Peter J. Leithart > Quotes

“The cross is the crux, the crossroads, the twisted knot at the center of reality, to which all previous history leads and from which all subsequent history flows. By it we know all reality is cruciform—the love of God, the shape of creation, the labyrinth of human history.”
― Peter Leithart

“Worship is Political Science 101.
In every worship service, the Christian ekklesia is renewed in her unique story and language, her unique political experience and vocation. Every worship service is a challenge to Caesar, because every Lord's Day we bow to a Man on the throne of heaven, to whom even great Caesar must bow. O'Donovan claims that all political order rests on a people's homage to authority, which is to say, on an act of worship. Every Lord's Day, the Church is reconstituted as a polity whose obedience is owed to Christ, and we are taught to name Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Against Christianity

“The Bible is useful because it opens our eyes, and because it’s highly impractical to walk through life with our eyes closed.”
― Peter J. Leithart

“Before we can progress in providing answers . . . we have to repent of our questions.”
― Peter Leithart

“In cleansing lepers, Jesus restores them to the worshiping community of Israel. Many of the other ailments that Jesus heals are sicknesses that disqualified a man from serving as a priest (see Lev. 21–22). Jesus restores human beings to full humanity by making them priests.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

“Pastors and Bible teachers go about their work in communal settings, where they listen to as well as deliver sermons, hear as well as speak, and gain biblical insights from their parishioners as much as they pass them on.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture

“Literature in the West arose from liturgy.”
― Peter Leithart

“Jesus keeps the Sabbath with an eye to the "weightier matters of the law," which are justice, mercy, and truth. Jesus keeps the Sabbath as an adult. Children are very worried about keeping the rules, and forcing other people to keep the rules. But children might keep rules so rigidly that they actually violate the rules. That's how the Pharisees keep the law. They are childish law keepers. Jesus is a mature law-keeper, and He calls His disciples to keep the law in the same way.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

“The Bible never mentions Christianity. It does not preach Christianity, nor does it encourage us to preach Christianity. Paul did not preach Christianity, nor did any of the other apostles. During centuries when the Church was strong and vibrant, she did not preach Christianity either. Christianity, like Judaism and "Yahwism", is an invention of biblical scholars, theologians, and politicians, and one of its chief effects is to keep Christians and the Church in their proper marginal place. The Bible speaks of Christians and of the Church, but Christianity is gnostic, and the Church firmly rejected gnosticism from her earliest days.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Against Christianity

“This line of argument puts the lie to the common charge that Athanasius and other “classical trinitarians” depict God as a static, immobile being. Quite the contrary, classical orthodoxy insists that God is by nature generative, productive, fruitful, and fecund. The Father is eternally Father, having begotten the eternal Son in an eternal begetting. Arians, by contrast, must conclude that the Father has something less than a “generative nature.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Athanasius

“The Triune God is in the world, nearer to us than we are to ourselves, yet the world is also encompassed by his loving presence. He does have the whole world in his hands, even while he inhabits the whole world. For Christians, being saved means being caught up into this communion, indwelled by God and indwelling in him, and being opened up so that other people may have room in us and we in them.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience

“Austen is a moralist, but, as John Lauber has put it, she is not a "punitive" moralist. Sometimes her villains receive no more serious punishment than to achieve their desires. Often that is punishment enough.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

“Anyone can discern the evils of the factory system or the Terror.
But it takes considerable wisdom to discern the evils embedded in the staccato blather of a seventeen-year-old girl.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

“As Alexander Schmemann notes, we moderns feel no need to renounce Satan because we 'do not see the presence and action of Satan in the world.' The world looks so shiny and civilized that we don't grasp how 'such seemingly positive and even Christian notions as freedom and liberation, love, happiness, success, achievement, growth, self fulfillment...can in fact be deviated from their real significance and become vehicles of the demonic.' Baptism renounces 'an entire worldview made up of pride and self-affirmation' that twists life 'into darkness, death and hell.' What appears to be a gentle, middle-class neighborhood can be a nest of vipers. Baptism enlists us to resist domesticated dragons as much as a the feral ones.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“If we only read the Bible silently in private, God would never speak His Word to His people. Studied in private, the Bible doesn’t do its temple-building work. The Bible can’t be all it’s supposed to be outside the liturgy. God wants to speak to His people, gathered as His people. Plus, the Bible isn’t merely spoken to us. It’s given to be spoken by us. The Bible is fulfilled when it’s turned into prayer, praise, song, dialogue. That happens in the liturgy.”
― Peter Leithart, Theopolitan Liturgy

“The Triune God is in the world, nearer to us than we are to ourselves, yet the world is also encompassed by his loving presence. He does have the whole world in his hands, even while he inhabits the whole world. For Christians, being saved means being caught up into this communion, indwelled by God and indwelling in him, and being opened up so that other people have room in us and we in them.”
― Peter Leithart

“For Mary, the world is something to be mastered, manipulated, and made; for Fanny, the world is a gift to be received with thanksgiving. Fanny is the eucharistic heroine, giving thanks in all times and places.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

“It is a strange story, the story of Jesus. To the Jews, it is not the story of Israel's redemption but some odd detour. For Christians, though, the story of Jesus is the final chapter of the story of Israel. For Christians, all that Israel hopes for—redemption from enemies, forgiveness of sins, triumph and exaltation, a restoration of Eden, the conversion of the nations, the earth filled with the glory of Israel's God—all of it comes to pass through Jesus. Not through the sword of Zealots, or the rigid purity of the Pharisees, or the political compromises of the Sadducees, or the withdrawal of the Essenes. Israel's story is carried to its conclusion by a different sort of Jew entirely, a different sort of holiness, a different story-line, a story-line of compassion, service, suffering, death. And, over all and transforming all, resurrection. For Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

“As Israel is baptized into Moses, so they are baptized into Joshua, whose miracles mark him as a new Moses. Unlike the Red Sea, the Jordan doesn't kill. No world is wiped away. No Pharaoh drowns. The Jordan is a river of life. To enter the land, Israel needs both a baptism through death and a baptism of resurrection.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Pray, and then start looking for answers. Faithful prayer leads to expectant living. Pray for the Spirit, and wait to see the Spirit work all around you. Faithful prayer leads to Spiritual living. Pray, and know that whatever God brings is exactly the fish and bread and eggs you need. Prayer in faith leads to thankful living. Pray that your Father would be with you, protect you, guide you, and put away timidity and fear and anxiety. Prayer leads to bold, fearless living.”
― Peter Leithart

“A part of the answer to these questions is that Christians have no more moral duty to read and study Greek and Roman literature than ancient Israelites had a duty to study the myths of Baal and Asteroth. Nor should Christian homeschoolers think that they can have a good Christian education only if the "classics" are prominent in the curriculum. The goal of Christian education is to train a child to be faithful in serving God and His kingdom in a calling, and certainly this goal can be achieved by a student who never cracks the cover of a Homeric epic. page 18”
― Peter J. Leithart, Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

“The upshot of this is that the “coming” of Jesus (1:16) and the “entry into the kingdom” (1:11) describe the same reality. Jesus’ Parousia (coming) will be at the same time as the “coming of the kingdom” in its New Covenant fullness, and that is the kingdom that Peter wants his readers to enter. Like Noah and Lot (2:4–8), the godly Christians of the first-century church will watch the world collapse around them, and like Noah and Lot, they can be confident God will rescue them from that collapse and will give them entry into a new world on the other side. Thus the “kingdom of our Lord and Savior” describes not the consummation of all things but the world of the New Covenant. If this is an accurate interpretation of Peter’s argument in chapter 1, it sets the context for chapter 3: when Peter talks about a “new heavens and new earth,” he is talking about the “kingdom of our Lord and Savior” which emerges from the birth pangs of Jesus’ coming in power.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

“If Peter is indeed condemning Judaizers and Jewish opponents of Christianity, his descriptions of them are sharply ironic. Reversion to the “world” (2:20) is a reversion to the world of the Old Covenant order, to a world of corruption that is about to be destroyed, to the practices and life of the “fleshly” covenant of the Jews.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

“I do see Christ everywhere and in everything, as the One in Whom all things, including Western literature, consist. Shakespeare's plays are among the "all things" that Paul says are created "for Christ" (col. 1:16-17). If there is offense in taking Paul quite literally and pressing his global affirmation into crannies of the academy that would rather not hear from an apostle, it is an offense for which I cannot apologize. Pressing Paul's point is a straightforward and unavoidable demand of discipleship. (page 28)”
― Peter J. Leithart, Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

“Baptism enlists us in the great war of human history, among the troops of the seed of the woman as he fights the seed of the serpent. As it brings us into the army of the church, baptism equips us with a panoply of weapons--the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the sandals of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Eph 6:12-17). The warfare of the baptized is a warfare of faith fought with Spiritual weapons (2 Cor 10:1-6), a liturgical warfare of word, water, song, prayer, bread, and wine.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death

“Israel's history is a story of a spurned husband who is rejected by a scornful wife. But it's a story of a spurned husband who refuses to give up on His bride. His bride spurns Him and finds other husbands, but He woos her back. He is the relentless, pursuing Hound of Heaven.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

“Baptism is one of those more effective rites that come in with the new covenant. The fact that baptism takes the place of the multiple, complicated cleansing rites of stoicheic order is itself a sign that salvation has come to the world. And the fact that baptism does the miraculous work of binding diverse flesh into one body means that baptism is one of the rites that effects the social salvation of humanity.”
― Peter Leithart

“I believe we find imaginative satisfaction in stories that end with weddings because we live in a world that will end with a wedding. The Bible tells the story of history, a story that is mysteriously 'built into' the structure of our minds and practices, so that even writers who resist this story cannot help but leave traces of it—faint and distorted as they may be—on every page.”
― Peter Leithart

“Thus in Twelfth Night the fact that Malvolio is called demon-possessed, and is associated with the devil over and over again, points to his thematic role in the play. Like Satan, he is sick with self-love, falling by the force of his own gravity, as Chesterton said. Of course, Malvolio is a comic devil, not nearly so threatening as Iago or Shylock, but he is a devil nonetheless. And his devilry is manifest particularly in his desire to end the gaiety of Olivia’s house. Here especially the title of the play comes into its own. Twelfth Night is named for the last night of the Christmas season, the final celebration of the Incarnation. It is a night for carnival, for suspension of the serious and structured. Malvolio wants to stop the merriment, and so it is fitting that he is ultimately excluded from it. But more: Malvolio is not only excluded from the comic climax of the play. He is excluded and overcome through trickery, practical joking, mirth. Satan digs a pit for the merry, but Satan falls into the very pit of merriment. And it tortures him forever. In the final analysis, that is the practical import of all that has been said in this little book: the joy of Easter, the joy of resurrection, the joy of trinitarian life does not simply offer an alternative “worldview” to the tragic self-inflation of the ancients. Worked out in the joyful life of the Christian church, deep comedy is the chief weapon of our warfare. For in the joy of the Lord is our strength, and Satan shall be felled with “cakes and ale” and midnight revels.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, & Hope In Western Literature

“But she submits as a queen to a king, as a lieutenant to a general. Her primary field of combat may be the home, but the woman isn’t created to be a servant or a domestic helper. She’s created to join man as his compatible battle-mate who stands at his shoulder to fight his adversaries.”
― Peter Leithart