Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Reflecting on the centennial of the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, Theopolis contributor Tim Nichols asked Dr. Leithart and me what the five fundamentals of the faith were today . His thoughts went something like this: Back in the early 20th century, in response to a ruinous drift away from the historic Christian…
1. Introduction In this article, I delve into some parallels found in the scholarly analysis of two important literary works: the Testimonium Flavianum by Josephus ( Antiquities 18.63–64) and the Olivet Discourse in the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 24–25). These texts have been at the center of countless academic discussions,…
Over the last twenty years, our American culture has created a culture of obsession over trauma. This could be a result of publications such as The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, which explores the lasting effect on health that traumatic experiences can have. Or it could…
The Beloved celebrates the beauty of his Shulamite’s lips, describing them as “a thread of crimson” upon a mouth that is altogether lovely (Song 4:3). It were easy perhaps to pass by this all too quickly, passing it off, if we attend to it at all, as a kind of…
This article originally appeared at American Reformer on October 29, 2025. Reproduced with permission. Why the West Was Never Meant to Be Governed by Law Alone Back in the early nineties, I was in the candidate process for Undergraduate Pilot Training with the Texas Air National Guard, hoping to fly…
In his book From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution , Peter Leithart shows that David, the author of so many Psalms and the musician who trained choirs, instituted a musical and liturgical revolution of how the people of Israel worshipped. The liturgical revolution in turn was designed to…
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In his classic work on the Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations , Cyrus Gordon points to a very specific parallel: “Homeric tradition often represents military organisation as contingents of troops under a triad of officers for each contingent.” He cites Iliad 1.563-7 and Odyssey 14.470-1 for support. And…
Giorgio de Santillana’s Hamlet’s Mill is an exercise in un-forgetting. Ancients believed the world moved through various ages: “Each age brings a World Era, a Twilight of the Gods. Great structures collapse; pillars topple which supported the great fabric; floods and cataclysms herald the shaping of a new world.” And…
In an essay written around 1942, John Maynard Keynes beautifully captured the archaic character of Isaac Newton: “Newton was not the first of the Age of Reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the…
Giorgio de Santillana argued that mythology was not historical but cosmological ( Hamlet’s Mill , 50): “whatever is true myth has no historical basis, however tempting the reduction, however massive and well armed the impact of a good deal of modern criticism on that belief. The attempt to reduce myth…
Sim Van der Ryn’s Design for an Empathic World is a brief for person-centered design, design that takes the users and the world around a building into account. Van der Ryn sees “forward-thinking companies” doing just what he suggests. He quotes Paul Goldberger on Google’s California campus: “What is really…
University of Cape Town professor David Benatar argues answers the question “How many children should we have” with a simple “None.” “Morally responsible parents wish to spare their children pain,” he argues. But “the only way to prevent harm altogether is to desist from bringing children into existence. Any child…
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