Peter Leithart

President, Theopolis Institute

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

Lots of talk about "Antichrist" these days, so a few basics.

*The term "antichrist" is used exclusively in 1-2 John, never in Revelation.
*1 John 2:18 says "many antichrists" have appeared. Not a singular figure, but a movement and a group.
*John defines antichrist as those who deny that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:22) or denies He came in the flesh (2 John 1:7).
*Thus, antichrist doesn't refer to a world-tyrant, but to a heretical movement. John refers to the apostasy that Jesus predicted (Matt 24:10).

The sea beast of Rev 13 is a world-tyrant, but it represents a demonized Roman Empire that persecutes the saints, along with the land beast that represents persecuting Jews.

Whatever analogies there may be with later movements and historical characters, in the NT "antichrist" is a phenomenon of the 1st century, not the 21st.

[Theopolis Institute @_Theopolis]

The Theopolis Podcast
Episode 882
The Sun of Righteousness
(Malachi 4)

https://t.co/8tozc8C1pW

[Theopolis Institute @_Theopolis]

Join us for the 2026 Theopolitan Ministry Conference as we consider worship, labor, craftsmanship, AI, vocation, and the Church’s calling to offer the world back to God in praise.

Learn more:
https://t.co/Plz0SqSc6m

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

Nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

-Shakespeare, Sonnet 12

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

The Spirit hovers over creation and appears as a dove.

The Spirit is the Father's wing, stretched out over creation and the church to claim it as Bride for His Son.

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

1 Samuel starts out with a Nazirite (Samuel), head untrimmed.

Sets up for anti-Nazirites who emerge later in the story - Saul with his towering head, Absalom with his weighty crown of hair.

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

"The Poet ... doth grow in effect into an other nature: in making things either better than nature bringeth foorth, or quite anew, formes such as never were in nature ... he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely raunging within the Zodiack of his owne wit ... her world is brasen, the Poets only deliver a golden."

-Sidney, Defense of Poesie

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

Gift economies are often contrasted to market economies. Gift economies are supposed to be cuddly and friendly, markets Darwin-red in tooth and claw.

At the very least, things are far more complicated.

Gift-giving can be a mode of oppression. Remember the generosity of The Godfather, who never gives without expecting a return on his investment.

The market can be a space for deep friendship. Friends start companies together, and strangers become friends by standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a venture.

The power dynamics differ. The giver holds the cards in gift exchange. When there are shortages in a market, especially of necessities, the balance tilts decisively toward sellers.

In many (most?) circumstances, buyers - which is to say, recipients - make final decisions. Sellers can set the price wherever they may, but there's no sale without buyers willing to pay. Buyers can walk, while sellers scramble to tempt them with a better deal.

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

"To destroy individuality is to destroy spontaneity, man’s power to begin something new out of his own resources, something that cannot be explained on the basis of reactions to environment and events. Nothing then remains but ghastly marionettes with human faces, which all behave like the dogs in Pavlov’s experiment, which all react with perfect reliability even when going to their own death, and which do nothing but react."

-Hannah Arendt

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

"The human world is constantly invaded by [newborn] strangers, newcomers whose actions and reactions cannot be foreseen by those who are already there."

-Hannah Arendt

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

Yahweh promises a land. When Abraham arrives, he immediately meets famine and barrenness.

Luigino Bruni comments: “To be righteous is ... to be able to recognize the promised land even in a dry land and see future children in a barren womb.”

And then he draws out the economic consequences of righteousness.

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

"Knowledge may not be as a Curtezan for pleasure, & vanitie only, or as a bond-woman to acquire and gaine to her Masters use, but as a Spouse, for generation, fruit, and comfort."

-Francis Bacon

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

"Man can generate literally below the waist or figuratively in his head. The metaphor of generation is so instinctive to us that the etymology of ‘concept’ goes largely unremarked. Our commonest idioms reveal the extraordinary pervasiveness of this metaphor. We refer to an abortive idea, the birth of a project (formerly, perhaps, in embryo). A brainchild is the natural issue of a fertile mind, sometimes delivered, with great labour, after a pregnant pause. An unrealised idea may be said to be in gestation. As we shape our experiences anew, our minds conceive. Is the conception viable? Literally: ‘Can the baby survive outside the womb?’"

-Elizabeth Sacks, Shakespeare's Metaphors of Pregnancy

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

Satan takes Jesus to a high mountain and offers Him all the kingdoms of the earth (Matt 4). Jesus refuses.

Jesus ascends to a high mountain and is transfigured as Son of Man, heir of all kingdoms of the earth (Matt 17).

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

"A story is like music in that it fills time, 'fills it up so nice and properly,' 'divides it up,' so that there is 'something to it,' 'something going on' ... Time is the element of narration, just as it is the element of life—is inextricably bound up with it, as bodies are in space.

"It is also the element of music, which itself measures and divides time, making it suddenly diverting and precious; and related to music, as we have noted, is the story, which also can only present itself in successive events, as movement toward an end (and not as something suddenly, brilliantly present, like a work of visual art, which is pure body bound to time), and even if it would try to be totally here in each moment, would still need time for its presentation.

"That much is perfectly obvious. But that there is a difference is equally clear. The time element of music is singular: a segment of human earthly existence in which it gushes forth, thereby ineffably enhancing and ennobling life. Narrative, however, has two kinds of time: first, its own real time, which like musical time defines its movement and presentation; and second, the time of its contents, which has a perspective quality that can vary widely, from a story in which the narrative’s imaginary time is almost, or indeed totally coincident with its musical time, to one in which it stretches out over light-years.

"A musical piece entitled 'Five Minute Waltz' lasts five minutes - this and only this defines its relationship to time. A story whose contents involved a time span of five minutes, however, could, by means of an extraordinary scrupulosity in filling up those five minutes, last a thousand times as long—and still remain short on boredom, although in relationship to its imaginary time it would be very long in the telling."

-Thomas Mann, Magic Mountain

[Little Word @LittleWordBooks]

Another Bible book review! Today we have The Awesome Book of Unusual Bible Heroes by Sandy Silverthorne.

[Theopolis Institute @_Theopolis]

The Cross as the Tree of Life (Psalms 1-2)
with: Alastair Roberts

https://t.co/fv9nBX5dYX

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

"By the middle of the seventeenth century ... an older political imagination rooted both in the metaphysics of Christian kingship and the exemplary lives of Christian martyrs yielded to something more unsettling and peculiar.

"A new Christian politics of sacrifice was built atop the pagan archives of Rome, figures from ancient Roman law and religion resurrected and then deployed against the very Christian ideal and institution of martyrdom.

"Ancient sacrificing kings - some sober, som murderous - were recalled from dusty obscurity to help rethink the proper order of kingship and priesthood, the political and the pious."

-Jonathan Sheehan

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

"The home is the only place of liberty. Nay, it is the only place of anarchy ... For a plain, hard-working man the home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and sets and tasks."

-Chesterton

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

"Private things are ... public in the worst sense of the word; that is, they are impersonal and dehumanized. Public things are already private in the worst sense of the world; that is, they are mysterious and secretive and largely corrupt."

-Chesterton