By allowing the Gospel of Matthew to tell the story it wants to tell (rather than telling the story of a doctrine) Leithart brings out
All in Theology
The Great Commission
Once you begin to understand the ways in which the Bible refers to itself, you begin to peel back layers to passages that before were seemingly shrouded in mystery and hid their glory from you.
Personhood & Abortion
In the end, it should not matter whether the fetus is human life or not. Humans are to view the world through the understanding that they are in dynamic relationship to everything around them.
Commands Vs. Relationships
We must focus on God's revelation as the center of sin. With this underneath us, we can look at sin as relational not merely ontological.
Reading & Laying Down Your Life
C.S. Lewis makes an argument that “good reading” consists in laying down one’s own point of view. This, Lewis explains, is a type of “dying,” but in this dying, we find that we truly become ourselves as we escape ourselves.
A Healthy Understanding of Sin
A healthy understanding of sin recognizes it's dominion over everything that does not belong to Christ. Among those who belong to Christ sin no longer has dominion. It has been put to shame. It has been mocked and ridiculed on the stage of redemptive history. Sanctification lives in this reality.
How to Know You've Been Called To Ministry
As American
"I'm Not a Calvinist/Baptist/Etc, I Follow Jesus"
If we want to “follow Jesus” then it makes no sense to shun His Body the church. That is why Paul says that it makes no sense for a husband to treat his wife
The Seed of the Serpent & the Seed of God
Many set beauty and darkness against each other, but I believe there is real beauty in darkness. This is not the time or the place for that debate, but that is where I am starting.
Incarnation & New Creation
Eschatology must submit to the story of Scripture and follow the story as it leads us to Christ. Too often eschatology (and theology in general) has abandoned the narrative of scripture. This can only lead to confusion and ultimately away from Christ.
There is No "Intertestamental" Period
History belongs to God. He is the great author. To look at periods of time in history and assume that God is not acting is to think like a pagan.
Relativism, Objectivity, & Fittingness
A recovery of beauty in the realm of aesthetics in the church is not going to be an easy task. It is going to take a long time and the odds are unlikely that our generation will taste the fruit of faithfulness. But what greater example of selfless love is there than laying down our own aesthetic preferences so that our great grandchildren can reap the fruit of a robustly beautiful church.
Barth Before Barth
"Whereas God had withdrawn to a distance from us, he has drawn near to us in Christ, and thus Christ has become to us the true Emmanuel, and his coming is God’s drawing near to men."
Abraham & God's Promises
Does "a faith that never is alone" mean that works are ever present in salvific faith?
Fasting Through Ordinary Time
This time doesn't even have a real name. Most denominations agree on Christmas, Easter, and even Pentecost - the Big Three. But there's Ordinary Time, Normal Time, maybe even Trinity Season (which is what my church calls it).
The Glaring God
While most people see the white baptismal gown and the godparents who would probably rather be having breakfast at some cozy diner, I see a heated exchange between the Lamb of God and the morbid angel.
Restoring the "Natural" Tracks
Infant baptism, in part, looks to redeem the created order that God established in Adam. Were sin to not have entered into the world there would be no distinction between a child’s growth in godliness and their “natural” growth as a human (both physically and psycho-socially)
Finding Our Place in God's Story Through Liturgy
Rather, than zooming
The New Testament Tells the End of the Story
The Old and New Testaments build on and relate to each other as much as the chapters of a really good book; even more so actually. Thus, if we are to understand both testaments as we should, we need to be intimately acquainted with both, not just the New.
Baptism Belongs to the Church
Families are never authorities over other parents. Thus, the baptism of one family's conviction can not be binding on another. If it is merely preference than it cannot be binding. Parents are never the entity that determines the doctrinal demands of other families. Only the church can do that.