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Writing

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

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Lent

Embrace Pessimism

Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…

by Bogumil JarmulakFebruary 21, 2024
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Biblical Theology

2 Trees of Eden & What They Mean: Knowledge of Good & Evil vs. Life

If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…

by Mark BriansFebruary 13, 2024
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Death

Training to Die

“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…

by Mandi GerthFebruary 7, 2024
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Jonah

Jonah’s Backward Exodus

In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…

by Tim SuffieldJanuary 30, 2024
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Revelation

Where is the Tree of Knowledge in New Jerusalem?

“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…

by David AppoldJanuary 23, 2024
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Luke

The Test of Adultery

Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…

by Ben LoveladyJanuary 17, 2024

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Erotic Trinity

Desmond suggests that when Hegel defines God as love, he has in mind God as erotic love, and God specifically as needy erotic love: “For Hegel . . . the movement up and the movement down seem not to be two different movements, but two expressions of a singular movement…

November 28, 2007

Can Hegel Count to Two?

In a brilliant chapter of his book on Hegel’s God, William Desmond asks whether Hegel can count to two. He wonders if Hegel is capable of accounting “for the true otherness of creation as temporal and not as eternal?” More, “Let God’s self-movement be eternal, but the self-becoming in time…

November 28, 2007

Hegel’s Trinity

In his book on the Trinity in German Thought, Samuel Powell gives a remarkably lucid summary of Hegel’s Trinitarian theology. A few of his major points: 1) Hegel worked out his position as a way between the Enlightenment and pietism, focusing on the question of whether and how we can…

November 28, 2007

Hegel’s Trinity

In his book on the Trinity in German Thought, Samuel Powell gives a remarkably lucid summary of Hegel’s Trinitarian theology. A few of his major points: 1) Hegel worked out his position as a way between the Enlightenment and pietism, focusing on the question of whether and how we can…

November 28, 2007
Science

Stem cells

The news actually broke this summer, when Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka announced that he had found a technique to transform cultured mouse skin cells into cells nearly identical to embryonic stem cells. As Nature magazine pointed out, if something similar works in humans, a simple skin biopsy could be used…

November 28, 2007
Philosophy

Marion and the gift

In his discussions of gifts, Marion takes both Heidegger and Derrida as interlocutor. In dialogue with Heidegger, he wants to show that the reduction that Heidegger performs does not necessarily reveal Being as the final horizon; he wants to argue that the reduction reveals givenness as the ultimate horizon instead.…

November 28, 2007

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