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Writing

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

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Books

Let us Fix the World: An Admonition from the Strugatsky Brothers

That there is something wrong with the world is obvious. It does not take much time or brilliance to notice it. Once we get the feeling that we could imagine a better world, we are tempted to fix it or, if we cannot, to escape it. For both the world-fixers…

by Bogumil JarmulakApril 6, 2021
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Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer Exposited

“Our Father in heaven,” what is man that we should be called your sons and daughters, beloved children of God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, Yahweh of Hosts, the Ancient of Days. You are not a father preoccupied with work or engrossed in your smartphone; you are a present…

by Drew KnowlesMarch 30, 2021
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Pastoral Ministry

Pastoral Reflections on Purity Laws

The Son of God took on human flesh and entered into the sin and suffering of our world. His life and teaching and suffering from His conception to His suffering on the cross teaches us a lot about how the good news enters into the world. Recently, I was teaching…

by Nathan ZekveldMarch 23, 2021
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Hermeneutics

The Ass and the Messiah

There is an unspoken rule about typology that permeates Evangelical thinking. It goes something like this: “If the New Testament authors don’t use an Old Testament character as a type, we don’t either.” There is a soundness in this reasoning, at least in a preliminary sense. There is no better…

by Garrett SoucyMarch 16, 2021
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Church Calendar

The Sound of Silence

In The world of Silence, Max Picard writes, “There does not seem to be any space left where there could possibly have been anything but noise. We take it for granted much as we take the air itself for granted. Everything begins and ends with noise.” Is it fair to…

by Jacob SkogenMarch 9, 2021
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Hermeneutics

The Absent Presence of God: The Storied Theology of Esther for the Modern Age

God is Not There God is not in the book of Esther. Do a word search and you will get 0 results. Also try Lord, Yahweh, Prayer, Temple, or Sacrifice. Even names with God’s name in them, like Elijah, Jeremiah, or Daniel are missing. The fool says in his heart,…

by Ryan HandermannMarch 4, 2021

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Sex

Porneia

In a 2011 JBL article, Kyle Harper examines the usage of the Greek word porneia from its classical uses through the New Testament and into the early church. He hopes to specify its meaning, since the usual English translation as “sexual immorality” is “so vague” that it “inevitable threatens to…

January 14, 2015

Purity and the Other

In his contribution to Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions , Philippe Borgeaud explores ancient comparative anthropology, the ways in which Greeks used other cultures as “mirrors.” Along the way (269-70), he discusses Porphyry’s De Abstinentia , which he compares to Mary Douglas’s classic Purity and Danger . For…

January 14, 2015
Theology

Passion of Poetry

Sketching a theological account in support of Reformed ressourcement in their Reformed Catholicity , Michael Allen and Scott Swain appeal to the argument of Reinhold Hutter’s Suffering Divine Things . Hutter tries to avoid both a notion of “strict continuation” between the church and the incarnate Christ and a Barthian…

January 14, 2015
Nevin Lectures

Nevin Lectures, 2015

Robert Louis Wilken, noted church historian and Chairman of the Board of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, will deliver the second annual Nevin Lectures on February 20-21, at the Hodges Chapel of the Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, Alabama. Wilken will give three lectures on “The Catholic Roots of…

January 14, 2015

Baptism and Justification in Christian Tradition

In his study of Justification in Earlier Medieval Theology , Charles Carlson concludes that early medieval commentators on Paul did not give any special attention to justification. For most of the early scholastics, “justification” was a synonym for the remission of sins, and prior to the thirteenth century it was…

January 13, 2015

Priests of Babylon

Ancient Babylonian temples were busy places. There were butchers and cooks for the meat, bakers for the bread and brewers of beer. The temple was supplied by farmers and milkmen, fishermen, oxherds, orchard keepers. Some were specialists in setting the table of the god, and others artisans who work with…

January 13, 2015

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