Peter J. Leithart

Psalm 72:4 describes a king who does justice, delivers the poor, crushes the oppressor. The imperatives of Zechariah 7:9-10 echo the Psalm, but in Zechariah the imperatives are plural. Israel has become a nation of kings. . . . . Continue Reading »

Moses built a tent, and then Yahweh sat on His throne, the glory above the cherubim. Solomon built a house, and then the glory of Yahweh settled on His throne in the debir . Zechariah predicts something novel: A man named “Branch” will build the house of Yahweh, and then the Branch will . . . . Continue Reading »

Paul Veyne ( When Our World Became Christian ) notes the radical difference between paganism and Christianity (which is calls a “masterpiece” and compares to a “best-seller” that revealed a “thitherto unsuspected sensibility”): “Augustus, following his . . . . Continue Reading »

Ahh, but Mark Womack argues that the whole point of Milton’s image of the “two-handed engine” is to leave us uncertain about its specific referent: “The need to define ‘two-handed engine’ has put scholarly minds in a panic, producing a vast body of commentary . . . . Continue Reading »

Stephen Booth writes, “Great works of art are daredevils. They flirt with disasters and, at the same time, they let you know they are married forever to particular, reliable order and purpose. They are, and seem often to work hard at being, always on the point of one or another kind of . . . . Continue Reading »

Among the cruxes of Milton’s Lycidas is the image of the “two-handed” engine that the apostle Peter threatens against the false shepherds of the seventeenth-century church.  Milton writes, “Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing sed, . . . . Continue Reading »

INTRODUCTION Godly, effective parenting is parenting molded by the Spirit.  Effective parents are Pentecostal parents.  What does that mean? THE TEXT “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.  For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and . . . . Continue Reading »

In his lucid, concise Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham , Russell Friedman contrasts two different medieval accounts of personal distinction within the Trinity, one rooted in personal relations of opposition and the other rooted in relations of origin or “emanation.” . . . . Continue Reading »

I didn’t find Eric Nelson’s The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought as revolutionary as some of the blurbs indicate, but it is a very intriguing study.  Contrary to the standard story of early modern political thought, Nelson argues . . . . Continue Reading »

A recent issue of the TLS reviews Bruce Feiler’s  America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story , a study of the influence of Moses on the American political imagination.  Everyone from Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and the other Founders to George M.-for-Moses (so described . . . . Continue Reading »