Peter J. Leithart

PROVERBS 28:9 Again Solomon speaks of our attitude toward torah .  The central command of the law was a command to “hear” (Deuteronomy 6).  It was a command addressed to the ear.  We are to have open ears (Psalm 40; Isaiah 50:5) so that we can obey His commandments.  . . . . Continue Reading »

Robert Sokolowski ( Phenomenology of the Human Person ) finds contemporary talk about “the self” extraordinary: “How odd it is, even gramatically, to speak of ‘the self.’  The linguistic strangeness of the term the self is matched by the oddity of the terms the . . . . Continue Reading »

From Lewis Carroll, quoted in Robin Wilson’s delightful Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life : From his shoulder Hiawatha Took the camera of rosewood, Made of sliding, folding rosewood; Neatly put it all together. In its case it lay compactly, Folded into . . . . Continue Reading »

McIntosh quotes this passage from Barth, saying that this reflects “the very heart of Barth’s understanding of the Gospel”: “In the beginning, before time and space as we know them, before creation, before there was any reality distinct from God which could be the object of . . . . Continue Reading »

Mark McIntosh ( Divine Teaching: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Blackwell Guides to Theology) ) points out that the most dramatic and clearest revelation of the Trinity in the gospel story occurs at the beginning, in Jesus’ baptism: “It is precisely as he unites himself with the . . . . Continue Reading »

Herbert McCabe writes: “If [Jesus] had wanted something less than the kingdom, if he had been a lesser man, a man not obsessed by love he might have settled for less and achieved it by his own personality, intelligence, and skill.  But he wanted that all men should be as possessed by . . . . Continue Reading »

Who is being described: “a man of abnormally emotional temperament, with a solicitous goddess for a mother and a comrade to whom he is devoted,” who “is devastated by the latter’s death and plunges into a new course of action in an unbalanced state of mind, eventually to . . . . Continue Reading »

A proposal, not a settled conclusion.  The problem is passibility.  For most Christian theologians, God is by definition impassible, not subject to passions nor passive in relation to His creation.  Recently, of course, many theologians have challenged this, sometimes at the expense . . . . Continue Reading »

I’ve been listening to Prokofiev’s third Piano Concerto almost non-stop since my friend Joshua Appel pointed me to the video of Yuja Wang’s stunning performance on YouTube.  How did I live a half-century without this music? What’s so fascinating about this piece? . . . . Continue Reading »

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” Paul says (Philippians 4:4). “Always,” Paul?  Always?  Rejoice when my mother dies, and when my husband’s playing around, and when we don’t know where the next paycheck is coming from, and . . . . Continue Reading »