murphy notes the difference between stage and screen acting ( God Is Not a Story: Realism Revisited ): “Our bodies are the locus of our unity or singularity; You and I are whole or one because each of us is a certain physical space. And so, the stage actor uses her body to make her . . . . Continue Reading »

John 15 (ESV) 1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and . . . . Continue Reading »