Peter J. Leithart

“He will be quiet in His love,” Zephaniah appears to say about Yahweh and Israel (NASB).  Quiet?  He’s just been exalting and shouting.  Now He’s quiet? That’s a possible translation, but the verb translated as “be quiet” or . . . . Continue Reading »

Jesus doesn’t talk much about justification, and when He does He doesn’t sound very Pauline (Matthew 12:37).  The publican is justified - apparently not by his faith but by his humility (Luke 18:14).  So, Jesus doesn’t teach justification by faith? Wrong. “Yahweh . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Corinthians 10:16-17: Is not this cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ?  Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Many Christians over the centuries have thought of the Lord’s Supper as a kind of continuing or second incarnation.  . . . . Continue Reading »

Luke 3:3: And John came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Israel was baptized twice.  All those who came out of Egypt were baptized into Moses in the Red Sea and in the cloud.  They ate spiritual food and drank . . . . Continue Reading »

Advent is about the coming of the Son, but we shouldn’t forget that Advent is a thoroughly Trinitarian event.  The Son doesn’t sneak away from heaven when the Father’s not looking; rather, out of His love for the world the Father sends the Son to reveal that love, and gives and . . . . Continue Reading »

Steven Hayward ( Weekly Standard ) has a balanced and thorough analysis of the climate science emails made public a few weeks ago.  Hayward is not a knee-jerk global warming skeptic.  He begins the final paragraph of his piece with “Climate change is a genuine phenomenon, and there . . . . Continue Reading »

Creatures by definition depend on something outside themselves to remain in existence.  Does this then mean that they are in danger of slipping into non-existence?  Do they, as one scholar suggests, retain “a potency for nonbeing” and do they “risk passing out of . . . . Continue Reading »

TF Torrance ends a series of articles on the hermeneutics of Athanasius by returning to a theme developed throughout the series: “Christian doctrines are not to be established or to be defended simply by appealing to Biblical texts, but by listening to the things they signify by and . . . . Continue Reading »

Athanasius quotes Dionysius regarding the perichoretic relation of word and intelligence: “For word is an efflux of intelligence, and, to borrow language applicable to men, theintelligence that issues by the tongue is derived from the heart through the mouth, coming out different . . . . Continue Reading »

Slusser ends his article on prosopological exegesis by noting that the Spirit “does not appear as an interlocutor within the texts we have examined by prosopological exegesis.”  But that is because “the Spirit is the source of all the utterances of Scripture, even those in . . . . Continue Reading »