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Writing

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

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Culture

Birmingham Life and Culture Series

There’s something about joy that is infectious. And occasionally, we all have the opportunity to be in someone’s presence who is so happily engaged in their work, so joyous in their pursuits, that we want to learn from them. We want to know where that joy comes from and attain…

by Brian MoatsOctober 23, 2015
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How to Worship

How To Change the World, (Part 1)

Jesus has told us that He intends all nations to be discipled. Nations. Not just individuals. All nations as theocracies. That being the case, the Church exists for the life of the world. Being baptized is not only a matter of becoming part of a new family, it is also…

by James B. JordanOctober 22, 2015
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Literature

Adam, Saul, Macbeth

Harold Bloom’s essay on Macbeth includes the kind of penetrating insights that make Bloom the great Shakespearean scholar that he is, but it also includes his typical and intense anti-Christian bias. “If Lear was pre-Christian, then Macbeth is weirdly post-Christian. There are, as we have seen, Christian intimations that haunt…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 20, 2015
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Revelation

Inverted Atonement

Revelation 16 is a day of atonement text. The tabernacle of the testimony has been opened (15:5). The angels who receive the bowls are clothed in linen (15:6), the clothing of the high priest when he goes into the sanctuary on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:4). The temple is…

by Peter LeithartOctober 15, 2015
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Biblical Studies

Music and Hermeneutics

From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…

by James B. JordanOctober 13, 2015
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Biblical Studies

In the Fish: The Church as Tomb

"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). Some reflections on Jonah’s Big Fish have led to the following essay. Let me…

by James B. JordanOctober 8, 2015

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Philosophy

From Myth to Reason

Many have summarized the intellectual history of Greece as an evolution from the mythos to logos . William Nestle’s Vom Mythos zum Logos (1940) is the classical statement of this reading. On the opening page, Nestle claims mythos and logos are “the two poles between which man’s mental life oscillates.…

April 12, 2022
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SexualityTrinity

Spousal Body

John Paul II ( Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body , 181-5) argues from Genesis that “‘alone,’ the man does not completely realize [his] essence.” Without the woman, Adam does not possess the “basic conditions that make it possible to exist in a relation of…

April 4, 2022
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BaptismMission

Baptizing Nations

Wes Baker of Peru Mission began his Theopolis Easter Term lectures with a discussion of the connection between the two baptisms in Matthew’s gospel. In Matthew 3, John baptizes Jesus, as the Father speaks from heaven and the Spirit descends in the form of a dove. Through His baptism, Jesus’…

March 28, 2022
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Ukraine

Borderland

I wrote this essay for FirstThings.com shortly after my first trip to Ukraine in 2013 . Rousing Soviet songs surround us as we pass through a gloomy gauntlet of titanic statues on our way to Kyiv’s Museum of the Great Patriotic War. My friends, a Polish and a Ukrainian pastor,…

March 14, 2022
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CrossLent

The Cross and the Powers

Paul taught Christians to expect a lot from the gospel, politically as well as personally. He taught that the crucifixion of Jesus had a direct impact on the powers-that-be. He told the Colossians that Jesus went to the cross as the firstborn¯the only-begotten of the Father, the new Israel, the…

March 7, 2022
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Masculinity

Patriarchy or Trinitocracy?

The following is a revised version of a portion of an essay that originally appeared as a part of a Theopolis Conversation on masculinity . On many specifics, I agree with Christians who today advocate for patriarchy. Scripture teaches that men are shepherds in churches and husbands are heads of…

February 28, 2022

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