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Writing

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

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Christendom

The Fundamentals of the Faith

Reflecting on the centennial of the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, Theopolis contributor Tim Nichols asked Dr. Leithart and me what the five fundamentals of the faith were today . His thoughts went something like this: Back in the early 20th century, in response to a ruinous drift away from the historic Christian…

by Jackson WatersNovember 26, 2025
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Matthew

Testimonium Negativum: Josephus, Matthew’s Gospel, and New Evidence for the Coming Christ

1. Introduction In this article, I delve into some parallels found in the scholarly analysis of two important literary works: the Testimonium Flavianum by Josephus ( Antiquities 18.63–64) and the Olivet Discourse in the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 24–25). These texts have been at the center of countless academic discussions,…

by Jonathan SedlakNovember 18, 2025
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Genesis

Trauma and Glory: Overcoming Suffering with Joseph

Over the last twenty years, our American culture has created a culture of obsession over trauma. This could be a result of publications such as The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, which explores the lasting effect on health that traumatic experiences can have. Or it could…

by Lindsey TollefsonNovember 11, 2025
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Uncategorized

Lips like a Thread of Crimson: Midrash on a Theme from the Song of Solomon

The Beloved celebrates the beauty of his Shulamite’s lips, describing them as “a thread of crimson” upon a mouth that is altogether lovely (Song 4:3). It were easy perhaps to pass by this all too quickly, passing it off, if we attend to it at all, as a kind of…

by Mark BriansNovember 4, 2025
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Culture

The Rule of the Incarnate

This article originally appeared at American Reformer on October 29, 2025. Reproduced with permission. Why the West Was Never Meant to Be Governed by Law Alone Back in the early nineties, I was in the candidate process for Undergraduate Pilot Training with the Texas Air National Guard, hoping to fly…

by Ronald DodsonOctober 31, 2025
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Deuteronomy

A Father’s Liturgical Logic: The Pastoral Aim of the Davidic Revolution

In his book From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution , Peter Leithart shows that David, the author of so many Psalms and the musician who trained choirs, instituted a musical and liturgical revolution of how the people of Israel worshipped. The liturgical revolution in turn was designed to…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 29, 2025
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Referees, Players, and Religious Liberty

I recently had an argument with my Lutheran brother concerning the subject of my forthcoming book, The End of Protestantism . The book is a plea to Protestants to pursue a deeper and wider unity within the church. My brother wasn’t convinced, and his response was severalfold: Lutherans aren’t going…

September 15, 2016

Jubilee

W illiam Johnstone points out ( 1 & 2 Chronicles , 1.15–16) that the Chronicler’s chronology “is related to the jubilee (Lev. 25:8–55): in the fiftieth year ‘you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family’ (Lev. 25:10). For C, the…

September 15, 2016

Stand, Serve, Sing

I t’s an ancient insight: Music tunes the soul. Music doesn’t just express what we’re feeling. It forms emotions. Emotions aren’t simply sensations. Emotions, as Robert Solomon has argued, are judgments about the world. Anger is a judgment concerning an outrage or injustice; fear is a judgment that a threat…

September 13, 2016

Sacraments and the Liberal Establishment

D avid L. Schindler ( Ordering Love ) exposes the “instrumentalism” that functions as the public philosophy of what he describes as the “juridical state,” an instrumentalism that he does not hesitate to describe as “violent” insofar as it excludes, in the name of fairness, any “ order of truth…

September 13, 2016

Liturgy and Totalizing Politics

I n his Political Worship , Bernd Wannenwetsch observes that “Worship again and again interrupts the course of the world. Through worship the Christian community testifies that the world is not its own. And this means also that it is not kept alive by politics, as the business of politics,…

September 12, 2016

Learning Like a Tudor

S cott Newstok urges students to learn like Shakespeare in a convocation address at Rhodes College . That means learning rhetoric: “in the Renaissance, rhetoric was nothing less than the fabric of thought itself. Because thinking and speaking well form the basis of existence in a community, rhetoric prepares you…

September 9, 2016

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