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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Stanislas Breton ( A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul , 56-7) observes that Plato dealt with mythology not be eliminating the gods but by taking their mythical histories as metaphor of the real, “by reading the elevating density of the intelligible in the heaviness of the sensible.” Platonic dualism thus…
Stanislas Breton ( A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul , 59) observes that for Paul “Time [is] the expression or explication . . . of the eternal.” He elaborates by linking predestination with the imperative of creation to sketch out a linguistic/constructivist ontology: “Word and seed correspond to each other…
“Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom,” says Paul. Most interpretations focus on the objects: Jews are defined by signs, Greeks by wisdom. Stanislas Breton ( A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul , 143-4) is more interested in the verbs: “We have here a simple typology, limited to an…
The oath of the strong angel in Revelation 10 knits together two passages. The angel’s oath stance - hand raised - alludes back to Ezekiel 20, where Yahweh reminds Israel of the day He chose them and lifted His hand (Heb. ‘esse ’ yadi ), making Himself known to them…
John records Jesus’ ringing “It is finished” in his crucifixion narrative. But when he gets to Revelation, John records another declaration that things are “finished.” The angel who gives John the book to eat swears that “the mystery of God is finished” (Revelation 10:7). In context, the mystery of God…
In a NYRB review of an exhibition of Cubism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Julian Bell links the early cubist experiments of Georges Braque to the impressionism of Cezanna: “In his artistic researches, Cézanne had been intent to paw at the boundary between his personal visual sensations and the…
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