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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Hermeneutics

Everything Concerning Himself, (Part 1)

I begin with a proposition: The Old Testament is not so much a collection of biographies as a biography. The Old Testament is the biography of Jesus, the Son of God. And as such, the Old Testament is the biography of God. This is what Jesus Himself says about the…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 16, 2013
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Theopolis News

Conference in Ukraine

Trinity House Institute joins with the Alliance of the Reformed Churches in Ukraine to co-sponsor a conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on September 19-20. Peter Leithart, President of Trinity House, will deliver a series of lectures on hermeneutics. He will also deliver several lectures at Ostrog Academy on September 18.

by Peter LeithartSeptember 16, 2013
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Books

If There Is Something To Desire

Vera Pavlova (b. 1963) has published over a dozen collections of poems in Russian. She came rather late to poetry. In her youth, she studied music and began writing poetry in her early 20s while she was in the maternity ward after giving birth to her first child. Her first…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 12, 2013
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Theopolis News

Book of Beginnings (Course Announcement)

Registration is now open for the Advent class at Trinity. James Jordan will lecture on the book of Genesis, the book of beginnings, December 16-20. There will be a kickoff welcome on December 15, and classes will be held at Trinity Presbyterian Church . Registration is open until November 1.

by Peter LeithartSeptember 9, 2013
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History

Idolatry and the Reformation

In 1533, Hugh Latimer, already well-known in the city of Bristol, preached a series of sermons attacking “pylgremages, worshyppying of seyntes, wurshypyng off ymages, off purgatory, &c. yn the whyche he dyd vehemently perswade towarde the contrary.” The writer of this account went on to say that “the people ware…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 9, 2013
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Authority

Authority That Gives

Even if Adam had never sinned, there would have been structures of authority, and authority would have been invested in particular men and women. Authority is not a postlapsarian rescue operation; it’s essential to the good of human life. Unfallen Cain might have wanted to build his new home on…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 4, 2013

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Battle of the Soul

Prudentius’s Psychomachia (5 th century AD) is one of the first and one of the most influential of medieval allegories. It is the source of the battle of Virtue and Vice that was one of the key themes of medieval allegory, which carries right into the Elizabethan allegory of Spenser's…

April 27, 2015
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Nationalism

Nations: Grown or Imagined?

R omantic thinkers like Johann Gottfried Herder, developed an organic conception of nationhood. For Herder, a nation is an extended family, and so a perfect nation, the most natural state, is “one nation, an extended family with one national character." (I rely on this essay by Richard White.) People have…

April 27, 2015

Imagining Finland

Nations are “imagined communities,” and one of the ways nations imagine themselves is to imagine themselves as very, very old. The Finnish epic, the Kalevala , serves as an illustration of the nexus between ancient literature and national identity. Anderson writes ( Imagined Communities , 74-5), “In the eighteenth century…

April 27, 2015

The Un-Dante

In a contribution to Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works Teodolinda Barolini contrasts the love poetry of Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (also known as the Canzoniere ) with that of Dante. Petrarch continues the courtly paradigm. His interest is in the shifting psychology and drama of the male…

April 27, 2015

Deflating Humanism

In his E nglish Literature in the Sixteenth Century , CS Lewis makes two deflationary comments about the effects of Renaissance humanism. First, “The ‘barbarous’ books [of medieval Latin] have survived in the only sense that really matters: they are used as their authors meant them to be used. It…

April 24, 2015

Mystic Ark

Conrad Rudolph's The Mystic Ark is the product of impressive scholarship. Its focus is on the image of the mystic ark, a complex cosmic portrait showing “the Majesty” (looking like Jesus) enthroned, flanked by angels, holding a large disk, inscribed with a square turned sideways like a diamond. Inside the…

April 24, 2015

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