Peter J. Leithart is President of the Theopolis Institute, Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author, most recently, of Creator (IVP).
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Peter J. Leithart
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Hoops Humility
“What makes this team special?” a reporter asked University of Virginia basketball coach Tony Bennett after his Cavaliers beat Syracuse to sew up the Atlantic Coast Conference championship. It was a typical sports-journalistic question, but Bennett’s answer wasn’t typical. “Humility,” Bennett instantly replied, then looked down and waited for the next question.
Girard v. Genesis
Over many decades and in voluminous writings, René Girard has elaborated a theory of sacrifice, scapegoating, and violence that purports to unveil things hidden from the foundations of the world. He has become a guru, not least to Christian theologians eager to formulate non-violent versions of . . . . Continue Reading »
Narrative Collapse?
Narrativity is collapsing, Douglas Rushkoff excitedly reports in his 2012 book Present Shock. We no longer tell traditional stories because we no longer live within ancient Aristotelian narratives with their beginnings, middles, and ends. Technology killed narrative, leaving us in an eternal . . . . Continue Reading »
Sent in the Spirit
In a few moments, we will lay hands on you to mark you as a minister of the Church of Jesus Christ. This is an effective ritual that achieves what it portrays and proclaims. Right now, you don’t hold pastoral office in the Church. By the end of the afternoon, you will. Our hands won’t declare that you already are a minister. They will make you one. You will be irreversibly changed. Continue Reading »
Silence
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a New York magazine report on Whisper, the latest in social media. Whisper users post their updates, secrets, and statuses anonymously. Other users can “heart” or reply. User stats aren’t public, but the company says it gets over 3 billion page . . . . Continue Reading »
Apocalyptic in Ordinary
In one of his later essays, Jacques Derrida identified a “newly arisen apocalyptic tone in philosophy,” and in the decade since his death, that tone has become a tumult. René Girard’s latest is a shrill warning about the end of European civilization. Slavoj Zizek hears the hoofbeats of four horsemen: environmental destruction, biogenetics, imbalances in global capitalism, and “the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions” . . . Continue Reading »
Truncating the Politics of Jesus
John Howard Yoder’s now-classic The Politics of Jesus sparked a revolution. For centuries, Jesus’ lordship had been foundational to Western political thought. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jesus had become irrelevant. Locke doesn’t use the name “Jesus” in either of his two treatises on government. Adam Smith mentions Jesus only once in Wealth of Nations, in a footnote reference to the “compagnie de Jesus.” There isn’t even a footnote reference to Jesus in Theory of Moral Sentiments. . . . Continue Reading »
Remembering Joseph at Christmastime
Joseph hasn’t received nearly as much attention as Mary over the centuries. There are no lengthy debates about whether Joseph is a co-redeemer, and no one to my knowledge has entertained the possibility that Joseph was perpetually celibate. Yet Joseph is as critical to the Christmas story as Mary. Consider the counterfactuals . . . Continue Reading »
Preparing for His Coming
Advent looks back to celebrate the coming of the Son of God in human flesh. As Advent lectionary readings show, God comes in many ways, and so Advent also looks ahead to God’s future interventions in history, and especially to his final advent at the last day… . Continue Reading »
Familiarizing the Apocalypse
A few weeks ago at the Huffington Post, Bruce Chilton of Bard College traced the rise of American Premillennialism, the view that Jesus will return to reign on earth for a thousand years. Chilton concluded that “readings of the Apocalypse that predict millennial catastrophe” produced a “counter-reaction” from secularists and mainline Christians who ignore the Revelation of John entirely. . . . Continue Reading »
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