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abortion
Abortion

Letters on Abortion, (Part 1)

What is below is fairly self-explanatory. This is an exchange I had with a local liberal clergyman on the subject of abortion. The circumstances of the debate are included in the text itself. I initially e-mailed this out to a list of clergy in our city after a local (and…

by Richard BledsoeNovember 17, 2015
wall-2
Ezra

The Perfumed Butler and the Wisdom of Civil Obedience

The seemingly humdrum parts of the Bible often hide overlooked wisdom. Take, for example, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their stories aren't exactly the most gripping or memorable. They are far less concrete than, say, the story of the Exodus. No one in Ezra is stricken blind or devoured…

by Christian LeithartNovember 10, 2015
sparkler
Happiness

"Happy! Happy! Happy!" Authentic Happiness and Its Knock-Offs

For most of the past century, philosophical perspectives on life in the western world have been overtly grim and pessimistic. The optimism of the Enlightenment, generated by confidence in the scientific method and the potential of an increasingly civilized humanity to redress the evils of the world, was shattered by…

by Bill DeJongNovember 5, 2015
aaron-burden-1ebsmyrau-s-unsplash
Hermeneutics

How Does a Chiasm Mean?

Chiastic structures are found all over the Bible, and in recent decades commentators have become more adept at spotting them. But identifying these literary structures is only part of the challenge. There remains the challenge of understanding what they mean. Part of the answer is found in the recognition that…

by Steve JefferyNovember 3, 2015
last-supper
Eucharist

How To Change the World, (Part 2)

Part 1 can be found HERE . Clearly, more than just getting worship right is important in changing the world, but since worship is the central act of God’s people, performed on the first day of the week at the center of the world before the very face of God,…

by James B. JordanOctober 29, 2015
solomonsidolatry
Biblical Theology

Big Love: A History of Stolen Fruit

“Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed.” ( Luke 11:27 ) Arguing for Christian morality in a secular society is difficult. A culture which accepts evolutionary dogma has no intellectual place — or inherent desire — for absolute morality, since it believes morality…

by Mike BullOctober 27, 2015

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Oldest Language?

T his is old news, but still: In late 2016 Science News reported on the work of archeologist and epigraphy Douglas Petrovich, who claims that “Israelites living in Egypt transformed that civilization’s hieroglyphics into Hebrew 1.0 more than 3,800 years ago, at a time when the Old Testament describes Jews…

July 28, 2017

Housing

F rom a TLS piece published late last year (I've unfortunately and inexplicably lost the reference): It's striking how many of those associated with Bloomsbury articulated the idea that houses, as well as being shaped physically by the tastes and attitudes of those who live in them, also possess a…

July 28, 2017
Jane Austen

Darcy's Shirt

C olin Firth's dive into Pemberly's pond is either the highlight or the lowlight of the epic A&E P&P . For newbies, it's a a highlight; for purists, it represents a capitulation to the standards of contemporary romance and it's not even in the book ! Alana Semuels presents a…

July 28, 2017

Eternity after Nietzsche

A decade ago, self-proclaimed “born-again pagan” and New Yorker-proclaimed “Sage of Yale Law” Anthony Kronman responded to critics in Comment with this: What did Nietzsche mean when he said, “God is dead?” He meant that the idea of a world beyond this one, from whose vantage point everything here “down…

July 28, 2017

Triune Perfections

In an essay on God's attributes ( Christian Dogmatics , 65-6) argues, rightly, that God's attributes are “shaped by God's triune nature.” Aseity, for instance, “must be teased out in a trinitarian fashion It is not the case that God is Stoic needlessness, or that God is self-causal force. Rather,…

July 28, 2017

Israel Among the Nations

T he similarities between Israel and paganism have vexed, tantalized, and intrigued Christian thinkers for millennia. It was a central issue in the apologetic writings of the early church, and from the patristic through the medieval period Christian intellectuals attempted to fit paganism within the framework of redemptive history. I…

July 27, 2017

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