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

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American Politics

How To Change the Supreme Court

Appalling as it is, the decision of the United States Supreme Court regarding marriage cannot come as much of a surprise to reformation minded Christians. At the same time, this event is a warning from which we might learn. It is parallel to the attack of AIDS in the homosexual…

by James B. JordanJuly 8, 2015
putin
Europe

Gay West and Straight East?

Should we trust Vladimir Putin, we could come to believe that the West is a gay paradise whereas Russia strongly defends traditional and even Christian morality. Similar conclusion could be drawn from polls, which say that the European Union and America are the parts of the world where the acceptance…

by Bogumil JarmulakJuly 7, 2015
street
City

Jane Jacobs: The Jane Austen of Economics

In 1974, Steven Goldberg published one of the books that radical feminists have since assiduously tried not to remember has ever been published: The Inevitability of Patriarchy . As David Gutmann said in a Commentary review: “Goldberg’s virtues as a scholar and a logician are formidable. . . .[He is]…

by Richard BledsoeJuly 7, 2015
stonewall
American Culture

A Pastoral Letter from Louisville

Since Friday’s SCOTUS decision in Obergefell v. Hodges , social media have been inundated with rainbows, tweets, quips, and essays both celebrating and decrying our new culture that has been officially codified in these United States. With a strong LGBT community in our city, we, no doubt, will see a…

by Bill SmithJuly 6, 2015
moses
Biblical Law

The Death Penalty in the Mosaic Law

During the course of recent debates among Evangelicals concerning same-sex marriage, critics of the traditional Christian position that homosexual acts and desires are sinful and unnatural have often pointed to Leviticus 20:13, where "he who lies with a man as with a woman" is condemned to death. In the following…

by Peter LeithartJuly 3, 2015
david-goliath-2
Homosexuality

When Obergefell Falls

We are being taunted. The giant’s name is Obergefell ; he is a six-fingered descendent of the Anakim. He has come out onto the battlefield arrayed in his impressive armor. He wears the media elites like a helmet of brass, and on his chest, he wears the deep pockets of…

by Toby SumpterJuly 2, 2015

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Kneeling

The story is told of the desert father Abba Apollo, who was appalled when he encountered a devil without knees. John Ratzinger wrote of this story “The inability to kneel is seen as the very essence of the diabolical.”

March 13, 2008
History

Faith and belief

Malcolm Ruel, again in the Blackwell Reader in the anthropology of religion, traces the changing meanings of “faith.” For the Hebrew Bible, ‘mn “denotes . . . a quality of relationship: it was used of the reliability or trustworthiness of a servant, a witness, messenger, or a prophet, but is…

March 13, 2008
History

The Invention of “Christianity”

Asad identifies the particular moment when “Christianity” (in the pejorative sense I’ve used it) was invented: In the wake of the post-Reformation wars, Lord “Herbert produced a substantive definition of what later came to be formulated as Natural Religion - in terms of beliefs (about a supreme power), practices (its…

March 13, 2008
History

“Religion” and Modernity

The aforementioned reader in anthropology of religion includes Talal Asad’s essay on the construction of “religion” as an anthropological concept. He argues that it is usually assumed, for instance, that medieval “religion” was the same in essence as modern religion, but that “its social extension and function were different in…

March 13, 2008

Anthropology of Religion

The second edition of the Blackwell Reading in the Anthropology of Religion (edited, Michael Lambek) looks to be a great resource, for those who like such things. There are classic essays from Tylor, Durkheim, Weber, and Geertz, Wittgenstein on Frazer, Susanne Langer on symbols and Mary Douglas on clean and…

March 13, 2008

Cross and Union

In his Theology of the New Testament (Zondervan, 2005), Frank Thielman responds to the claim that justification is secondary to participation with Christ in Paul’s theology. Thielman does not agree, but he does say that it is true that “Paul’s references to the death of Christ more often support his…

March 13, 2008

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