Can God Show Himself in the World?

Last updated on: August 14, 2017 at 3:03 pm By Peter Leithart

A few reflections on Barth’s discussion of the Trinity in Church Dogmatics 1.1, ch 10. 1) Barth insists that Trinitarian theology developed not as a qualification of monotheism but as a way of defending monotheism: “Christian monotheism was and is also and precisely the point also and precisely in the Church doctrine of the Trinity as such.” Barth’s emphasis on God’s self-revelation and self-impartation helps us see how this is so. God is the Revealer, the Revelation, and the One who brings... Read more

In the Flow

Last updated on: August 13, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his book on giving and forgiving (Free of Charge), Miroslav Volf summarizes Luther’s metaphor of the “flow” of God’s love. Human love sometimes sucks the life and love out of us, but not God’s love. Rather, as Luther says, “it flows forth and bestows good” (quoted 49). It flows to us and brings us benefits, but it doesn’t stop there: “were were created to be and to act like God” so we become givers as well as recipients of... Read more

TheoUrban Dreams

Last updated on: August 14, 2017 at 3:06 pm By Peter Leithart

The following was delivered as a Convocation Address at the beginning of the 2017-18 Theopolis Institute’s Junior Fellows Program on August 14, 2017. Theopolis is the embodiment of a dream. Our name expresses the contents of that dream. We dream of a polis, a city. Every city is a dreamscape, a screen on which we project our fantasies. William Carlos Williams’s poem, “Perpetuum Mobile,” follows a couple in their exploration of New York. Approaching the city, they “stand / and... Read more

Hearts Prepared

Last updated on: August 14, 2017 at 9:03 am By Peter Leithart

Hezekiah’s Passover (2 Chronicles 30) has a prominent place in the Chronicler’s account of his reign. As William Johnstone points out (1 & 2 Chronicles), Hezekiah’s reign moves out from the temple to the city to the nations. He reopens and purifies the house of Yahweh (2 Chronicles 29), prepares the city for the celebration of Passover (2 Chronicles 30), and then gains a reputation among the nations because of his deliverance from Sennacherib (2 Chronicles 32). To prepare for Passover,... Read more

Welcome to Leithart

Last updated on: August 13, 2017 at 6:41 pm By Peter Leithart

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Welcome to Leithart the blog. For those who are coming to the blog for the first time, please allow me to introduce myself. I am Peter Leithart, President of the Theopolis Institute, a study center and leadership training program based in Birmingham, Alabama. After spending several decades in the Presbyterian Church in American, I currently serve in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) as Teacher at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. In the past, I have served as pastor of two... Read more

Multiple Meanings

Last updated on: August 11, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

What do we do when we disagree about what the Scriptures say? Augustine’s answer to that question has rarely been put into practice. This from The Literal Meaning of Genesis: “And when we read in the divine books such a vast array of true meanings, which can be extracted from a few words, and which are backed by sound Catholic faith, we should pick above all the one which can certainly be shown to have been held by the author... Read more

Dehumanizing Skepticism

Last updated on: August 11, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

God made us to be knowers. We long to know. Esther Meek argues (Longing to Know) that the frustration of this desire is one of the effects of skepticism and relativism: “To be human is to make sense of experience. There are voices today that would discourage the attempt. They say, You can’t really get it right, you can’t really understand. All you can do is come up with some private interpretation, and you need not worry about your private interpretation fitting the world,... Read more

Inventing “Emotion”

Last updated on: August 11, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

No one before the twentieth century, writes Robert Solomon (The Passions), paid serious philosophical attention to the emotions. There’s a good reason for that, writes Thomas Dixon (From Passions to Emotions): The category “emotion” didn’t exist prior to the 19th century. Between 1800 and 1850, there was a “wholesale change in established vocabulary occurred such that those en- gaged in theoretical discussions about phenomena including hope, fear, love, hate, joy, sorrow, anger and the like no longer primarily discussed the passions... Read more

Pillars of Gratitude

Last updated on: August 11, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Philip Watkins (Gratitude and the Good Life) identifies three “pillars of gratitude.” These are components of gratitude as an emotional “trait,” as opposed to gratitude expressed in response to specific good received or as an emotional state: “These are presumed to be three subordinate facets that contribute to and comprise the superordinate factor of trait gratitude (the attitude that all of life is a gift). First, we argued that grateful individuals should have a strong sense of abundance, or put negatively, they should have a... Read more

Searching for Sincerity

Last updated on: August 10, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Jon Baskin’s piece on David Foster Wallace is the best thing I’ve come across on Wallace. He starts with the arresting claim that in time “it will be recognized that Wallace had less in common with Eggers and Franzen than he did with Dostoevsky and Joyce.” His fiction is a brief for subjectivity, consciousness, the possibility of living a human life even in the confusions of contemporary culture. If he seems to perpetuate those confusions with his rambling postmodern prose,... Read more