Peter J. Leithart Archives

Creator: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1, Peter J. Leithart. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514002162), 2023.

Summary: Considering philosophical discussions of the being of God, turns to Genesis 1 which reveals the Triune Creator who speaks and sees, who loves and is good.

The challenge of this book for the person without a background in philosophy is to get past the first three chapters which explore questions of God’s being, self-existence, and simplicity, and what may be said of God, wrestling with the challenge of apophaticism, in which we can only say what God is not. There are questions of how God relates to the physical world and how God can be an unmoved mover and yet retain God’s simplicity. Along the way, Peter J. Leithart invokes Aquinas and Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus, Augustine and Bulgakov, among others. It’s challenging reading, and important for its exploration of discussions of the being and nature of God.

It also sets us up for the radical turn in the second half from the reasonings of pagan and Christian philosophers to the revelation of Genesis 1. We find here no discussions of the Absolute, the One, or Being. The first thing we learn of God is that God is almighty Creator. Scripture does not know of a God “without interplay with creatures, without a created playground” (p. 150). Creation reflects who God is from eternity. God’s transcendence is over creation, never apart from it. Unlike Greek philosophy, there is no God unrelated to creation.

Furthermore, Leithart asserts, against those who propose that the “we” of Genesis 1 is a heavenly council, that Genesis 1 reveals a Triune Creator. There is a harmonious unity, creating, calling by Word, and forming or hovering–Father, Son, and Spirit. In this, the life of God is revealed as “justice, holiness, wisdom, power, goodness, and truth, all actualized in the infinitely mobile, infinitely lively, inexhaustibly energetic life of triune love, a;; actualized in relation to a contingent creation” (p. 209).

What then do we say of God’s being, the question of ontology. We often speak of God as “I am” as one who is self sufficient, but utterly other. Yet a Triune Creator is both utterly sufficient, but also utterly related to creation, which reveals the self-giving love of the Triune loving Creator.

Genesis 1 reveals a God who speaks and sees. Leithart notes: “All created action, all moments and periods and bodies of time, all created experience is suspended between God’s saying and his seeing.” A staggering thought indeed–that all of our existence is encompassed and sustained and directed by God’s saying and seeing.

My experience of this book was to move from exasperation with my efforts to follow philosophical arguments to exultation in worship of the Triune Creator who speaks and sees all creation–and that so much may be found in Genesis 1 that is not mere polemical ammunition in origins debates.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Delivered From the Elements of the World, Peter J. Leithart. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016.

Summary: An exploration of why Christians claim the death and resurrection of Jesus is the decisive event in human history, because it is the “delivering verdict” of God against human systems to control sinful human flesh, hence an act with socio-political significance for all peoples.

Anselm posed the question, “Cur Deus Homo?” or “why the God Man?” Peter J. Leithart thinks the more significant question that must be asked is, “How can the death and resurrection of a Jewish rabbi of the first century…be the decisive event in the history of humanity, the hinge and crux and crossroads for everything?”

Leithart’s big question leads to a sweeping exploration of pagan and secular culture, Levitical foundations, and Pauline teaching. This is not a book for the faint of heart or one narrowly focused on atonement theories, but rather one that attempts to explain how our understanding of the atonement makes sense of everything and addresses not only the individual but our social and political structures.

Leithart begins with exploring what he calls the “physics of the old creation.” We are creatures of flesh, originally good but bent in the fall. Every society subsequently creates “elemental” or stoicheic systems (cf. Galatians 4:1-10) recognizing the pollution of human flesh and creating systems of “do not taste, do not touch” rules that lead to striving for purity. Leithart does an imaginative tour by a Jew of various ancient civilizations describing how these work, whether focused around the fear of death, around phallic displays and fertility, or around violence, honor, and vengeance. These resulted in classes, political structures, and injustices.

God chose Israel for something different. Beginning with Abraham, the cutting of circumcision was an anti-flesh campaign that expanded with Torah and served as a teacher or pedagogue of how to approach God. Yet Torah was co-opted in using purity rules to reinforce ideas of racial superiority over Gentiles and divisions between elite and “sinner” Jews. It became yet another stoicheic system.

Leithart understands that it is the full life of Jesus enacting all that Torah intended, the unjust death in the flesh in which judgment is passed upon human flesh in Christ (Leithart here argues for a carefully defined version of penal substitution), and the bodily resurrection of Jesus by the Father in the Spirit, that together constitute atonement and justification. Leithart elaborates justification as God’s “delivering verdict” or “deliverdict” liberating not only from sin and the flesh, but the elemental, stoicheic principles of the world, whether those of other religious systems, Torah, or what Leithart sees as the post-stoicheic systems of secularism which are a kind of relapse from the Christian era’s understanding of a Spirit indwelt life. Those united with Christ by faith enter a new epoch, a new humanity breaking down the sociopolitical divisions of the old order, and live according to a new animating principle.

I’ve offered here only a bare bones summary of a breathtakingly rich argument. I believe he makes several important contributions to our understanding of the work of Christ. One is his discussion of stoicheic elements as a social theory elaborating the ways various societies attempt to deal with the flesh, and the sociopolitical consequences of these systems. While carefully arguing for penal substitution, a doctrine that has fallen out of favor, he contends for a broader understanding of atonement and justification that encompasses the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and centers justification in the objective “delivering verdict” of these events rather than our subjective experience. Along with N.T. Wright, he argues that we are justified by the faith of Jesus, in whom we trust, but he also draws out further what this new status means in terms of a new Spirit-empowered life in the flesh and a new social order contrary to stoicheic systems that has radical implications for Christian mission that crosses social barriers and breaks them down. His analysis of modernity in “Galatian Church, Galatian Age” serves as a rich complement to Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.

Leithart’s book covers familiar territory but forces you out of familiar patterns of thinking. I’m still weighing how well “stoicheic systems” can serve as a kind of “social theory of everything.” I’m challenged by how often we separate the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and how Leithart brings these together as a seamless whole. The idea of a “delivering verdict,” that performs what it declares and powerfully transfers us into a Spirit empowered community speaks of the power of the gospel to effect what it promises. This book stays on my shelves, worthy of further reflection and re-reading.