Peter J. Leithart

A Tale of a Tub , published anonymously in 1704, was the first of Jonathan Swift’s great satires. It tells of three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack, who represent, respectively, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. Their father has given each of the brothers a coat, with instructions not . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s called straining a gnat and swallowing a camel. At its annual meeting in Atlanta in November 2003, the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) voted to permit Clark Pinnock and John Sanders to retain their membership in the society. The two had been charged with denying the ETS statement of . . . . Continue Reading »

That Austen recognized the absence and failure of the Church in combating individualism makes her a public theologian to reckon . . . . Continue Reading »

The anonymous alliterative Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the gems of Western medieval literature. It gives a colorful portrait of court life, of heaped tables fringed with silk, knights and ladies in stately order, “velvet carpets, embroidered rugs, . . . . Continue Reading »

In early July 1759, three friends met at an inn called the Windmill outside the German city of Königsberg, for what might be called an “evangelistic” or “counseling” session. Intellectuals all, the three friends had earlier been cobelligerents in the cause of rationalism and the . . . . Continue Reading »

Liturgy and politics don’t mix. For two things to mix, they have to be separable; liturgy and politics are not. Participation in the Christian liturgy is always a political act. Worship, far from being a retreat from politics, embodies a new kind of politics, a genuinely Christian politics. . . . . Continue Reading »

In an essay written during World War II, C. S. Lewis raised the question of learning during wartime. What, he asked, is the use of pursuing arcane knowledge when the world is collapsing about us? Isn’t this like fiddling while Rome burns? Since I teach at a Christian liberal arts college, this . . . . Continue Reading »

“For all the radical talk,” Stanley Fish concludes in a summary of the political theory of William Corlett, “what we have here is liberalism all over again.” Something similar might be said of this collection of Fish’s essays: though he does not, to be sure, revert to liberalism, his . . . . Continue Reading »

It is of course the case that only God knows what will happen in the next century and the next millennium. But we human beings are created with an irrepressible disposition toward the future, as well as a capacity to recall the past. In the last year we published a “millennium series” of . . . . Continue Reading »

For more than two decades, Psalm 139:13 has served as a slogan for the anti-abortion movement, adorning banners and picket signs from Boston to the Bay and everywhere in between. And the text is entirely appropriate to the sermon. One can hardly imagine a clearer affirmation of God’s care for the . . . . Continue Reading »