BuddhistCatholicContemplativeEvangelicalGeneral ChristianHinduJewishLatter-day SaintMuslimNew VisionsProgressive Christian
Beliefs
- Buddhist
- Catholic
- Contemplative
- Evangelical
- General Christian
- Hindu
- Jewish
- Latter-day Saint
- More Voices
- Muslim
- New Visions
- Pagan
- Progressive Christian
Topics
- Religion News
- Food and Religion
- Sports and Religion
- Religious Art
- Religious Music and Entertainment
- Religious Events
- History and Religion
- Style and Religion
- Politics and Religion
- Women in Religion
- Recreation Outdoors and Religion
- Business Finance and Religion
- Careers Workplace and Religion
- Education and Religion
- Family Parenting and Religion
- Health Fitness and Religion
- Home and Religion
- Relationships and Religion
- Technology and Religion
- Travel and Religion
Columnists
- Buddhist Columnists
- Business Finance and Religion Columnists
- Careers Workplace and Religion Columnists
- Catholic Columnists
- Contemplative Columnists
- Education and Religion Columnists
- Evangelists Columnists
- Family Parenting and Religion Columnists
- General Christian Columnists
- Health Fitness and Religion Columnists
- Hindu Columnists
- History and Religion Columnists
- Home and Religion Columnists
- Jewish Columnists
- More Voices Columnists
- Latter Day Columnists
- Muslim Columnists
- New Visions Columnists
- Nonreligious Columnists
- Pagan Columnists
- Politics and Religion Columnists
- Progressive Columnists
- Recreation Outdoors and Religion Columnists
- Relationships and Religion Columnists
- Religion News Columnists
- Religious Art Columnists
- Religious Events Columnists
- Religious Music and Entertainment Columnists
- Sports and Religion Columnists
- Style and Religion Columnists
- Technology and Religion Columnists
- Travel and Religion Columnists
- Women in Religion Columnists
Resource Library
- 2026 Calendar
- Library of World Religions
- The 100 Most Holy Places on Earth
- Patheos Answers
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Faith Leaders Database
- Anglican Episcopalian
- Bahai
- Baptist
- Buddhism
- Christianity
- Confucianism
- Eastern Orthodoxy
- Hinduism
- Holiness and Pentecostal
- ISKCON
- Islam
- Judaism
- Lutheran
- Methodist
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
- New Age
- Paganism
- Presbytarian and Reformed
- Protestantism
- Religion Behind the Scenes
- Roman Catholic
- Scientology
- Shia Islam
- Sikhism
- Sufism
- Sunni Islam
- Taoism
- Zen
- See all religions
Research Tools
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support
- Trending:
- Forgiveness
- |
- Marriage
- |
- Consciousness
- |
- Death Penalty
- |
- Election
- |
- Halloween
Leithart
- Home
- Evangelical
- Luther’s hermeneutics
Luther’s hermeneutics
Last updated on: March 12, 2007 at 11:52 am by Peter Leithart
Luther’s hermeneutics 2007-03-12T11:52:27+06:00 Peter Leithart
Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.
In a 1964 article in Theology Today , Gerhard Ebeling laid out some of the hermeneutical directions found in Luther’s early writings. He focuses on three areas where Luther displays both some continuity with the terminology and problems of medieval interpretation, but also breaks free in significant ways.
At the beginning of his early treatise on the Psalms, Luther is still functioning within the constraints of the medieval fourfold method, applying it more “intensively” and more “on principle” than other exegetes of his time. Yet, he fundamentally shifts the ground of the fourfold by arguing that the literal sense is already a Christological sense. The “I” of the Psalms – even the penitential Psalms – is Christ, and from this Christological-literal sense, Luther develops the other senses so that they uncover a theology of the cross embedded in the text.
As Ebeling puts it, “to connect the psalms with Christ in the sensus literalis promoted a christology which clearly emphasized the characteristics of the true humanity of Christ up to the God-forsakenness on the cross, thus a theology of the cross. And, to make the sensus literalis the basis for the other interpretative possibilities of the fourfold sense of Scripture made the christological starting-point of the theology of the cross central for ecclesiology (sensus allegoricus), soteriology (sensus tropologicus), and eschatology (sensus anagogicus). As a result, the sensus tropologicus did not aim toward man’s deed but toward faith as the actual manner in which man responds to Christ. This means that Christ, tropologically understood, is faith.”
Ebeling also examines the difference between Luther’s understanding of letter/spirit and earlier views. Like Origen, Luther reads the letter/spirit distinction as a distinction between two worlds, but these two worlds are interpreted not as referring to a cosmic Platonic dualism but as an existential dualism, man coram Deo and man before the world:
“In overcoming the conception of Origen with regard to 2 Cor. 3: 6, the interpretation of Holy Scripture is not concerned with the disclosure of an allegorical hiddenness, but with the revelation of God in the hiddenness under the opposite. Thus the interpretation of Holy Scripture is concerned with the theology of the cross as the substance of Holy Scriptures, the significance of which must be established through exegesis. This new stamp which Luther presses upon the understanding of letter and spirit is the preparation of Luther’s later distinction between law and gospel. The traditional structure of the twofold sense of scripture is thus principally destroyed. Luther does continue to use the allegorical method in a limited way as a means of decorative application. But, in the correct understanding, the one, plain, grammatical sense is the truly theological one which includes within itself the duality of law and gospel in its orientation to the substance of Holy Scripture; or, to say it more exactly, the basic task of theological hermeneutics occurs in the distinction between law and gospel. To the degree to which Luther’s distinction of law and gospel differs from the scholastic differentiation of the natural and the supernatural, Luther’s understanding of the doctrine of the two kingdoms changes, too, in comparison to the Middle Ages.”
Finally, Ebeling finds a crucial difference between medieval interpreters and Luther in their conceptions of the very purpose of hermeneutics. For Thomas, the big linguistic problem of theology was finding language adequate to God: “With reference to God one can only speak by approximation, since all linguistic possibilities are contingent upon space and time and hence cannot describe God as such. The very structure of a sentence which is by necessity determined by a time-word is contradictory to the nature of God.”
Ebeling connects this to the relative priority of love over faith, and of sacrament over word, among medievals: “Theologically, the inadequacy of linguistic communication can be felt especially well. The Catholic-scholastic tradition shows this in two ways: First, the true means of grace is not the word but the sacrament. For the word keeps man at a distance from God and God at a distance from man. The sacrament, however, unifies man with the divine itself. Grace is infused into man in form of a created reality, as habitus of the soul; it becomes a property (virtus) of man. And secondly, the highest so-called theological virtue and the very heart of the reality of grace is, correspondingly, not faith as expression of distance, but love as the expression of the unification which overcomes distance.”
The subordination of the word/faith combination is part and parcel of the view that “the word basically considered as weak and dark. It is inadequate and must be explained. Hermeneutics in this understanding is, to a certain extent, the result of this weakness of language and, as a therapeutic measure, it is simultaneously the evidence for that weakness and darkness of language.”
For Luther, theology does not aim primarily at descriptions of God but at attempting to expose man’s condition, to announce God’s judgment over sinners. In this context, “the word-event in human language is the most suitable form of God’s communication with man. Hence the relationship of God and man is a relationship of word and faith. This does not contest the sacrament, but re-interprets the sacrament as one aspect of the word-event.”
This also has soteriological import. Luther’s approach does not “eliminate love but it refers love to its proper place as the fruit of faith. For faith and love are to each other as doer and deed, as person and work. And the decisive question is what constitutes man’s being as person, i.e., the question of man’s being before God. Here the distance of distinction between man and God is affirmed and considered as something in keeping with true communication.”
The goal of the interpreter for Luther is to enable the word to do its work, not to unveil hidden mysteries: “This understanding of language is not defined from the point of view of signification but from the viewpoint of the word-event which must be accounted for and which, in turn, enables such accountability. The hermeneutical result is, therefore, that the very word as such is of hermeneutical importance and is able to illumine, to bring about clarity, and to give life. The hermeneutical task can only consist of the fact that we devote ourselves to the service or the word-event in such a way that the word becomes truly word, and that it occurs as pure word in the fullness of its power.”
One noteworthy stray comment from earlier in the article: “In keeping with this is his conscious attention to the specifically biblical use of language in distinction from the theological terminology which was philosophically tinted. Furthermore he attempted to establish a language, free from the scholastic structure of language, which would be closer to the subject and more suitable for it.”
Overall, Ebeling’s article helps to show how central hermeneutics is to the Reformation, and how crucial was Luther’s effort to refurbish theological language by speaking as the Bible speaks.
Previous Post

March 12, 2007
Quadriga on the cross
Next Post

March 13, 2007 Quantifiable love
Browse Our Archives
Select a Category 1 Corinthians 1-2 Samuel 1968 Abelard Abortion Abraham Acedia AD 70 Adam Smith Addiction Advent Advertising Aeneid Aesthetics Africa African Christianity African Church African religion Age Aging Agriculture Airline industry Alabama Alasdair MacIntyre Albania Alcohol Allegory Alms Alternative Medicine Ambrose America American Christianity American culture American economy American Evangelicals American Foreign Policy American history American Literature American Military American Politics American Religion American Revolution Anagogy Analytic Philosophy Anamnesis Ancient Egypt Ancient Greece Ancient history Ancient Near East Ancient Religion Angels Anglican Church Anglicanism Animism Anointing of the Sick Anselm Anthropology Anthropomorphism anti-Catholicism Antiquities Antonio Lopez apocalypse Apocalyptic Apocalyptic language Apostles Creed Aquinas Archeology Architecture Arianism Aristotle Ark of the Covenant Art Art History Ascension Aseity Assurance Athanasius Atheism Athens atonement Attention Attributes Augustine Austin Farrer Authority autonomy Avant-garde Awe Bach Ballooning Balzac Banking Bankruptcy Baptism Baptists Baseball Basketball Bavinck Beatitudes Beauty Behavioral Economics Being Benedict XVI Benjamin Benjamin Franklin Beowulf Berkeley Bernie Sanders Bertrand Russell Bestiary Bible Bible - criticism Bible - NT Bible - NT - 1 Corinthians Bible - NT - 1 John Bible - NT - 1 Peter Bible - NT - 2 Corinthians Bible - NT - 2 Peter Bible - NT - Acts Bible - NT - Colossians Bible - NT - Ephesians Bible - NT - Galatians Bible - NT - Gospels Bible - NT - Hebrews Bible - NT - James Bible - NT - John Bible - NT - Jude Bible - NT - Luke Bible - NT - Mark Bible - NT - Matthew Bible - NT - Paul Bible - NT - Philippians Bible - NT - Revelation Bible - NT - Romans Bible - NT - Thessalonians Bible - NT - Timothy Bible - OT Bible - OT - Amos Bible - OT - Chronicles Bible - OT - Daniel Bible - OT - Deuteronomy Bible - OT - Ecclesiastes Bible - OT - Esther Bible - OT - Exodus Bible - OT - Ezekiel Bible - OT - Ezra-Nehemiah Bible - OT - Genesis Bible - OT - Habakkuk Bible - OT - Hosea Bible - OT - Isaiah Bible - OT - Jeremiah Bible - OT - Job Bible - OT - Joel Bible - OT - Jonah Bible - OT - Joshua Bible - OT - Judges Bible - OT - Kings Bible - OT - Lamentations Bible - OT - Leviticus Bible - OT - Malachi BIble - OT - Micah Bible - OT - Nehemiah Bible - OT - Numbers Bible - OT - Pentateuch Bible - OT - Proverbs Bible - OT - Psalms Bible - OT - Ruth Bible - OT - Samuel Bible - OT - Song of Songs Bible - OT - Torah Bible - OT - Zechariah Bible - OT - Zephaniah Biblical Law Biblicism Billy Graham biography Biology Biololgy Biotechnology Blasphemy Blindness Blog news Blogging Blogroll Bloomsbury Group Bob Dylan Body Body symbolism Boethius Boko Haram Bonhoeffer Book of Common Prayer Books Botany Boundary Brexit Britain British History British Politics Bruce Springsteen Buddhism Bureaucracy Burial Business C. S. Lewis C. S. Peirce Calendars Caliphate Calvin calvinism Camille Paglia Canon Capitalism Cappadocians Carl Schmitt Catholic Social Teaching Catholicism Catholicity Causation cemeteries Cervantes Charism Charismata Charity Charles Dickens Charles Hodge Charles Simeon Charles Taylor Charles Williams Chaucer Chermistry Chess Chesterton Chiasm children China Chinese Exclusion Act Chivalry Chopin Chretien de Troyes Christendom Christian Democracy Christian reconstruction Christianity in Britain Christianization Christmas Christology Chronology Church church and state Church architecture Church Calendar Church history Church of England Church Year Cicero Circumcision Cities City of God Civil Religion Civil Society Civil War Civility Classical Theism Classics Climate Change Clothing Coleridge Colloquy of Marburg Colonialism Color Comedy Comenius Commodity Communio Communism Community Comparative religions Computer Science Confederacy Confessionalization Conflict Congregations consciousness Consecration Conservatism Constantine Constitution consumerism Contra Faustum Conversion Coriolanus Cormac McCarthy Cosmology Cosmopolitanism Council of Trent Counter-culture Counter-insurgency Courage Courtly love Covenants Crafts Craftsmanship Cranach Creation Creativity Creator-creature Credit Crime Crime and Punishment Crisis Critical scholarship Criticism Cross Cubism Cultural theory Culture Culture War Dance Daniel Dennett Dante Darwin Dave Eggers David David Foster Wallace David Hume David Jones Deadly sins Death Debt Dechristianization Decolonization Deconstruction Defoe Deja vu Democracy Denis de Rougemont Denominationalism Derrida Descartes Developmental psychology Devils Diocletian Discipleship Disenchantment Disgust Diversion Diversity Divine energies Divine Impassibility Divine Simplicity Divine Warrior Doctrine dogma Dominion Donald Trump Dostoevsky Douglas Campbell Douglas Farrow Dreams Dualism Durkheim Dystopia E.M. Forster Early Christianity Early Modern Europe Easter Eastern Europe Eastern Orthodoxy Ecclesiology Ecclesiology Economics Economy Ecumenism Eden Edgar Allan Poe Edmund Spenser Education Egypt Election Elites Emergence Emma Emotion Empire England English History English Reformation Enlightenment Entertainment Entrepreneur environmentalism Envy Epic Epiphany Episcopals Epistemology Epistles Equality Erasmus Ernst Kantorowicz Eros Eschatology Eternity Ethics Eucharist Europe Evangelicalism Evangelicals and Catholics Together Events Evil Evolution Exile Face Fairie Queene Fairy Tales Faith family Family and Marriage Fantasy Farming Fashion Fasting Fatherhood Fear Femininity Feminism Fertility Fetishization Feud Feudalism Feuerbach Fiction Figs Film Finance Finland Fire Flag Flags Flannery O'Connor Flood myths Folly Food football Foreign Affairs Foreign Policy Foreknowledge Forgiveness Foucault Fracking France Francois Mauriac Franz Rosenzweig free will Freedom Freedom of God French Revolution Freud Funerals Future G. K. Chesterton Gambling Gaming Gay Marriage Gender gender identity Genealogy Geography George Berkeley George Eliot George Herbert; Poetry George Romanes Gerald Manley Hopkins Germany Gethsemane Gift Gifts Giorgio Agamben Global Christianity Global economics Globalism Globalization Glorious Revolution Gnosticism God's sovereignty Gods Goethe Golf Good Friday Gospel Gospels Gothic Gothic architecture Grace Grammar Gramsci Gratitude Greek Literature Greek Philosophy Greek Religion Greek Science Gregory of Nyssa Guillermo del Toro H. Richard Niebuhr Haiku hair Hamann Hamlet Handicap Handles Hands Hans Urs von Balthasar Happiness Harold Bloom Harper Lee Harvest healing Heaven Heavenly treasure Heavenly treasure Hebrew Bible Hebrew language Hegel Heidegger Hell Hellenism; Judaism; Revelation Henri de Lubac heresy Herman Dooyeweerd Hermeneutics Herod Heroic Heroism Hesiod Hidegard of Bingen Hierarchy Hieronymus Bosch Historicism Historiography History History - Early Modern History - Middle Ages Hoaxes Hobbes Holiness Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Home Homeless Homer Homosexuality Honor hope Horror Hospitality Housing Hugh of St. Victor Human Rights Humanism Humor hylomorphism Hymns Hypocrisy. Iago Iconoclasm Identity Ideology Idleness Idolatry Iliad Images Imagination Immigrant churches Immigrant Religion Immigration Imperialism Improvization Imputation Incarnation Incest India Individualism Indonesia Inequality Inerrancy Infant Baptism Infant mortality Infanticide Ingratitude Innovation Inspiration Institutions Insult Intellectual History Intellectuals Intelligent Design International Politics Internet Intimacy IQ Iran Iran-Iraq War Iraq Ireland Irony Islam Islamic State Islamism Ismail Kadare Israel Ivan Illich J. Gresham Machen J.N. Figgis Jacob Jacques Lacan James Bond James Jordan James Joyce James KA Smith James Wood Jane Austen Jane Jacobs Jealousy Jed Perl Jeff Koons Jeroboam Jesus Jewish War 66-70 AD Jihad Johann Georg Hamann Johannine Epistles John Ashbery John Behr John Bunyan John Calvin John Donne John Frame John Howard Yoder John Knox John Milbank John Milton John Owen John Rawls John Ruskin John Stuart Mill John the Baptist John Webster John Wesley John Williamson Nevin Jonathan Edwards Jorge Luis Borges Joseph Conrad Joseph Ratzinger Journalism Joy Judaism Judaize Judgment Judith Butler Jurgen Moltmann Justice Justification Kalevala Kant Karl Barth Karl Marx Karl Polanyi Karl Rahner Kazakhstan Kazuo Ishiguro Kenneth Lonergan Kierkegaard King Lear Kingdom of God Kitsch Knighthood Knowledge Korea Labor movement Lactantius Lamech Lament Landscape Language Latin America Laughter Law Law and Punishment Leftism Lent Les Murray Levi-Strauss Levites Leviticus Liber Mundi Liberal arts Liberal Theology Liberalism Light Lighthouse Linguistics LIstening Literacy Literary structure Literature Liturgics Liturgy Locke Logic Love Luther Lutheran Lutheranism Lying Lytton Strachey Macbeth Machiavelli Machines Madness Mainline Manhattan Manicheanism Manners Manufacturing Manuscripts Mao Zedong Maps Marcion Marilynne Robinson Marketing Marriage Martha Nussbaum Martin Bucer Martin Chemnitz Martyrdom Marx Marxism Mary Mary Douglas masculinity Mass Materialism Mathematics Maundy Thursday Max Weber Media Mediation Medication Medicine Medieval Church Medieval exegesis Medieval Literature Medieval theology Medieval Thought Medievalism Memory Merchant of Venice Mesopotamian Religion Messianic Metaphor Metaphysics Methodist Mexican-American War Michel de Montaigne Michel Faber Middle Ages Middle East Midwifery Mikhail Bulgakov Military Millennium Mind Miracles Miscellaneous Mission missionaries Mixed constitution Modern self modernism Modernity monasticism Monotheism Monroe Doctrine Monsters Montaigne's Essays Moral philosophy Mormonism Moses Mother Teresa Motherhood Motive Mount of Olives Movies Multiculturalism Murder Music Musicals Mutability Mutability Mystery Mysticism myth N. T. Wright Narrative Nation-State Nationalism Natural Law Natural-Supernatural Nature Nature and culture Nature and Grace Nazi Nazirite Necrophilia Nero Nestorianism Neuroscience Nevin Lectures New Atheism New Testament New York City Newbigin News NGOs Nibelungenlied Nicholas of Cusa Nicholas of Lyra Nietzsche Nigeria Nihilism Nobel Prize Nobility Nominalism Norbert Elias Norman MacCaig nostalgia Novels Numerology Obama Objectivity and subjectivity Occasionalism Odysseus Oil Old Testament Oliver O'Donovan Ontology Origen original sin Orthodoxy Othello Owen Barfield Pacifism Pactum salutis Paedocommunion Paganism Pain Painting Paleoconservatism Palm Sunday Pannenberg Parenting Pascal Passions Passivity Pastoral Care Pastoral theology Patrick Modiano Patristics Patronage Paul Peace of God Peace of Westphalia Penal substitution Pentecost Pentecostalism Perichoresis Pericles Persecution Person Peter Peter Enns Petrarch Philip K. Dick Philip Melanchthon Philosophy Philosophy of Action Philosophy of History Philosophy of language Philosophy of science Phone booth Photography Physics Pictures Pierre Bourdieu Place Planned Parenthood Plants plato Play Plot Plotinus Pluralism Pneumatology Poetics poetry Poetry & Stories Poland police Political Philosophy Political theology Political Theory Politics Pop Culture Pope Francis Popular Culture Populism Pornography Porphyry Post-Colonial Theory Post-Structuralism Postmodernism Postmodernity Potential Poverty Power Practice Pragmatism Prayer Preaching Predestination Prediction Prehistory Premillennialism Presbyterian Priesthood Prince Charles Prison Reform privacy Private Prodigal Son Progress Progressivism Property Prophecy Prophet Propitiation Prosperity gospel Prostitution Protectionism Protestantism Providence Prudentius psalms Pseudo-Dionysus Psychological Warfare Psychology Public intellectual Public Life Public Philosophy Public Theology Publishing Punk Rock Pure nature Puritanism Purity Pushkin Putin Pythagoreanism R.J. Rushdoony Race Racism Radical Orthodoxy Rape Rationality Reactionary reading Realism Reason Red State Blue State Reformation Reformational Catholicism Reformational Philosophy Reformed theology refugees reinhold niebuhr Relationality Relativism Relics Religion Religion and science Religions Religious Freedom Religious Liberty Religious Right Renaissance Rene Girard Republican Party Resurrection Resurrection. Revelation Revelations Revenge Revivalism Revolution rhetoric Richard Flannagan Richard II Richard III Richard Wagner Richard Wilbur Righteousness Ritual Robert Frost Robert Herrick Robert Jenson Robert Mugabe Robert Spaemann Robinson Crusoe Rock n' Roll Rod Dreher Rodin Roman Catholicism Roman Empire Roman Religion Romance Romanticism Rome Rootedness Rosenstock-Huessy Rousseau Rowan Williams Rural America Russia Russian literature Russian Orthodoxy Rusty Reno Rwanda S. Y. Agnon Sabbath Sacrament Sacramental theology Sacraments Sacred Sacred Space Sacrifice saints Salt Sam Harris Same-sex marriage Sanctuary Satan Satire Saudi Arabia Scapegoat Scarcity Schism Schleiermacher Scholarship Science Science and Theology Science Fiction Scopes trial Scotland Scott Adams Scott Cairns Scottish Reformation Scotus Scripture and tradition sculpture Sea Second temple Secularism Secularization Self-Help Self-trust Semiotics Semper reformanda separation of church and state Sermon on the Mount Sex Sex Trafficking Sexual abuse Sexual Politics Sexual Revolution Sexuality Shakespeare Shame Culture Shema Sherlock Shopping Silence Simone Weil Simplicity Simpsons Sin Sincerity Sixties Skepticism Slavery Slavoj Zizek Sleep Sloth Social capital Social change Social Imaginary Social Science Socialism Socialization Sociology Sociology of Knowledge Sociology of Religion Sola scriptura Sonnets Sophocles Soteriology Soviet Union Space Spain Speculation Spinoza Spirit Sport Sports Star Trek State State-formation Stephen Masty Steven Bannon Strangers Structuralism structure Subject-object Substitution Suburbs Suffering Suicide Super-Rich Superheroes Supersessionism Supplication Supreme Court Surveillance Symbol Synagogue Taberancle Tabernacle Tax Taxes Tears Technology Teens Teleology Television Temple Ten Commandments Terence Terrence Malick Terrorism Thanksgiving The South The West Theodore Roosevelt Theogony Theological Education Theological Language Theology Theology - Anthropology Theology - Christology Theology - Covenant Theology - Creation Theology - Ecclesiology Theology - Eschatology Theology - Liturgical Theology - Pneumatology Theology - Soteriology Theology - Trinity Theology proper Theopolis Theopolis Institute Theosis Theresa May Thomas A. Clark Thomas Aquinas Thomas Carlyle Thomas Mann Threshing Thucydides Time Tocqueville Tolerance Toleration Tolstoy Tom Wolfe Tools Torah Torture Toscanini Totalitarianism Trade Tradition Tragedy Transhumanism Translation Transubstantiation Travel Trees Trinitarianism Trinity Trinity House Tristan Troilus and Creysede Trump Trump Truth Turkey Twelfth Night Two Kingdoms Typology Ukraine Ulysses Uncanny Uncategorized Uniform Union with Christ United States Unity University Usury Utilitarianism Utopia Value Vatican II Vengeance Vico Victorian Age Victorian Literature Vienna Violence Virgil Virgin Birth Virginia Woolf Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Solovyev Vladimir Solovyov W.H. Auden Walls Walt Disney Walt Whitman Walter Benjamin Walter Lippmann War Wars of Religion Washington DC Wealth Weddings Will William Carlos Williams William Gilpin William Golding Wine Wisdom wonder Word of God Wordsworth Work Works World Council of Churches World History World War I World War II Worldview Worship Wrath Writing Youth Youth Ministry Yuja Wang Yves Congar Zimbabwe Zwingli Zygmunt Bauman
Select a Month January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003
Follow Us!
TAKE THE
Religious Wisdom Quiz
How did Job's life end according to the book?
Select your answer to see how you score.
He went to Egypt He became a king He lived many more years and prospered He died in misery
Related posts from Leithart
Literal, Figurative, Fundamentalism
TRENDING AT PATHEOS Evangelical
The REST of Your Life: A Creative Wrestles...
This week I had a conversation with a good friend from church....
How the author of the world's best hymn...
I've been working with John Newton for a while now. This makes...
Long before this Lectio Divina, Psalm 130 - the song - started...
What About the Trees? Another Living Parable
After I finished writing the last article about falling leaves as a...
Why Classical Education Is a Conversation, Not a...
Come and Read: Joy in Classical Education When I was a little...
Cornell University has received a great deal of negative publicity and intense...
view all Evangelical blogs
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support
- About Us
- 2026 Calendar
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Library of World Religions
- Faith In Media Tracker
- Advertise With Us
- Write for Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service
- Do Not Sell My Data
- Contact Us
- Radiant Digital
- Manage Newsletter Subscriptions
- Unsubscribe From Notifications
- Sitemap
Copyright 2008-2026, Patheos. All rights reserved.
Subscription Support Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In








