Peter Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute and serves as Teacher at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
Leithart has served in two pastorates: He was pastor of Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church (now Trinity Presbyterian Church), Birmingham, Alabama from 1989 to 1995, and was pastor of Trinity Reformed Church, Moscow, Idaho, from 2003-2013. From 1998 and 2013 he taught theology and literature fulltime at New St. Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho.
He received an A.B. in English and History from Hillsdale College in 1981, and a Master of Arts in Religion and a Master of Theology from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1986 and 1987. In 1998 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in England.
He and his wife, Noel, have ten children and twelve grandchildren.
All teaching and discussion will be lead by Dr. Peter Leithart.
Discussions of creation are often reduced to debates about science and faith. Did God really create the world in six days? How old is the earth? Is evolution true?
These are important questions, but the Bible’s teaching about creation is far richer and vaster.
In the 2021-2022 Theopolis Regional Course, Peter Leithart will explore how Genesis 1 provides the foundation of everything we know about God, His relation to the world of time and space, the nature of the created reality, and the purpose and destiny of human beings and the creation.
The course will answer questions such as:
- Why is the creation account written in the way it is?
- Why is God’s name (‘elohim) plural? Why does God speak of Himself as “us”?
- Is “classical theism” compatible with Genesis 1?
- What is heaven? What is the relationship between heaven and earth?
- Why does God first create a formless, empty, dark, and watery earth? Why didn’t He create everything instantly?
- What does Genesis 1 tell us about God’s relationship to time?
- What does the fact that God created the world by speaking tell us about God? What does it tell us about creation?
- Why does God create light first and the light-bearers later?
- What does it mean for animals to be “living souls”?
- What does it mean for man to be created in the “image of God”?
- What does it mean for man to “have dominion”?
There are required readings for this regional course.
Schedule
Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 8:00 AM – Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 9:00 PM EDT