God’s Whimsy

Last updated on: July 9, 2007 at 3:18 pm By Peter Leithart

Wiker and Witt suggest that God created pandas as “comic relief” in a blessed fit of “divine whimsy.” The suggestion is troubling even for Christians who defend creation, because, being engineers, they have swallowed the reductive notion that creation must be functional. Wiker and Witt offer this rejoinder: “To spurn the notion as if it were patently ridiculous, as beneath consideration, is merely to expose one’s utilitarian presuppositions. Why, after all, should the designer’s world read like a dreary high... Read more

God’s Whimsy

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:42 pm By Peter Leithart

Monkeys and Typewriters

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

How long will monkeys typing randomly on typewriters take to produce the works of Shakespeare? That’s been a way of thinking about Darwinian evolution since who knows where. In 2002, researches at the Paignton Zoo in England decided to find out. They left a computer terminal in a cage with six monkeys. The results: Mike Phillips, one of the researches, said “They pressed a lot of S’s” and “the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out... Read more

Little Red Pentecostal

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:46 pm By Peter Leithart

The earliest known version of “Little Red Riding Hood” comes from Egbert of Liege’s school trivium textbook Fecunda natis ( The Richly Laden Ship , c. 1022/24). Egbert’s verse version, which appears to be drawn from an oral folktale, begins with Red’s baptism: “A certain man took up a girl from the sacred fond/ and gave her a tunic of red wool; / sacred Pentecost was [the day] of her baptism.” When she’s 5, a wolf attacks her and carries... Read more

As the preacher preaches

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm By Peter Leithart

In a footnote in Fear and Trembling explaining the phrase “things do not go in the world as the preacher preaches,” Kierkegaard says, “In the old days, people said: It is too bad that things do not go in the world as the preacher preaches. Maybe the time will come, especially with the aid of philosophy, when they can say: Fortunately things do not go as the preacher preaches, for there is still some meaning in life, but there is... Read more

Forced ecumenism

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

During the 19th century, various European states forcibly united divided churches. A similar thing happened in Zaire in 1970. Mbiti writes, “the Eglise du Christ au Zaire . . . brought together Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Disciples and a host of other Protestant traditions.” The Church of Christ became the only recognized Protestant body in Zaire, but “the member churches (or Communautes, as they are called) have much freedom to function more or less according to their former traditions.” Mbiti is... Read more

Exporting schism

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

Mbiti tells a disheartening story about an effort to unite Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Moravians in Kenya and Tanzania. At a 1965 meeting that lasted several days, the group had come to agreement on all the issues that had been seen as obstacles to union. Mbiti picks up the story: “It was a wonderful expression of understanding and fellowship which emerged as we reached that point. We prayed. Then we dispersed to our various rooms to catch a few... Read more

Eschatological Economy

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

At a quick glance, Douglas H. Knight’s The Eschatological Economy (Eerdmans, 2006) looks very good. Some of Knight’s other work has been on John Zizioulas, the Orthodox Trinitarian theologian, and this book includes discussions of Zizioulasian themes like Trinity, personhood, Trinitarian personhood, personhood and being, etc. Yet, Knight’s book is significantly more biblically oriented than Zizioulas’s work. Knight includes a couple of chapters on Israel, including one on sacrifice and temple in Israel, and this OT work is integrated into... Read more

New Pentecost, New Babel

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:09 am By Peter Leithart

A reader, Dan Glover, sends the following reflections concerning my quotations from John Mbiti on the “Pentecostal” experience of getting the Bible in the vernacular: “Your comment from John Mbiti got me thinking of what the Bible in the vernacular of a culture does. It ignited the reformation as well thanks to the work of Wycliffe, Luther, Tyndale, etc. I love how Mbiti describes this as an outpouring of God’s Spirit through the availability of the Word in a way... Read more

Bach’s Bible

Last updated on: July 3, 2007 at 4:46 pm By Peter Leithart

In his biography of Bach, Martin Geck quotes a number of notes that Bach penned in the “Calov Bible,” a copy of Luther’s translation that belonged at one time to the theologian Abraham Calov. On Miriam and her singing women, he writes, “First prelude to be performed in two choruses to the honor of God.” Regarding the Levitical chorus and orchestra in Chronicles: “This chapter is the true foundation of all church music pleasing to God.” (Unfortunately, Geck doesn’t tell... Read more