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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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Life in a Medieval Parish

“Parochial Christianity,” writes Mark Greengrass ( Christendom Destroyed ), “was more than a religious experience. It was a set of rights to benefices which were the key to monopoly revenues (the tithe, collected in various forms) in which patrons, collators and clergymen all had interests. And behind every parish church…

June 5, 2015

Crusoe Errant

Robinson Crusoe suffers enormous hardship before he ever gets to his island, and the hardship seems disproportionate to the wrong he commits. Is running off to sea against his father's wishes such an enormity? In his classic study of Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography , GA Starr explains that Robinson “defies…

June 4, 2015

Restorative Justice

Howard Zehr makes clear in his Little Book of Restorative Justice that “restorative justice” isn't a panacea. It doesn't pretend to replace the the legal system, nor is it necessarily opposed to retribution (12-13). Primarily, restorative justice is an effort to put the principle actors back at the center of…

June 4, 2015

Gift of Work

RJ Snell's Acedia is about acedia. But before he gets to his extended analysis of that vice, he offers a superb, brilliantly brief, ontology and anthropology, drawing on the resources of Trinitarian theology and the book of Genesis. Among other things, Snell emphasizes the gift that is human work, a…

June 4, 2015

On a cloud

John sees one like a son of man on a cloud, holding a sickle (Revelation 14:14). We assume that He's traveling down to reap the harvest, but is that correct? The original for this son-cloud combination if Daniel 7:13, where it is clear that the Son of Man comes up…

June 4, 2015

Ideological art

D avid Goldman ( It's Not the End of the World, It's Just the End of You ) argues that “modern art is ideological, as its proponents are the first to admit. It was the ideologues, namely the critics, who made the reputation of the abstract impressionists, the most famous…

June 3, 2015

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