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Writing

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

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Coronavirus

Does Corona Compassion Kill?

The corona virus hit Western society like a Biblical plague — almost. Biblical plagues were actually much more devastating. Still, as Peter Leithart describes the present situation, it is a judgment from God, because the disease itself together with our political solutions brought about a social situation that fits Deuteronomy’s…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 26, 2020
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Theology

Is Theology Useless?

“The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?” - Richard Dawkins One cannot be a Christian college president or seminary trustee (your essayist is both) without wondering if Richard Dawkins’s notorious take-down of theology…

by Alexander WhitakerMay 19, 2020
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How to Worship

How Should Churches Respond to One Another?

Nearly every church that I am aware of has adopted differing practices since the recent virus scare began. Some churches continued to meet during the state lock downs, and other churches left their building empty, meeting online through various video conference technologies. Some churches have gone back to life as…

by Jonah BarnesMay 12, 2020
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Fear

Fear

Fear is an inseparable companion of human life. We are afraid of illness and death, poverty and cataclysms, rejection and betrayal, failure and shame. We are afraid of the unknown, so in a sense we are afraid of the future and life itself. Unless we live in the illusory belief…

by Bogumil JarmulakMay 5, 2020
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Heresy

The Blessing of “Heresies”

In the title above, I put the word “heresies” in quotation marks because I would prefer that the word “heresy” be confined to erroneous beliefs about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, rather than be used broadly to describe any view that might be considered an error. 1 At…

by Ralph Allan SmithApril 30, 2020
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Fear

On Coping (or not) with a Crisis

I’ve been trying to work out why I’m feeling existentially disconnected from CoV-19-related fears. I’m taking it seriously, but it’s not registering in any deeply personal way. Partly it’s that my routines are largely undisrupted. But as I reflect on people’s reactions I think there’s more, because a lot of…

by Matthew MasonApril 28, 2020

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Theology

All Time and None

My colleague Jonathan McIntosh pointed me to Anselm’s discussion of God’s relation to time in the Monologion (available in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works ). It’s a complex discussion. On the one hand, the infinite nature cannot exist finitely ( determinate ) at a particular place or time, so…

April 30, 2013

Apocalypse in nuce

Four simple points to guide any sane reading of Revelation. 1) Revelation is a book of the Bible. It is packed with Old Testament language and imagery, and cannot be understood without that Old Testament background. One scholar has suggested that Revelation uses the Old Testament “compositionally” rather than “expositionally”…

April 30, 2013

Let there be light

Edison is credited for inventing the electric light, but as Ernest Freeberg notes in his The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America , Edison was part of a transAtlantic network of researchers and relied on capital investments to keep his experiments going. And once he…

April 29, 2013

Christ Clothed

Segundo Galilea notes in The Way of Living Faith: A Spirituality of Liberation that sacramentality represents a problem for contemporary spirituality. But sacraments are not the problem. Sacraments, and “the Word of God that shapes every sacrament,” are the solution. As Galilea says, “Jesus, his life and liberation, is found…

April 29, 2013

A Cusan Modernity?

I summarize some aspects of the work of Nicholas of Cusa at the Trinity House web site.

April 29, 2013

Eucharistic meditation

1 Corinthians 11:20: Paul calls this meal the “Lord’s Supper.” We have eaten together about five hundred times. This is the last time I’ll serve at this table as pastor of Trinity Reformed Church, but after I’m gone, you’ll have the same host. Jesus is the host of this meal.…

April 28, 2013

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