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Writing

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

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Culture

Consumerism, Oikos, and the Role of Women in the Church

Part 1 We do not understand the role of women in ministry because we do not understand the role of men in ministry. We do not understand the role of men in ministry because we do not understand the church. We do not understand the church because the consumer culture…

by John CarpenterJuly 11, 2023
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Biblical Theology

Genesis’ Beginning Story

1. One structure The Creation account (G1:1-2:4) conspicuously conveys meaning using the literary shape of the text. The narrative is told with formulaic patterns, repetitions, and parallelism. The Garden account is different. It is viewed as a separate text, with its own author, employing its own structure. This second account’s…

by Scott FairbanksJune 28, 2023
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Baptism

Crystalline Baptism

I was reading James Jordan’s Creation in Six Days while also preparing for Trinity Sunday in which the gospel reading is John 3:1-15. As providence would have it Jordan dropped an easter egg for me along the lines of baptism. In chapter 5 he points out, “ On the second…

by Matthew CoreyJune 20, 2023
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Baptism

Christians Should Baptize Their Children, but Not Because of Circumcision

It's true. There is no verse in the New Testament that commands or records an infant baptism. This poses a problem for some Christians. Those who only look for explicit commands, or those whose theology is limited to the New Testament, will conclude that infant baptism is not biblical and…

by Adam McIntoshJune 13, 2023
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Biblical Studies

Polarities

1. Goal This paper’s goal is to identify and describe a literary strategy employed by scripture, namely using two episodes that cover similar territory or themes using details drawn from opposite ends of a number of spectrums. Once described the reader may recognize numerous other instances of this strategy in…

by Scott FairbanksJune 7, 2023
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Deuteronomy

Kind Capital Punishment

Numbers 14 records the tragic story of Israel’s decision to rebel against Yahweh and Moses. Twelve spies had been sent into the land to bring back a report to Israel. All twelve spies agreed: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey”…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 31, 2023

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Exhortation, June 20

According to the traditional church calendar, we are several Sundays into Trinity season. Trinity season begins with Trinity Sunday, which is the first Sunday after Pentecost, and Trinity season stretches through the summer and into the autumn, until the beginning of Advent. It is the longest of the seasons of…

June 20, 2004

Eucharistic Meditation, June 20

Numbers 13:32 Throughout the OT, the land promised to Israel is described as a ?land flowing with milk and honey.?E This is an image of rich abundance, of course, but it is particularly an image of the rich abundance of food. God did not choose a land where Israel would…

June 20, 2004

Huntington and Mexico

Enrique Krauze provides some powerful criticisms of Samuel Huntington’s claims about the influence of Mexican immigration on American cultural identity in the June 21 issue of TNR . Huntington argues in his recent book that there is a core American culture, and it is “Anglo-Protestant.” Mexicans, Spanish-speaking and Catholic, threaten…

June 19, 2004
Literature

Freud and Theory

James Woods perceptively notes that the triumph of theory in literary studies is less the triumph of Marx than the triumph of Freud: “One of the decisive changes that theory effected was to introduce the idea that texts do not know themselves. It is the critic’s business to reveal their…

June 19, 2004
Literature

The Original Bobo

Writing on Joyce’s Ulysses just before the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, Declan Kiberd notes the oddity of the ending: “the climax of Ulysses is a meeting between two men, the young poet Stephen Dedalus and the older ad-canvasser Leopold Bloom . . . . The meeting of Dedalus and Bloom…

June 19, 2004

Distance

Can there be a Creator-creature distinction without the Trinity? It would seem not. For a unitarian theology “distance” is introduced only with the world; for a unitarian god to be at a distance, there must be something to be at a distance FROM. But because “distance” is not of the…

June 18, 2004

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