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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Ezra

Ezra: The Aaronic Rest-Giver

If you’re a preacher looking for good commentaries on Ezra, you’ll struggle. Certainly to find ones that wrestle in good detail with the text. And certainly ones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg. There’s a good bit more for Nehemiah, which is odd, as the two are…

by Rhys LavertyJune 8, 2021
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1 John

1 John in Community

Quick thought experiment: try to pretend you’ve never read 1 John before. Read 1:1-6. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Now, on to v. 7: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with ______….” What word would you expect in that blank, based…

by Tim NicholsJune 1, 2021
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Hermeneutics

Spending Time with Noah: Reflections on Prepositions in the Flood Narrative

In my work as a Bible translator, I was recently checking our translation team’s draft of Genesis 8:8, which says of Noah (translating the Hebrew quite literally): And he sent out the dove from with him to see: had the waters lessened from upon the face of the ground? Part…

by Josh JensenMay 25, 2021
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Philosophy

Steven Weinberg Destroyed My Faith

Just in case a reader may not know Weinberg, he is a theoretical physicist and the winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1979, as well as countless other prizes for his research. He is also a prolific, lucid, and captivating writer. If you want to read something on…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 18, 2021
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Colossians

Reconciliation in Colossians 1:20

Colossians 1:15-20 is a famous passage in Paul’s epistles because it is a succinct and powerful poem. It appears even to have been a hymn. Given the uniquely Pauline language — “reconciliation” is a term used only by Paul — it should not seem odd to attribute the poem/hymn to…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 11, 2021
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Movies

Terror of Knowing Myself

Stalker (1979) is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky based on Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It shows a day from the life of a stalker, a man who enters the so-called "Zone", an Alien landing site, where he leads people to a room that grants people’s innermost desires, which…

by Bogumil JarmulakMay 4, 2021

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Theology

Beauty’s authority

Von Balthasar says somewhere that beauty makes demands, and suggests that this is a natural analogy to the attitude of faith, which is like an aesthetic response to the form of Christ. Beauty makes demands. If I hear the central movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata or any of a dozen other…

September 8, 2006
Theology

Beauty’s authority

Von Balthasar says somewhere that beauty makes demands, and suggests that this is a natural analogy to the attitude of faith, which is like an aesthetic response to the form of Christ. Beauty makes demands. If I hear the central movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata or any of a dozen other…

September 8, 2006
Theology

Imprecations

A friend, Jim Rogers, offers some thoughtful reflections on imprecatory prayers at: http://lutheranguest.blogspot.com/2006/09/imprecatory-prayer.html

September 8, 2006
History

Globalization

Globalization is the unification of cultures, the formation of the many cultures of the world into a single, global culture. This is facilitated, obviously, by communications technologies, the worldwide spread of media, entertainment, and advertizing, and by the restructuring of corporations so that they are no longer confined to a…

September 7, 2006
History

Enlightenment and the Gothic

Enlightenment was not only a movement of illumination through reason but a movement of exposure, an effort to bring light to all the dark and secret places of European society. Foucault noted in an inverview: “A few haunted the latter half of the eighteenth century: the fear of darkened spaces,…

September 7, 2006

Sermon outline, Romans 12

INTRODUCTION Last week, I made a case for the legitimacy of imprecatory prayers and Psalms. But that leaves a lot of questions unanswered – When are prayers of imprecation legitimate? Against whom is it legitimate to pray imprecations? And, most importantly, how do imprecations square with the NT’s command, “Bless…

September 6, 2006

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