Souls Bound & Unbound
Peter J. Leithart on the Surprising Madness of the Gospel
In her forties, the Jewish philosopher Gillian Rose discovered she had ovarian cancer. Chemotherapy did nothing to arrest the disease as it ate through her peritoneum and pleura, and when the surgeons treating her could not agree on either her condition or her prospects for recovery, she said goodbye to conventional medicine.
She dabbled briefly in alternative medicine, but soon left that behind too, not for practical but for philosophical reasons. Alternative medicine’s upbeat message, she commented acidly, was “poor psychology, worse theology and no notion of justice at all.” Unless you live a perfectly happy life, alternative healers told her, you are predestined to death. Ordinary, unhappy, fractured mortals are reprobates.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Peter J. Leithart is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and the president of Trinity House Institute for Biblical, Liturgical & Cultural Studies in Birmingham, Alabama. His many books include Defending Constantine (InterVarsity), Between Babel and Beast (Cascade), and, most recently, Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor University Press). His weblog can be found at www.leithart.com. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
31.1—January/February 2018
The Wisdom of the Victorian Quest for Innocence by David Sandifer
32.4—July/August 2019
on Single-Mindedness in Durer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel by Anthony Costello
30.3—May/June 2017
C. S. Lewis Assesses the Religion of Mohammed by Jacob Fareed Imam
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
