Select Works of Peter J. Leithart (3 vols.)

This festschrift ably honors Jim Jordan and his brilliant body of work, which has illumined the glories of biblical structure, symbolism, and typology like few others in our day. Perhaps his greatest legacy, however, will be how he inspired a new generation to see the Scriptures and God’s world through new, more perceptive eyes. Some of today’s most insightful Reformed pastors and teachers influenced by Jim have penned this excellent collection of essays in his honor—a masterful tribute befitting a master scholar-teacher.

—Roy Atwood, president, New St. Andrews College

A very helpful, meditative guide and exploration of the complexity, wonders, and depths of Malick’s remarkable Tree of Life.

—Roy Anker, professor of English, Calvin College

Peter Leithart has provided a great service by approaching this film of Terrence Malick—America’s greatest filmmaker, and perhaps the greatest of his time—with the seriousness it merits, and by considering it in light of the religious and metaphysical themes it so beautifully and so mysteriously explores. I hope this book is the first of many such treatments.

—David Bentley Hart, author, The Experience of God

In this book . . . neglected parts of the Old Testament are made to yield striking insights into the nature of the Christian community. The author reveals himself to be a true scribe of the kingdom, revealing a vision of the Church in relation to the world that is radical in the fundamental sense of the word: digging down into the roots of the Christian tradition, and bringing out of his treasure things new and old.

—Andrew Louth, emeritus professor of patristic and Byzantine studies, University of Durham

This erudite book constitutes a bold and wide-ranging attempt to argue for a typological relationship between Old Testament ideas of priestly ordination and Christian conceptions of baptism. In the process the author raises a number of fascinating historical and theological questions, many of which have potentially intriguing implications for Christian understandings of community and church order. A book which should stimulate and challenge people working in a variety of theological disciplines, whether biblical studies, church history, or Christian doctrine.

—James Carleton Paget, senior lecturer of New Testament studies, University of Cambridge

Leithart argues that Christian baptism, rightly understood, is the inception point of a new kind of social order, one that has yet to find full expression in Christendom and in the wider world. Anyone interested in Christian sacraments, in ecclesiology narrowly conceived, or in social order, needs to study this work with care.

—James B. Jordan, director, Biblical Horizons