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

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Abortion

To Kill or Not to Kill

It seems to be old news, but I was unaware of it until recently. Australian academics argued that mothers should be allowed to terminate the life of a newborn child. [i] Why would they promote such an idea? Because before the child is born it is not always possible to…

by Ralph Allan SmithSeptember 12, 2019
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Philosophy

Is the Betting Rigged in Pascal's Wager?

This is the second of two essays introducing Pascal’s Wager. Click HERE for Part 1. In “The Pop Star and the Mathematician” I gave an overview of the apologetic approach commonly called Pascal’s Wager. In that Wager, 17 th -century French mathematician Blaise Pascal argued that the choice between Christian…

by Alexander WhitakerSeptember 10, 2019
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Philosophy

The Mathematician and the Pop Star: A Pascal's Wager Primer

This is the first of two essays aiming to introduce the reader to Pascal’s Wager. The second will address criticisms of the Wager. In the early 1990s, a perennially popular British pop star was interviewed on British television about his very public evangelical Christian faith. “What if,” the reporter asked…

by Alexander WhitakerSeptember 5, 2019
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Matthew

The Secret of the Middle of Matthew

Matthew 13 is about secrets. In this chapter, Jesus teaches eight parables and tells the disciples that they reveal the secrets of the kingdom (13:11). And much like Samson who both tells riddles and is himself a riddle that the reader must solve, so Jesus not only tells secrets but…

by John HigginsSeptember 3, 2019
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Biblical Theology

David, Goliath, and the Body of Moses, (Part 2)

Click HERE for part One. THE TEXT AS TABERNACLE Creation – Initiation – Genesis (1 Samuel 17:1-11) The gathered armies not only remind the reader of Ebal and Gerizim, but also of the very reason that Israel was established (Creation) , set apart from the other nations by the circumcision…

by Mike BullAugust 29, 2019
job
Job

The Man in the Middle

What to do with Job’s Final “Friend,” Elihu Elihu is a strange character, at least in the sense of how and where he appears in the book of Job. Why does he not appear with the other three “friends?” Does his argument differ from any of the first three who…

by Eric RobinsonAugust 27, 2019

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Science

Myths of Science

Galileo Goes To Jail , a 2009 collection of essays edited by Ronald Numbers, examines 25 myths of science and religion. The essays aren't defenses of religion by any means; they instead aim at complicating the received scientific triumphalism and set records straight. Maurice A. Finocchiaro tackles myth #8, that…

February 23, 2018

The Sin of Tolerance

The late Billy Graham from a 1 959 issue of Christianity Today . 1959!! One of the pet words of this age is "tolerance." It is a good word, but we have tried to stretch it over too great an area of life. We have applied it too often where…

February 23, 2018

Modernity as Aspiration

"Modernity," writes Jason A. Josephson-Storm, "is first and foremost the sign of a rupture . . . a device for positing significant historical breaks" ( The Myth of Disenchantment , 7). By designating something as "modern," we associate it with novelty, up-to-dateness, "the current." But modernity is also a spatial…

February 23, 2018

Imago Dei

Frances Young ( God's Presence , 173-4) offers this summary of the post-Nicene consensus concerning the image of God in man: "Athanasius and the Cappadocians, those who fashioned the notion of theopoiesis / theosis and recognized that it implied Nicene orthodoxy, were those who had a sense of the interrelationship…

February 23, 2018
Philosophy

Philosophic Wonder

Everyone wonders - children, “savages,” men and women at one another. Philosophers wonder too, Rosenzweig says ( Understanding the Sick and the Healthy ), but they respond to wonder differently from the rest of us. The rest of us are “adrift on the river Life, borne on, wonderment and all.”…

February 23, 2018

Nominal Sociology

Sociologists, Rosenstock-Huessy charges, often formulate their theories in this fashion: "an obscure Force A and a Relation B . . . affect Mr Y." Sociologists "pretend that their science address a nameless world" ( In the Cross of Reality , 4). No such nameless world exists: "X and Y are…

February 23, 2018

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