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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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Literature

The shrew speaks

In an article on Taming of the Shrew , Carol Rutter points out that most shrew plays end with the shrew silenced. Shakespeare’s play moves in the opposite direction. Kate speaks a lot early, but her conversation lacks poetry and wit. Her final speech, though, is elegant and wise. In…

February 14, 2008
Literature

Romanticism and the Bible

In Natural Supernaturalism , M. H. Abrams notes the influence of the Bible on Romanticism: “A conspicuous Romantic tendency, after the rationalism and decorum of the Enlightenment, was a reversion to the stark drama and suprarational mysteries of the Christian story and doctrines and to the violent conflicts and abrupt…

February 14, 2008
Literature

Milton and Romanticism

All the English Romantics were admirers of Milton. Blake wrote a quasi-epic poem in which Milton was the title character. Wordsworth took up Milton’s prophetic mantle, and was regarded by Coleridge as the Milton of his day. Keats conceived his own poetic mission as one of surpassing Milton, and the…

February 14, 2008
History

Jihad and church socials

Sayyid Qutb was one of the architects of jihadist Islam, and his stern opposition to the West was forged during a visit to the United States in 1949. Attending a church social in Greeley Colorado, he found, in the words of Lawrence Wright, “The room convulzed with the feverish music…

February 14, 2008
History

Translation

Weigel again, quoting a 2002 study of Arab development: “the Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one-fifth of the number that Greece translates. The accumulative total of translated books [into Arabic] since [the ninth century] is about 100,000.’ More books are translated into Spanish in an average decade or…

February 14, 2008
History

Crusading explorers

Following Bernard Lewis, Weigel suggests that European expansion in the early modern period was part of “a great flanking movement in response to Islamic advances into the continent of Europe.” Lewis writes, “When Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut he explained that he had come ‘in search of Christians and…

February 14, 2008

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