Hymn to creation

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:44 pm By Peter Leithart

In his response to Faustus’ theories about the relation of hyle and God, Augustine launches into several lyrical passages in praise of the harmony and order of creation. Some selections (from Book 21): “the divine art does not create the universe by simply making its individual things. Rather, in creating individual things for the composition of the universe, it exhibits its whole self even in creating individual things, making and arranging all things appropriately for their places and ranks and... Read more

Pursuing Riches

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

Paul ends 1 Timothy with some quite striking warnings about the dangers of wealth. Godliness involves contentment, contentment with food and clothing; Paul reminds Timothy that wealth neither came with us nor goes with us when we die (6:6-8). Ungodliness is discontent with God’s provision. And Paul immediately fills out the character of discontent with a warning about the danger of wealth. More specifically, he warns about the dangers of wanting ( boulomai ) wealth (v. 9). Paul knows that... Read more

Fall of Adam?

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Did Adam “fall” into sin? If we follow the strict language of Scripture, it would seem not. So far as I can find, Adam is never said to have “fallen.” Adam sinners, transgressed, committed an act of transgression, and by his action sin and death entered the world (Romans 5:12-21). But the only reference to a Genesis 3 “fall” is to the “fall” of Eve: “it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived, fell into... Read more

Chronology of Wisdom Literature

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:49 pm By Peter Leithart

In answer to a reader’s question about the chronology of Solomon’s writings in the OT, I suggested this: 1. Proverbs is instruction to a son during his boyhood/adolescence/young adulthood. That seems to put it early-ish in Solomon’s life. He became king around 30 (there’s a complicated argument for this), and reigned 40 years (1 Kings 11:41). Rehoboam became king at 41 (1 Kings 14:21),so he was born the year before Solomon’s accession. He would have been 5 in Solomon’s fourth... Read more

Eucharistic meditation

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:38 pm By Peter Leithart

Exodus 7:20-21: All the water that was in the Nile was turned to blood. And the fish that were in the Nile died, and the Nile became foul, so that the Egyptians could not drink from the Nile. As Pastor Sumpter has pointed out, when Moses turns the Nile to blood, it only makes visible what was already true. Decades before Moses confronts Pharaoh, the Nile was heaped with corpses, the corpses of Hebrew infants. It was already a river... Read more

Baptismal meditation

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:47 pm By Peter Leithart

Exodus 7:19: Then Yahweh said to Moses, Say to Aaron, Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, over their streams, and over their pools, and over their reservoirs of water, that they may become blood; and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone. The first plague is all about water. Moses meets Pharaoh in the morning as he... Read more

Exhortation

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:40 pm By Peter Leithart

When Moses turns the water of the Nile to blood, the Egyptians don’t have any water to drink. Do the Israelites? We’re not told. In the second plague, frogs creep from the Nile and fill the land of Egypt. Do they infest Goshen, where the Israelites live? Again, we’re not told. It’s not until the third plague that Yahweh sets apart Goshen to protect Israel from the plague of insects. Apparently, the Israelites suffer along with Egyptians during the first... Read more

Crisis of Protestant Hermeneutics

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:51 pm By Peter Leithart

Warren Gage of Knox Seminary kindly agreed to let me post his essay on Protestant hermeneutics. To find a pdf of the essay, click on “Downloads” at the top of the page and find the essay called “Crisis of Protestant Hermeneutics.” Read more

Pulling the Dog’s Ears

Last updated on: August 7, 2010 at 5:07 pm By Peter Leithart

In his recent The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America’s Foreign Policy (echoes of Niebuhr), William Pfaff argues that the real targets of Islamic violence are not Western or American but closer to home. He notes that “For nearly a century Washington has supported the Saudi government and, indirectly, Wahhabi fundamentalism, against such secular reform movements as Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1950s ‘Arab Socialism’ and the originally modernizing and secular Ba’ath movements in Iraq and Syria.” Why?... Read more

Pulling the Dog’s Ears

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart