A Ruler in Israel

Last updated on: December 22, 2017 at 2:42 am By Peter Leithart

Micah’s prophecy begins with an advent, a theophany, of Yahweh. Yahweh rises from His palace-temple (1:2) to tread down the heights of the earth (1:3). At His coming, this too too solid world melts and turns watery, formless and void (1:4). Mountains represent highly-placed people who are going to be brought low. Alternatively, mountains may represent Israel and Judah, the high places where the Israel lives and worships. At Yahweh’s coming, the mountains that make up Israel and Judah are... Read more

Lament for Moab

Last updated on: December 14, 2017 at 2:38 am By Peter Leithart

Some of the most passionate passages of the Old Testament are lamentations over Moab (Isaiah 15-16; Jeremiah 48). Why so much space and energy for a relatively obscure nation? We can find the reason by glancing at the history of Moab. Philistia is better known, but Moab is actually more intimately linked to Israel. Moab was a son of Lot, Abraham’s nephew, born to Lot in the cave above Zoar after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah his eldest daughter... Read more

Reformation and the Secular Age

Last updated on: December 22, 2017 at 1:21 am By Peter Leithart

Like many Catholic thinkers, Charles Taylor sees the Reformation as a crucial movement in the formation of the “secular age” of his most recent most massive title. Little of his discussion is absolutely new, but it is pithy and freshly stated, not to mention profoundly challenging for Protestants. Taylor sees the Reformation as the culmination of a Reforming spirit that inspired movements throughout the later middle ages. At the heart of most of these movements was an aspiration to raise... Read more

Santa Fight Club

Last updated on: December 21, 2017 at 10:39 pm By Peter Leithart

A little Christmas fluff, inspired by a 2008 NPR report. Thanks to my son Woelke for pointing me to the original story. Act 1 Phone ringing on an empty desk. Enter Santa Jeff, dressed in a red jacket and wearing a white beard. He answers the phone. Santa Jeff : AORBS, Santa Jeff speaking. Pauses. Hello? Hello? AORBS. Oh, bother. Hangs up phone. He picks up a brush and hair-dryer and starts styling his beard. Enter Santa Nick, dressed in... Read more

Bronze Horseman

Last updated on: December 16, 2017 at 9:02 pm By Peter Leithart

On a misty morning in 1703, Peter stood with advisors and surveyed the network of islands that made up the only land mass around the area. As Orlando Figes describes the scene in his magnificent Natasha’s Dance, “With his bayonet he cut two strips of peat and arranged them in a cross on the marshy ground. The Peter said: ‘Here shall be a town.’” Within four months, they had built the Peter and Paul Fortress on the northernmost island, “the... Read more

Poetics of Final Judgment

Last updated on: December 19, 2017 at 6:28 pm By Peter Leithart

No area of Christian theology has been subjected to more Enlightened scorn than eschatology. Eschatology is myth to end all myth, superlatively mythological: All human beings ever will stand before the enthroned Jesus at a final judgment, some transfigured into Spiritual bodies to enjoy eternal bliss while others thrown with the Satanic dragon into a pit of horrors beyond even Dante’s imagining, while a gleaming city (or is it a bride?) of gold and pearl descending from heaven. To believe... Read more

Way of Man With A Maid

Last updated on: December 19, 2017 at 5:04 pm By Peter Leithart

Four things puzzle Agur the son of Jakeh, elusive author of Proverbs 30: eagles in the sky, serpents on rocks, ships on the sea, and “the way of a man with a maid” (v. 19). Agur is thinking of the mysteries of attraction and passion. There are plenty of puzzles in that arena of our experience. “How did he end up with her?” we wonder. “What does she see in him?” In the end we have to throw up our... Read more

When Our World Became Christian

Last updated on: December 27, 2017 at 7:45 pm By Peter Leithart

Constantine didn’t merely become a genuine Christian. He saw himself as a chosen vessel to bring Christianity to the Roman world and the world beyond the empire. Read more

Overinterpreting Alabama

Last updated on: December 15, 2017 at 8:19 pm By Peter Leithart

Doug Jones won a “stunning” victory in the Alabama Senate race. It was a stinging “rebuke” to Trump. Those were the headlines following the raucous Alabama Senate runoff on Tuesday. Jones is the first Democratic Senator in Alabama for a quarter century, and the first Democrat elected in a state-wide vote for a long time. It’s a big moment in Alabama politics. Is it also a big moment in American politics? A moderately important moment, to the extent that it shifts the balance in... Read more

Augustine and the Old Covenant

Last updated on: December 15, 2017 at 8:18 pm By Peter Leithart

Augustine, Paula Fredriksen found (Augustine and the Jews), radically revised the common Christian views on the Old Testament and Judaism, embodied in the adversus Iudaeos tradition that stretched back to Justin’s treatises against Trypho the Jew. It started with a public debate with the Manichean Fortunatus. Though he left Fortunatus tongue-tied, Augustine was shaken by the sense that Fortunatus had been able to make the apostle Paul sound uncomfortably close to Manicheanism. Augustine found that some of the traditional Christian... Read more