released 3/27/2024

In a lecture from 2019 titled “Levitical Excursions: Old Testament clues for the Church’s life in late modernity,” Peter J. Leithart argues that the Old Testament book of Leviticus may offer surprisingly relevant insights into our late modern culture. In Leviticus may be found clues to the pathologies of our age and to helping us form a “counter-polity” that harmonizes the old and the new. Modernity, Leithart shows, is a “deviant harmony” of the old and the new that leads not to wholeness and life but to reductionism and death. This is most evidenced as we examine the Levitical themes of sacrifice and purity, which find their ultimate fulfillment in Christ. Leithart illustrates how these themes are disordered in modernity, resulting in post-Christian “taboos” and utopian political dreams of purity.

This lecture was originally presented at the 2019 Methexis Institute Conference, where the conference title was “Church & Academy: Deepening Our Dialogue.” It is featured here by permission.

22 minutes

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In 2017, when in Virginia to give an Areopagus Lecture for Mars Hill Audio, theologian Peter J. Leithart presented an additional lecture at the Center for Christian Study in Charlottesville. That talk was titled “New City, New Garden: Exile and Exodus in the Book of Revelation.” The often perplexing final book of the Bible addresses themes that might seem especially timely today, including the challenge of faithfulness and the meaning of martyrdom. Leithart’s lecture on Revelation is presented courtesy of the Center for Christian Study (University of Virginia).

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