Peter J. Leithart

In a 1917 article, Joseph William Hewitt notes that the Greeks did not view ingratitude with the same horror as modern writers (among modern writers, he lists Thomas Elyot, Shakespeare, and the Spectator ). From the sixteenth century to the early twentieth, “we find a deep, indeed an extreme, . . . . Continue Reading »

Kenneth Burke wisely remarks that “Every document bequeathed us by history must be treated as a strategy for encompassing a situation,” an “answer or rejoinder to assertions current in the situation in which it arose.” He goes on to compare our entry into history to a late . . . . Continue Reading »

Philosophers claim that European/American thought has gone through a linguistic turn in the last several decades. The truth is the opposite. Rorty says, “The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it . . . . Continue Reading »

INTRODUCTION While Herod and Jerusalem fear the news of the birth of Jesus, the Magi worship Him and rejoice (2:10). Here is another inversion of the original exodus story, and a preview of the gospel story: Jews reject their deliverer, but the Gentiles embrace Him. THE TEXT “Now after Jesus . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Corinthians 10: Is not the 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? Since there is one loaf, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one loaf. As I mentioned at the outset of the sermon, . . . . Continue Reading »

For most Americans, Christmas means warm feelings, forgiveness, kindness, generosity. It means putting our differences aside and getting along. Celebrating Christmas means celebrating liberalism and toleration. As in so many ways, our celebration of Christmas borrows scraps from the table of . . . . Continue Reading »

In 1834, Heinrich Heine had predicted a revival of Germany that was not dependent on Christianity but on a return to the savage roots of German character: “Christianity, and this is its greatest merit, has occasionally calmed the brutal German lust for battle, but it cannot destroy that . . . . Continue Reading »

1914 brought unity to a previously divided Germany. One pastor in Hanover wrote, “When the day of mobilisation had fully come, there were Germans all together in unity - villagers and city dwellers, conservatives and freethinkers, Social Democrats and Alsatians, [Hanoverian] Guelphs and . . . . Continue Reading »

James Wood is one of the most public of our public atheists, but he has several bones to pick with other members of the brotherhood in a TNR review of Sam Harris’s latest book (TNR, December 18). He complains, for instance, against Dawkins’s use of Russell’s “celestial . . . . Continue Reading »

Playwright, novelist, and philosophy Michael Frayn offers this critique of David Deutsch’s claim that quantum mechanics implies multiple, perhaps infinite, worlds: “If only we knew what proportion of David Deutsches was putting forward each of these theories we should be able to judge . . . . Continue Reading »