Peter J. Leithart

How did prosopon (“face” or “mask”) become the accepted term for the “persons” of the Godhead in the East.  In a 1988 article in Theological Studies , Michael Slusser examines what other scholars have called “prosopological exegesis,” exegesis . . . . Continue Reading »

Another student, Jesse Sumpter, summarized an article by one Kathryn Walls on the axe in Sir Gawain.  She connects the axe with the words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3: The axe is already laid at the foot of the trees.  That fits the setting of the Green Knight’s first appearance . . . . Continue Reading »

“Kitsch” has become a key category in critical evaluations of the aesthetics of “mass society.”  Thomas Kincaid, Hummels, sentimental novels and manipulative Hallmark movies are all branded with the label.  I think it’s a useful label, but a student paper on . . . . Continue Reading »

Augustine said that knowing and willing were inseparable.  Knowledge is “a thing discovered,” and “discovery is often preceded by a search which aims at resting in its object.  Searching is a striving ( appetitus ) for discovery.”  He continues: “We may . . . . Continue Reading »

In a very stimulating presentation on “divine poetics” in Thomas, my colleague Jonathan McIntosh pointed to this very intriguing statement from Disputed Questions on Truth : “The one first form to which all things are reduced is the divine essence, considered in itself. Reflecting . . . . Continue Reading »

More from Mark McIntosh’s Mystical Theology . The Word, he notes, is the “expression of the Father’s ecstatic love which causes there to be an ‘other’ in God.”  That same love not only leads to the begetting of the Son, but “leads to the eternal filial . . . . Continue Reading »

What is the resurrection like?  Paul says, like a tree that grows from the planted seed of our body; like the glory of a brighter star. Or this, as Hamann puts it in his London notebooks, in a comment on Genesis 2:21-23: “Adam awakes as the dead of which David says, in order to praise . . . . Continue Reading »

Mark A. McIntosh ( Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology (Challenges in Contemporary Theology) ) offers a profound and moving pneumatological response to what he describes as the “mythological” and “Cartesian” Trinitarian theology in Moltmann and La . . . . Continue Reading »

Ray Bakke ( A Theology As Big As the City ) wonders how the apostles, and the gospel, could have made such a rapid transition from rural Galilee to the cities of the Mediterranean.  He suggests that Jesus discipled the disciples in an urbanized Palestine.  He writes, “Rome . . . . . . . Continue Reading »

A number of sections of Eberhard Busch’s The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology deal with Barth’s criticisms of natural theology.  In one section, Busch helpfully puts this in the context of Barth’s reaction to Nazism and his effort to trace the . . . . Continue Reading »