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Writing

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

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Books

Let us Fix the World: An Admonition from the Strugatsky Brothers

That there is something wrong with the world is obvious. It does not take much time or brilliance to notice it. Once we get the feeling that we could imagine a better world, we are tempted to fix it or, if we cannot, to escape it. For both the world-fixers…

by Bogumil JarmulakApril 6, 2021
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Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer Exposited

“Our Father in heaven,” what is man that we should be called your sons and daughters, beloved children of God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, Yahweh of Hosts, the Ancient of Days. You are not a father preoccupied with work or engrossed in your smartphone; you are a present…

by Drew KnowlesMarch 30, 2021
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Pastoral Ministry

Pastoral Reflections on Purity Laws

The Son of God took on human flesh and entered into the sin and suffering of our world. His life and teaching and suffering from His conception to His suffering on the cross teaches us a lot about how the good news enters into the world. Recently, I was teaching…

by Nathan ZekveldMarch 23, 2021
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Hermeneutics

The Ass and the Messiah

There is an unspoken rule about typology that permeates Evangelical thinking. It goes something like this: “If the New Testament authors don’t use an Old Testament character as a type, we don’t either.” There is a soundness in this reasoning, at least in a preliminary sense. There is no better…

by Garrett SoucyMarch 16, 2021
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Church Calendar

The Sound of Silence

In The world of Silence, Max Picard writes, “There does not seem to be any space left where there could possibly have been anything but noise. We take it for granted much as we take the air itself for granted. Everything begins and ends with noise.” Is it fair to…

by Jacob SkogenMarch 9, 2021
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Hermeneutics

The Absent Presence of God: The Storied Theology of Esther for the Modern Age

God is Not There God is not in the book of Esther. Do a word search and you will get 0 results. Also try Lord, Yahweh, Prayer, Temple, or Sacrifice. Even names with God’s name in them, like Elijah, Jeremiah, or Daniel are missing. The fool says in his heart,…

by Ryan HandermannMarch 4, 2021

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Theology

Hegel the pietist

Still further evidence that a) Hegel can’t get away from Kant’s pietism and b) Hamann would have been as right about Hegel as he was about Kant.  Jean-Marie Schaeffer writes of the impact of the incarnation on history: “it is through God’s becoming man, through the life and passion of…

September 22, 2009
Music

Music and modernity

Andrew Bowie ( Aesthetics and Subjectivity : From Kant to Nietzsche ) challenges the typical postmodern characterization of modern philosophy by highlighting music.  Heidegger views “the growth of the importance of music in modernity as grounded in an attitude to art based just upon feeling ‘which has been left to…

September 22, 2009

Scapegoat

Esau is a “hairy man” ( sa’iyr ), something we learn only when Jacob dresses himself in goat hair to approach his father (Genesis 27:11, 23). Jacob becomes a hairy one, subbing in for his brother. The only other use of the word in Genesis is in 37:31, where it…

September 22, 2009

Yahweh and Pharaoh

When Moses objects that he cannot speak, Yahweh assigns his “brother Aaron” to be his spokesman and prophet (Exodus 4:14; 7:1-2).  The next time Aaron is identified as Moses’ brother is in Exodus 28, where he is given the garments of glory and beauty to approach Yahweh, and the phrase…

September 22, 2009
Art

Christian art

Greek art, Hegel says, brings art to its summit.  This presents a difficulty: The greatest sensuous artistic form occurs within a polytheistic, inadequate religion. In Jean-Marie Schaeffer’s summary, Hegel resolves this by pointing to the very brokenness of the bodily form of Christ in Christian art: “in Christian art, Christ…

September 21, 2009
Philosophy

Against Empiricism

Heidegger got it exactly right: “We never really first perceive a throng of sensations, e.g., tones and noises, in the appearance of things . . . rather we hear the storm whistling in the chimney, we hear the three-motored plane, we hear the Mercedes in immediate distinction from the Volkswagen.…

September 21, 2009

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