Marketing Crafts

Last updated on: August 5, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Contemporary technologies threaten to suck us into virtual reality, and in response many have turned to real reality, to hand-crafts that link us to this worldly stuff. As Darian Leader (Hands, 13-13) puts it, “We are encouraged to counter our apparent alienation in the excesses of the virtual world by returning to traditional activities such as weaving, knitting, model making, gardening, sculpting and general tinkering. Using our hands to make things is supposed to work against the dematerialized universe that... Read more

Addicted to Autonomy

Last updated on: August 5, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his book on Hands, Darian Leader notes the “paradox at the heart of the modern notions of agency and choice.” We strive for autonomy and self-determination, but this “obligation to be free and to make our own choices is framed within a network of imperatives that come from without, ordering us to be free.” This can only produce pathologies: “the more that autonomy and self-termination are valorized, the more that all basic human activities that fail to come under... Read more

The Living and the Dead

Last updated on: August 5, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When New Haven’s New Burying Ground was set up in the 1790s, it marked a revolution in cemetery planning. It was outside of town, neatly organized into family plots and class clusters. Yale President Timothy Dwight thought it unique in the world, and gave a rationale for its design: “It is always desirable that a burial ground should be a solemn object to man, because in this manner it easily becomes a source of useful instruction and desirable impressions. But,... Read more

Vipers’ Tangle

Last updated on: August 4, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The title of Francois Mauriac’s 1932 novel, Vipers’ Tangle (French, Le Nœud de vipères, The Knot of Vipers) evokes Jesus’ assault on the Pharisees as a “brood of vipers,” spawn of the serpent. It’s a fitting allusion, since the novel, mostly an autobiographical epistle written by the greedy, irreligious and vindictive lawyer, Monsieur Louis, to his wife, is about both a serpent and his poisonous children. From Louis’s perspective, it’s not clear where the knot is located, because the knot... Read more

He Bears His Iniquity

Last updated on: August 4, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

According to the Protestant doctrine of imputation, Christ’s righteousness is reckoned as righteousness to those who believe. Typically, this creates a double identity: Though we are in ourselves guilty sinners, God sees us in Christ, and therefore regards us and treats us as righteous. It is often objected that imputation rests our standing with God on a legal fiction: Jesus is treated as guilty when He’s not, and we are treated as just when we’re not. Is that truthful? Existentially... Read more

Smooth Stones

Last updated on: August 3, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

David meets Goliath with a stick, a sling and five stones. We’re told that the stones are “smooth” and that he took them from the brook (1 Samuel 17:40). Why are we told this? When Israel first entered the land, they set stones in the midst of the Jordan and on the western bank as memorials. The stones on the bank are a conversation-starter for later generations of Israel, but the stones in the river are invisible to humans and... Read more

From 2 to 70

Last updated on: August 2, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Genealogies occupy a large portion of the opening chapters of the Bible, tracing a line from Adam and Eve through ten generations to Noah. Noah fathers a new human race through his three sons, the 70 nations listed in Genesis 10. From 2 (Adam and Eve, Noah and Mrs. Noah) to 70. After Noah, the genealogies narrow for another ten generations. They are no longer genealogies of the human race, but of the seed of Shem (11:10-26), then more specifically... Read more

Kingdom First

Last updated on: August 2, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Whatever else the 2016 Presidential cycle has accomplished, it has brought the chasm between nationalism and globalism into sharp relief. Many see this divide as the issue of the campaign (Robert Merry) or of the century (Pat Buchanan). It seems to be a choice we have to make. Christians must refuse the choice. We are members of a communion that, now more than ever before, is geographically universal. The church is ecumenical, a worldwide “Abrahamic empire” (see my Between Babel... Read more

Dawn After Evening

Last updated on: August 1, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Pastor Rich Lusk of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, Alabama, points out that, narratively, the entire gospel of Mark takes place during the night. The sun sets in Mark 1:32 and there is no reference to a sunrise until 16:2, on the first day of the week when the women find an open tomb. (There’s a sunrise in the parable of the sower in 4:6.) Between sunset and sunrise Mark refers to six evenings (1:32; 4:35; 6:47; 11:19; 14:17; 15:32; the... Read more

Bless This House

Last updated on: August 1, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Prayers for the blessing of a house, adapted from this order of house blessing. At the doorway: O God, heavenly Father, Lord of heaven and earth, protect our going out and our coming in. Banish demons, defeat all curses, and station your angels at this door. Shine the light of your presence into this house, and may this home radiate your light to those outside. Make this door a gateway to hospitality, that those who enter here may be refreshed... Read more

Who saw Elijah being taken to heaven?