Peter J. Leithart

My friend Peter Roise has repeatedly encouraged me to read the work of the Asia Times Online columnist who writes under the pseudonym “Spengler.” I’m glad he has, because Spengler is well worth reading. He writes with a historical awareness and philosophical depth rarely found . . . . Continue Reading »

What is going on in Samuel Richardson’s fiction that can shape such diverse offspring as Rousseau, the Marquis de Sade, and Jane Austen (who loved Sir Charles Grandison )? . . . . Continue Reading »

In his Inquiry into the original of our ideas of Beauty and Virtue , the Irish Presbyterian moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson suggested an equation for calculating love: “The Quantity of Love toward any person is in a compound Proportion of the apprenhended Causes of Love in him, and of the . . . . Continue Reading »

In a 1964 article in Theology Today , Gerhard Ebeling laid out some of the hermeneutical directions found in Luther’s early writings. He focuses on three areas where Luther displays both some continuity with the terminology and problems of medieval interpretation, but also breaks free in . . . . Continue Reading »

The quadriga makes a neat match with Rosenstock-Huessy’s cross of reality: Historical = past Tropological = inside Allegorical = outside Anagogical = future . . . . Continue Reading »

A few weeks ago, I posted some discussion of vulgar language on my site. I included some brief, and inconclusive, comments about Paul’s use of skubalon in Philippians 3:8. Classicist Matt Colvin examined and analyzed the use of the word in Greek literature, and concluded that “the word . . . . Continue Reading »

INTRODUCTION Every family lives between the sometimes contradictory demands of the past and the future. Every family also lives between the sometimes contradictory demands of the “inside” and the “outside.” Families have to develop their own distinctive . . . . Continue Reading »

Genesis 2:21: So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place. We saw in the sermon this morning that every marriage involves a break with the past. A man leaves his father and mother, the home of his youth, . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Corinthians 12:12-13: Even as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slave or free, and we were all made to drink of one . . . . Continue Reading »

When God created the land animals, He created them male and female. The earth brought forth sexed living creatures, both male and female arising from the ground. God did not create the human sexes in the same way. He formed Adam from the dust of the ground, but in a separate act He formed Eve from . . . . Continue Reading »