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Writing

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

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American Culture

Gerazim and Ebal

Place names become fraught with meaning by association with people and events. The name “Wittenberg” calls to mind Luther and the Reformation for Protestants and Catholics alike. Geneva has a wider range of associations, but the Reformation Wall, with its four main statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza,…

by Ralph Allan SmithFebruary 16, 2017
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Art

Tomboys and Totems

“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe,…

by Mike BullFebruary 14, 2017
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Biblical Studies

The Structure and Typology of the Bathsheba Incident

2 Samuel 11-12, which record David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath, is structured chiastically: This arrangement highlights several things about the episode. It reinforces what is obvious from even a casual reading, that the transition in the story occurs with Nathan’s confrontation of David’s sin and David’s confession. Up…

by James B. JordanFebruary 8, 2017
bestiary
Anthropology

Anthropomorphism and Christian Humanism

Medieval bestiaries are packed with quaintly inaccurate information about animals, birds, and other created things. Foxes and snakes are devilish critters; stags, pelicans and elephants are Christlike in their various ways. Of course, the medievals picked this up from the Bible, where bestiary observations are fairly common. “Go to the…

by Peter LeithartFebruary 2, 2017
beer
Beer

The End of Beerocracy

What do Reformational Catholicism and craft beer have in common? The question seems to beg for a punchline. Better yet, it would be pretty good clickbait for an article on Katharina von Bora’s “spirited” contribution that helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Well, this is no joke and I am certainly…

by John CrawfordJanuary 31, 2017
calvin
Pastoral Ministry

Calvin and Pastoral Care

Suffering Defined Suffering happens. We witness it all around us and experience it in our lives. It often comes from forces beyond our control. Suffering is inscrutable; it strikes unexpectedly, on a bright summer day or a cold winter night. We lament and are bewildered by suffering. But we are…

by Uri BritoJanuary 26, 2017

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LA Theology Conference

I am honored to be a speaker at the first annual Los Angeles Theology Conference at Biola University, January 17-18, 2013. The topic is Christology, and additional information is found here: http://latheology.com/

September 7, 2012
Philosophy

Meaning

I’ve been leading students through John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (A Theology of Lordship) for the past 15 years, and every year I’m impressed all over again. Frame is solidly biblical, creative, careful. His multiperspectival approach allows him to incorporate the best insights of nearly everyone,…

September 7, 2012

Shame Interrupted

Edward Welch’s Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection is a remarkable book. It offers a penetrating, discomfiting analysis of the experience of shame, which Welch summarizes under the headings of nakedness and exposure, isolation and being an outcast, contamination and self-disgust. He sees it everywhere…

September 7, 2012
Uncategorized

Reproduction

John Paul II, waxing Frankfurtian and Benjaminist, reflects on the effects of technologies that enable us to reproduce images of the human body - film and photography ( Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body , 366-7 ): “Artistic reproduction, when it becomes the content of…

September 7, 2012
History

Infant Christendom

In an interview in The Legend of the Middle Ages: Philosophical Explorations of Medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (p. 22 ), Remi Brague argues that the early Christians transformed everything because they were obsessed with Christ not “Christianity itself.” They tracked “the reverberations of his coming in the whole of…

September 7, 2012

Three Loves

Dan Glover offers these expansions on an earlier post where I quoted Edward Vacek’s analysis of the threefold love of God ( agape , philia , eros ). The rest of this post is from Dan. Adding to your comments, perhaps each person of the Godhead serves particularly, though not…

September 7, 2012

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