Peter J. Leithart

A “Well, duh” moment. Yahweh regularly charges Israel with harlotry. This is not just serial adultery, though it is that. It is also commercialization. Yahweh loves His bride and calls her to intimate love. She wants to buy him off with sacrifices and trinkets. . . . . Continue Reading »

In his latest book ( Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church ), William Cavanaugh offers an intriguing analysis of the liturgy of war memorials. Drawing on Marvin and Ingle’s Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge . . . . Continue Reading »

The similarities between religious and nationalist rites are often noted. But this is no mere analogy. Francis Bellamy, who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, intended the Pledge to function as catechesis through repetition: “It is the same way with the catechism, or the Lord’s . . . . Continue Reading »

The title of Jason David BeDuhn’s The Manichaean Body: In Discipline and Ritual is, the author admits, surprising: Manichaeanism was a intellectualistic gnostic movement that saw salvation as liberation from the body, right? The subtitle is also a surprise, since many scholars suggest that . . . . Continue Reading »

In the article mentioned in my last post, Kloos argues that Augustine moves beyond allegorical and figural exegesis in the process of writing the Contra Faustum . Figural exegesis plays into Faustus’s hands: If the Old Testament physically figures spiritual realities, why not dispense . . . . Continue Reading »

The late Colin Gunton argued that Augustine’s refusal to follow the earlier tradition of interpreting Old Testament theophanies as a revelation of the Son was a move away from a fully Trinitarian theology toward a semi-modalist Unitarianism. In her article in Augustine and History (Augustine in . . . . Continue Reading »

The name of God in the greeting in Revelation 1:4-7 is triads on triads: A triple source of grace and peace; the Father is given a triadic name; and the Son is not only given three titles but His work is described in three phrases. As Joseph Mangina has put it, God is a fractal: He is Triune at . . . . Continue Reading »

The Father is the One who “is, was, comes” (Revelation 1:4), and that same phrase is a name for the “Lord God” in 1:8. What we see in the Father we see in the whole Trinity. John inverts that name a few times in Revelation. To the church church at Smyrna, Jesus speaks about . . . . Continue Reading »

Isaiah 8:21-22: They will pass through it hard-pressed and hungry; and it shall happen, when they are hungry, that they will be enraged and curse their king and their God, and look upward. Then they will look to the earth, and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish; and they will be driven into . . . . Continue Reading »

Isaiah 8:6-8: Inasmuch as these people refused the waters of Shiloah that flow softly, and rejoice in Rezin and in Remaliah’s son; now therefore, behold, the Lord brings up over them the waters of the River, strong and mighty— the king of Assyria and all his glory . . . He will pass . . . . Continue Reading »