Peter J. Leithart

Washington, Augustus on a prancing horse, sword pointing toward sunset. Over the pond, fringed with ice, droop the weeping willows. And what I miss most in the pine-blanketed West: leafless trees in cold sunshine. . . . . Continue Reading »

In expounding on the coherence of Trinitarian theology with contemporary physics, Polkinghorne notes htat “it is striking that so methodologically reductionist a subject as physics has pointed us in this relational and holistic direction. This tendency is surely reinforced by chaos . . . . Continue Reading »

Polkinghorne is better when he points to the import of the remarkable fact that we can understand the inner structure of the universe: “our human ability to understand the universe far exceeds anything that could reasonably be considered as simply an evolutionary necessity, or as a happy . . . . Continue Reading »

John Polkinghorne writes that the “human writings [of Scripture] bear witness to timeless truths, but they do so in the thought forms and from the cultural milieu of their writers.” As a result, “we find attitudes expressed in the Bible that today we neither an nor should agree . . . . Continue Reading »

The Word became flesh. He assumed everything that flesh is heir to - all our weakness, all our sorrow, all our sickness and shatteredness, all our godforsakenness, He took to Himself. But not merely to identify or sympathize. He took it to Himself to overcome it. He goes to the cross as flesh, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Balthasar again: “For fundamental theology, the heart of the matter should be the question: ‘How does God’s revelation confront man in history? How is it perceived?’ But under the influence of a modern rationalistic concept of science, the question shifted ever more from its . . . . Continue Reading »

Balthasar resolves the dilemma between rationalistic and fideistic approaches to faith and reason by identifying a common flaw in them, and by proposing an aesthetic solution. The common flaw, he thinks, is that both rationalists and fideists “are wont to call the historical facts of . . . . Continue Reading »

Von Balthasar summarizes Roman Guardini’s insistence that “form is not only corporeal” by saying “The eye sees the life of plants in their kind of coloration, in the manner of their movements as brought about by air and contact. The eye sees the vitality of the animal. In . . . . Continue Reading »

As Markus Barth saw it, Bultmann was Protestant accommodation gone to seed: “Bultmann’s conception rests on the thesis that visible miracles (signs) are only a concession to man’s weakness, and that the appearances of the risen Christ are, likewise, a concession to the weakness of . . . . Continue Reading »

In his commentary on the Sentences, Thomas says that “The science [of theology] develops from these first principles [of faith] and also includes the universal [natural] principles. It possesses no means to prove them, but only to defend them against detractors.” It’s the . . . . Continue Reading »