Letter& Spirit seeks to foster deeper understanding of Sacred Scripture.
We believe that what God has joined in giving us the Bible - the Word incarnate and the Word inspired; divine speech and human language; God's call and his people's response in the Church's liturgy and tradition - cannot be separated. From the words of creation ("Let there be...") to the words that consecrated his new covenant ("This is my Body..."), God's Word in Scripture is always living and active.
Proclaimed in the liturgy, God's Word continues to come to us as saving action, as the promise of a new creation and the fulfillment of that promise. When we read the Bible in this way, from the heart of the Church, we find no tension between letter and spirit - between literary and historical study of Scripture and faithful contemplation of its religious and spiritual meaning.
Letter & Spirit is published by the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology , a nonprofit research and educational institute that aims to advance the study of the sacred page at every level, from beginning students of Scripture, to seminarians, pastors, and priests. The journal appears as part of the Center’s “Letter & Spirit Project,” which publishes dissertations and other scholarly studies of important themes in Scripture from literary, historical, and theological perspectives.
Letter & Spirit's start-up costs were underwritten by a generous $50,000 grant from The Our Sunday Visitor Institute, the charitable giving arm of the nation's largest Catholic publishing house and offering-envelope concern. On-going support for the journal's operations are provided by the generous donors to the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.
