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 the course of a review of Vittorio Montemaggi's Reading Dante's Commedia as Theology , Rowan Williams offers these observations on Inferno and Purgatorio : "There is still a tendency among not very attentive readers – not to mention people who have read almost nothing of the work but have…
"God's work in history," writes Mark Searle ( Liturgy Made Simple ), "is to gather into one the scattered children of God, to overcome divisions, to provide a place for the homeless and the lonely, to give support to those whose burdens are heavy, and to create an oasis of…
John Milbank argues in his Beyond Secular Order that " historicism cannot straightforwardly be considered as something specifically modern" (8). In fact, it originates from a Christian insight: "the sense of estranged distance from the past is initially the fruit of the Christian contrast between old and new covenants and…
Last week, I wrote a Firstthings.com column summarizing the argument of Graham Allison's Destined for War , a study of Sino-American relations organized around the concept of the "Thucydides Trap." Allison says that the ancient Greek historian claimed that Athens and Sparta went to war because Sparta was fearful of…
Christine Chaillot has a fascinating summary of the liturgical traditions of the "Ancient Oriental Churches" (Egyptian, Ethiopian, Syrian, Assyrian, Indian) in The Oxford History of Christian Worship . She quotes this Eucharistic hymn from the fifth-century Saint Yazdin (p. 164): "Strengthen, O our Lord, the hands which reach out and…
In ST I, 45, 5, Thomas Aquinas asks whether God alone creates. His sed contra cites Augustine’s de Trinitate (3.8), where Augustine says that angels cannot create anything. If angels cannot, Thomas reasons, neither can any other creature. He presents several arguments in favor of this conclusion. Creation is, Thomas…
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