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Writing

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

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Art

The Artist's Litany

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8) O God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, who inspired Creation with the breath of your nostrils, who placed Adam in the…

by Christian LeithartFebruary 2, 2016
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American Culture

American Sodom

For nearly a half-century, Sodom has been a key symbol in the American culture wars. On the one side, we have an aggressive movement among homosexuals that has first decriminalized homosexual conduct, then to force cultural and legal recognition of homosexuals as a minority and to normalize homosexual behaviors, finally…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 28, 2016
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Biblical Theology

The Meaning of the Mount of Olives

Speaking of the Church, Romans 11:16-17 says, "And if the root be holy, the branches are also. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root of the fatness of the…

by James B. JordanJanuary 26, 2016
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Isaiah

No Sabbath for God

At the end of Isaiah 61, Yahweh's Servant rejoices because the Lord clothes Him with salvation and righteousness. He decks Him like a bridegroom with a garland on His head. He wears jewels like a bride. He is a new bridegroom in a new garden of Eden, a garden of…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 21, 2016
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Biblical Law

Approaching the Torah

Before anything else, a word about “Torah” may be in order. I have been persuaded that “law” is a bad translation of “Torah,” even though it is evident that what is called “Torah” does have commandments, statutes, and ordinances in abundance. Why not “law?” “Law” as a translation for “Torah”…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 19, 2016
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Biblical Horizons

Jane Austen, Pundit

Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 14, 2016

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Social Immobility

With income inequality and social mobility in the air, two articles in the Economist challenge the conventional wisdom. One is a report on a study conducted by economists at Harvard and Berkeley that concludes, in the Economist ’s words, “Despite huge increases in inequality, America may be no less mobile…

February 3, 2014
Uncategorized

Parenting As We Know It

Andrew Solomon begins his NYTBR review of Jennifer Senior’s All Joy and No Fun with the arresting claim that “parenting as we know it—predicated on the unconditional exaltation of our children—is no more than 70 years old.” The key shift in the past century has been, Senior says, our children’s…

February 3, 2014

Calves at Dan

When Jeroboam I split the northern tribes from the house of David, he secured the unity of his area by establishing shrines for golden calf worship at the northern and southern borders of his territory—at Dan and Bethel respectively. Both were obvious choices. Bethel had been a holy place since…

February 3, 2014

Memoria Passionis

Memoria passionis is a central feature of Johann Baptist Metz’s “postidealist theology,” a theology that is founded in practice and knows its own historical embeddedness. For Metz, this doesn’t just involve memory of Christ. For moderns, it’s equally the memory of Auschwitz. In A Passion For God , he recalls…

February 3, 2014

Banality v. Apocalyptic

Metz ( A Passion for God , 49-53) suggests that the “sickness unto death of religion is not naivete, but banality.” Banality arises from some of the deep seeds of modernity. Our “cult of possibility,” our confidence that “everything is possible” has an underside, resignation to the fact that everything…

February 3, 2014

Repenting Repentance

Noah is named as the rest-bringer for the human race. And he does just that, not simply by enduring the flood but by offering righteous worship on the holy mountain after the flood. Yahweh initially repents that He made “the man”; in the end, He has a change of heart…

February 3, 2014

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