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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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Does Genesis 1 Teach Science?

John Walton insists that Genesis doesn't "attempt to address cosmology in modern terms or address modern questions. The Israelites received no revelation to update their 'scientific' understanding of the cosmos." Then too: "Throughout the entire Bible, there is not a single instance in which God revealed to Israel a science…

March 2, 2018

Arming the Resistance

In Policing America's Empire , Alfred McCoy spells out the analogies between America's intervention in the Philippines at the beginning of the 20th century and our invasion of Iraq at the end. He thinks the comparison is most illuminating when we highlight the differences between the two: "The spectacular capture…

March 2, 2018

Porch to Patio

In a 1975 article in the wonderfully-named journal Palimpsest , Richard H. Thomas traced the movement “from porch to patio,” showing how the change in domestic architecture both reflected and reinforced changes in social structure. The porch, he points out, facilitated conversation between the inhabitants of a house, their neighbours…

March 2, 2018

American Exception?

Alfred McCoy has had a lively life. While still in grad school, he testified before Congress about his discoveries of CIA alliances with drug lords in Southeast Asia. He's been subjected to surveillance and had his phone tapped. And along the way he has made America's global power a matter…

March 2, 2018

Philhellenism, German Style

D. Valdez ( German Philhellenism ) discerned two forms of interest in Hellenism among German intellectuals of the 18th and 19th centuries: "The first, weighted toward the earlier, Homeric, and more archaic period of Greek life, celebrated a raw, tumultuous humanity, in harmony with nature, reveling in the primitive and…

March 2, 2018

Bible and Science

Stephen Jay Gould famously offered a solution to the religion v. science conflict: Consign each to its separate corner; they belong to separate domains; they don't conflict because they don't overlap. Problem solved. Not so fast, says John Lennox ( Seven Days That Divide the World ). One problem is…

March 2, 2018

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