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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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Many waters

Yahweh speaks with the voice of many waters, and so does Jesus.  That means loud, but it also means that the voice is the source of life (cf. Numbers 20:11; 24:7; Ezekiel 17:5), like the abundant waters in the wilderness. Many waters cannot quench the flame of Love.  That is,…

October 21, 2009

Seal on my heart

“Set me as a seal upon your heart,” says the Bride to the Bridegroom. Now the priest wore stones with the names of the tribes “engraven like a seal” on his breastplate (Exodus 28:11, 21) and the name of Yahweh, also “engraven like a seal” on the golden plate on…

October 21, 2009

New Song

Erik Peterson ( Das Buch von den Engeln ) points out that the new song of Revelation 5 is sung by people from every tongue and nation and people.  Thus, “the hymn of the church is the transcending of all national hymns, as the speech of the church is the…

October 21, 2009

Vestiges of Perichoresis

Hegel’s “sublation” seems to be a conceptual vestige of perichoresis. Sublation requires the Trinity: If all is one, nothing other can be absorbed within being destroyed.  If we have sheer differentiation, all is utterly other. Hegel is right: Sublation happens.  Aquinas does absorb Aristotle, so that Aristotle is still recognizably…

October 21, 2009

Sermon notes

INTRODUCTION The Song of Songs is a love poem, but both Jewish and Christian readers have discerned that it’s something more than that.  Ultimately, the Song is nothing less than the gospel. THE TEXT “Put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm for love is…

October 21, 2009

Speculative good friday

All history, Hegel says, is the death and resurrection of Jesus, the God’s embrace of negativity and death and their sublation in the resurrection.  This movement of incarnation, death, and death-nestled-in-resurrection is, moreover, the pattern of thought.  As Hegel says, “‘God himself is dead,’ it says in a Lutheran hymn,…

October 20, 2009

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