God’s Good Creation

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Welcome back to this podcast series where we are uncovering, Traces of the Trinity. So far, we’ve peered into our bodies, our families, our loves, our sense of time — all to see how the world hums with hints of mutual indwelling, of the Triune God’s signature everywhere.

Today, we tackle something that wraps around all of that — language. Not just grammar drills and spelling tests — but language as a living sign of how the world itself works. This is Chapter 5: Word in Word in World.

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Language is weird. It’s so familiar, we forget how strange it is. Little squiggles on a page, vibrations in the air — somehow they pass thoughts from my mind into yours. Or do they?

Leithart starts by poking that idea. He says — maybe we’ve asked the wrong question all along. Are words just tiny packages that move ideas from one head to another, like digital files? Or do they do more than carry meaning — do they create meaning?

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Think about it. Plato and Aristotle thought spoken words were closer to thought than written ones. A spoken word was the living breath of the thinker. But a written word? Just a mark on a page — a ghost of the living voice. Once you scribble it down, you lose control of it.

Yet here we are — thousands of years later — still reading Plato’s ghost words. Somehow, the ideas still come through. How?

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Leithart says the clue is this: language is never just words. It’s words in the world — and the world in the words.

You yell “Duck!” when a baseball flies off course. You’re not just passing a thought. You’re trying to move a body — to get someone to bend their knees and dodge. The word isn’t a fact to file away — it’s an action that changes the world.

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And it goes deeper. Words reshape the world — but the world also shapes words.

Think about nicknames. Or local slang. Or that family phrase only your siblings get. Language isn’t just a static list of labels. It’s a living web of meanings, stories, mistakes, jokes, memories — words that contain other words, histories that echo inside each phrase.

When you say “White House,” you don’t mean the building alone — you mean the whole government it stands for. That’s called metonymy — one thing standing in for something bigger. But that only works because we know the history behind it. The world inhabits the word.

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Or think about metaphor. Metaphor isn’t just fancy speech for poets. It’s how we think. “Life is a journey.” “Time is money.” “Argument is war.” These aren’t just decorative flourishes — they’re the mental handles we grab to navigate life.

Language layers word upon word. Meaning curls into meaning. Each phrase is a Möbius strip — an inside and an outside that twist into each other.

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Leithart pushes it even further. He says — this tangled pattern is not just about words but about world.

Words don’t stand apart from the world, looking in. Words are in the world — and the world is inside our words. When you name something — a swan, a rock, a friend — you reshape how you see it, touch it, even live with it. Words are like little worlds that contain pieces of the bigger world.

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And the Trinity? That’s the shape echoing again. Words dwell in other words. The world dwells in the word. The word dwells in the world. It’s perichoresis — mutual indwelling — in grammar, poetry, politics, and everyday speech.

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Leithart gives examples from literature. Shakespeare’s lines live inside our speech. Phrases from Hamlet (“to be or not to be”), Macbeth (“something wicked this way comes!” OR a “wild goose chase” & “it’s all Greek to me”) — these lines echo through new books, new jokes, new memes. Words nest inside words. Texts dwell inside texts.

And this isn’t just literary trivia (Alex, I’ll take literary trivia for 400 please) — it’s how meaning happens at all. Without older words, new words have nowhere to live. Without a bigger world, words have nothing to point at. And without words, we can’t even see the world clearly.

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Here’s the kicker: language is never just labels stuck on things. It’s how we join with the world. How we act on it. How we let it act on us.

When Augustine asked how we can learn anything new through language, he puzzled: if you need to know something to understand the word, how does the word teach you anything? Augustine’s answer: ultimately, God teaches the mind from the inside.

Leithart says — yes, but don’t miss this: language also teaches from the outside. Words pour the world into us. Marks on paper pull dead philosophers or playwrights back to life (that’s all Greek to me!). A single word can unlock a new part of your world.

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So here’s the takeaway: language is a sign of the Trinity because it’s a dance of difference and union. Words are distinct — each means something unique — but they only work because they indwell each other.

Sense and sound. History and meaning. World and word. They live in one another — and we live inside that swirl every time we speak.

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Next time you shout “Duck!” or whisper “I love you” or read a text from a friend — remember: you’re not just swapping info. You’re tracing the shape of something deeper. A world stitched together by words. Words stitched together by the world.

And maybe — just maybe — all this chatter points back to the divine Word that was with God and was God, the Word through whom all worlds were made.

Next episode, we’ll tune our ears to another clue — music. If words are swirling hints of the Trinity — what about sound itself? Until then — listen well, speak carefully, and keep your mind open to the hidden music of word in word in world.

The Trinity leaves fingerprints on every inch of creation.

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Next Episode (6) – Chords (coming soon).

I welcome any questions or comments. [Don’t worry, your personal info will not be given to anyone.] Thanks!

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Hey friends — welcome back to the podcast. In this podcast series we are finding out that Traces of the Trinity are everywhere. If you’ve traveled with us so far, you know the drill: we’re following theologian Peter Leithart up this winding mountain path where the world’s everyday features — our bodies, our relationships, our words — all whisper a hidden shape: the triune shape of mutual indwelling.

Today, we step into Chapter 4 — and we’re turning our gaze to something we usually take for granted: time.

Leithart calls this one Presence of the Past.

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Time is slippery. Augustine¹Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was a Christian theologian, philosopher, and bishop of Hippo in North Africa, and one of the most influential figures in Western Christianity. After a restless youth, he converted to Christianity in 386 under the influence of St. Ambrose. His writings shaped Christian doctrine on grace, sin, free will, and the Trinity. Augustine’s most famous works include Confessions, a spiritual autobiography; The City of God, a vision of history shaped by the love of God; and On the Trinity. Blending classical philosophy with biblical faith, Augustine profoundly influenced medieval theology, the Protestant Reformers, and Western thought as a whole. once said, “I know what time is — until someone asks me.” Then it slips through his fingers.

We live inside time. We watch it tick by on screens and clocks. But do we ever really see it?

Leithart says: look again. Because if you pay attention, even time reveals the same strange pattern — inside and outside, past and future, all tangled up inside the present.

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Here’s the classic problem. The past? It’s gone — right? I am no longer the child obsessed with football, no longer the teen at my first job. That version of me doesn’t exist anymore. The past is memory.

The future? That doesn’t exist either — not yet. It’s all possibility. Plans, hopes, fears — but they’re not real today.

So what do we have? We have now. But here’s Augustine’s puzzle: as soon as you name the present, it vanishes. It’s swallowed by the past. The present is a knife edge — and it’s gone before you can point at it.

So how does this fragile sliver hold our lives together?

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Leithart says: it does — because the past and future don’t just hover outside the present. They dwell inside it.

Think about it: you remember what you did this morning. (At least I hope you do.) You remember your childhood. Those memories live in you. They shape you. They are you, in part.

And the future? It leaks into now, too. You’re listening to this podcast probably because you hope to learn something, to grow, to reach some future you want. Deadlines push us. Dreams pull us. Futures shape the present.

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Leithart borrows an idea from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy²Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888–1973) was a German social philosopher, historian, and Christian thinker known for his emphasis on speech, community, and historical transformation. Trained in law and history, he rejected purely abstract philosophy in favor of a dialogical, lived understanding of reality, arguing that human life is shaped by command, response, and shared language. After emigrating to the United States in the 1930s, he taught at Harvard and later at Dartmouth College. His major works, including Out of Revolution and Speech and Reality, explore how language, faith, and social order arise through historical crises and renewal.— a quirky name, but worth remembering. Rosenstock-Huessy said that time isn’t just clock ticks on a wall. Real time is shaped by what fills it.

A basketball game has its own time — the “time of the game” isn’t just minutes. It’s the drama, the rush, the roar of the crowd.

A classroom has its own time — the old knowledge of the teacher meets the fresh curiosity of students. Past and future collide in the present moment of teaching.

History itself works this way. We speak of “the Victorian Age,” “the Reformation,” “the Digital Era.” These aren’t just dates — they’re times-with-shape, where past, present, and future press into each other.

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So look around your life. You’re surrounded by traces of the past. The buildings in your town — someone built them decades ago. That chair you’re sitting in? Designed, carved, assembled long before you sat down. Your own body bears scars, moles, wrinkles — little footprints of time.

The future lives here too. Maybe you wear a ring, a sign of promises made long ago that bind you now and propel you ahead. Maybe you’re studying for a test or saving for a trip. The future inhabits your present — just like the past.

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Leithart says: this is the same Möbius twist we’ve seen all along. Things that are separate actually dwell in one another. Just as your body is not sealed off from the world but porous — so time is not chopped into neat slices. It’s a swirl.

Without memory, there is no now. Without anticipation, there is no present action. The past makes sense only because it lives on in us. The future only matters because it reaches back to tug at our now.

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And here’s the deep point: time’s dance of mutual indwelling points us to the Triune God.

For Christians, God is not frozen above time, untouched and unmoved. He steps into time — in Christ, in history, in the Spirit who inhabits every moment.

And the Trinity itself is a dance of eternity — Father, Son, and Spirit indwelling, pouring life into each other without beginning or end. The shape of time echoes the shape of the Trinity — difference united, separate yet together, all folded into a living story.

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So, what do we do with this?

For starters, we can stop fearing time. We live in an age obsessed with youth, terrified of aging. We chase anti-wrinkle creams and digital illusions of forever. But Leithart says: what if change is not our enemy? What if time’s passage is gift — a pattern that invites us to live inside the dance?

We don’t have to run from the past. We don’t have to fear the future. The Triune God holds both — and holds us inside it.

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So today — maybe pay attention to time in a new way. Notice the memories that rise when you see an old photo. Notice how a plan for tomorrow shapes your choices now.

Remember: past and future aren’t enemies of the present. They’re the frame that makes now possible. And all of it — all this swirl — is a whisper that we live inside a world shaped by the Trinity.

Next time, we’ll see how this pattern seeps into something else we take for granted: language. But until then — may you find the traces of the Triune dance in every tick of the clock, every scar on your skin, every hope that wakes you up in the morning.

The Trinity leaves fingerprints on every inch of creation.

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Next Episode (5) – Word in Word in World.

Traces of the Trinity: Word in Word in World

I welcome any questions or comments. [Don’t worry, your personal info will not be given to anyone.] Thanks!

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Hey friends — welcome back to the podcast about Traces of the Trinity.

If you’re just jumping in — here’s your heads up: this episode steps into the realm of love, bodies, sex — and how all that messy, beautiful stuff actually whispers a deeper pattern about reality. So buckle up — this might get awkward. Or it might just be the best thing you hear all week.

Today, we open up Peter Leithart’s Chapter 3 — I Am His, He Is Mine.

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When we talk about sex in our modern world, it often gets sliced up two ways. Some people crack open an anatomy book — describing all the moving parts. Others — poets, lovers, mystics — reach for a different language. They use metaphor, music, laughter, blushes.

Leithart says — the poets are onto something. Because when a man and woman become “one flesh,” as Genesis says, they do something far more mysterious than biology alone can explain.

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Think about it: for centuries, lovers have reached for poetry to describe what happens in sex. Shakespeare called it the “beast with two backs.”  Andrew Marvell spoke of rolling all strength and sweetness up into one ball. William Blake asked what men and women truly want — and he answered: “The lineaments of Gratified Desire.”

It’s not just earthy poets. Mystics — Christian, Jewish, Eastern — often turn to the same language when trying to describe what it means to long for God. Song of Songs paints a picture of human lovers — but beneath that heat and longing is a deeper ache: the soul longing for the divine.

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Karl Barth — the Swiss theologian — said that the difference between male and female is the part of humanity that most deeply reflects God. Because in that difference — and in their union — we glimpse a hint of the Trinity’s life: difference without division, unity without erasure.

The old word for that is perichoresis — mutual indwelling.

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And here’s the bold claim: sex is not just physical release. It’s not just pleasure or “exchanging fluids,” as the clinical talk goes. It’s not just biology. It’s a sign — a sign that actually does what it points to.

When a man and woman come together, they quite literally enter one another’s lives — bodies first, but hearts too. He wraps his arms around her; she folds herself into him. They breathe together, kiss together — two becoming one, yet remaining two.

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Leithart goes deeper. Think about a kiss — just a kiss. Not just a peck on the cheek — but an open-mouth, breath-sharing kiss. It’s intimate, invasive, mutual. Your lips touch. Your breath mingles. You taste each other. You’re sharing life at the gateway of the body.

The mouth is a door — things go in: food, drink, air. Things come out: words, songs, sighs, laughter. The mouth is a threshold where what’s inside becomes outside — and what’s outside becomes inside.

A kiss, then, is a small version of what happens in sex: a mutual opening, a giving and receiving, a little liturgy of indwelling.

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Now, some might say: “Hold on — that’s just animal stuff. Birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it.”¹Hat tip to song writer Cole Porter But humans are not just animals. We blush. We hide. We veil. We make it private. We wrap sex in poetry, vows, laughter, tears.

Animals don’t write love songs. They don’t close the bedroom door. They don’t feel shame.

That shame points to something bigger: that our sexuality is not just about pleasure — but about communion, about self-gift, about vulnerability that echoes the mystery of our Creator.

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Leithart reminds us — this union is also the way the world gets peopled. No other human act is so intimately unitive and so profoundly creative. Other pleasures don’t make new life. But this one can — and does.

Through mutual indwelling, two become one — and out of that oneness, a third can come into being. A new person, born from the overflow of mutual gift.

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But the point isn’t just babies. It’s that the pattern is baked into the act itself — bodies are designed to fit together. It’s not an accident. It’s gift, echo, hint. It’s a physical sign of a deeper reality: that true love wants not just pleasure — but to dwell inside and be dwelled in.

Romantic love wants more than bodies pressed together — it wants stories woven together. It wants a life shared, a world reshaped by a vow.

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Leithart says: lovers don’t just merge bodies — they merge narratives. He tells how when you fall in love, your life story rewrites itself around the other. Your past, your dreams, your friendships — they all get re-colored. The beach where you honeymooned. The restaurant where you first confessed you were in love. These places get wrapped up in the shared story.

And if you’ve ever lost a spouse, or watched someone grieve — you know it’s true. When one partner dies, it’s like losing a piece of yourself. Because that other person was part of you.

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Of course, there’s a dark side too. This longing for indwelling can twist into domination. Love can curdle into possession — one person devouring another’s identity. It’s the tragic side of romance: instead of a dance, it becomes control.

True love holds the tension: mutual giving without erasing the other. Lovers “ingest” without “digesting” — they remain themselves, but they dwell in one another, too.

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So, why does this matter for Leithart’s bigger argument? Because it’s yet another trace. Another clue that the world is stitched together with a triune shape.

Sex is more than sex. It’s a signpost, a sacrament — a bodily icon that points us back to the One whose very life is mutual indwelling, self-gift, other-receiving. Father in Son, Son in Father, both in Spirit.

So the next time the world tries to reduce sex to a transaction or just biology — pause. Remember that blush. Remember the veil. Remember the poetry.

Remember that you are built for more — your body testifies that love was always meant to be mutual self-gift. A little earthly echo of a cosmic dance.

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Next time, we’ll see how this pattern doesn’t stop with lovers. It shapes our sense of time — and even the way we speak and think. But for now, maybe take a moment to remember the gift of bodies, the mystery of desire, the wonder that when we say I am his, he is mine — we’re pointing to something deeper than flesh.

Until next time — keep your eyes open for the traces. They’re everywhere, even in the most private places.

The Trinity leaves fingerprints on every inch of creation.

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4: The Presence of the Past – (Episode 4)

Traces of the Trinity: Presence of the Past

I welcome any questions or comments. [Don’t worry, your personal info will not be given to anyone.] Thanks!