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Creation

Maker of Heaven and Earth, (Part 4)

In my previous two posts, I looked at aspects of Psalms 93, 95, 96 and 98 that declare Yahweh, the divine King, to be the world’s own Creator. In my next post, I plan to argue that the creation theology of the sub-section constituted by Psalms 93-100 contributes to the…

by Stephen LongApril 23, 2015
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Otherness

Sexual Difference, Liberal and Christian

Ethika Politika has published a fascinating interview within which the French Catholic philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj discusses his recent work on the subject of sexuality. While there are many points where our lines of reasoning as Protestants will sharply diverge from Hadjadj’s, there is also much that is deeply perceptive in…

by Alastair RobertsApril 21, 2015
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Literature

Macbeth and the Fall of Adam

For anyone in Shakespeare’s audience who knew the real story of Macbeth, his play must have been surprising. Shakespeare changed so many important details of the historical Macbeth’s life that had Raphael Holinshed, the main author of the most popular history of the British Isles in Shakespeare’s day — Holinshed…

by Ralph Allan SmithApril 16, 2015
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Creation

Maker of Heaven and Earth, (Part 3)

I started looking at a sequence of psalms on divine Kingship (Psalms 93-100) in my last post, part of a series looking at the Old Testament’s witness to Yahweh’s exercise of absolute mastery over his cosmos. I am not trying to “prove” a doctrine of creation ex nihilo directly from…

by Stephen LongApril 14, 2015
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Anxiety

(Un)Holy Fear

Most of the time I believe that dread is wise, anxiety righteous, fear a holy thing. It sounds ridiculous, but bear with me. There are days when fear seems to be not only a rational response to my circumstances, but a moral duty. After all, being a grown-up means responsibility.…

by Leta SundetApril 11, 2015
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Psalms

Psalm 36 Commentary

Get the Psalm 36 Translation here Psalm 36 begins with several translation problems. First, the first word in the actual psalm, as it is found in the English text, is the word "oracle." This word also begins the second verse in the medieval Massoretic Hebrew text, which is our basic…

by James B. JordanApril 10, 2015

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Differentiation and De-Differentiation

In their editorial introduction to Globalizing the Sacred , Manual Vasquez and Marie Marquardt explain the limitations of secularization theory. Some secularization theorists, recognizing that the theory's universal claims have proven false, put forward a qualified secularization theory. Though secularization as such doesn't explain the progress of modernity, modernity does…

September 10, 2015

Film in a Fallen Eden

In a 2003 essay on Terrence Malick's film, Days of Heaven , Hubert Cohen traces the Edenic motifs in Malick's various films. At the beginning of The Thin Red Line , “Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) . . . is AWOL and living in a Melanesian community that he stubbornly insists…

September 9, 2015
Biblical Studies

On the Deaths of Sons

In a recent Theopolis lecture, James Jordan pointed to the symmetry between the beginning and end of the Mosaic era. As soon as the tabernacle is set up, Aaron's two sons, Nadab and Abihu, offer foreign fire before the Lord and are killed. At the end of the Mosaic era,…

September 9, 2015

Cut It Out

In a recent New Yorker piece on “ Omission ,” John McPhee puts in a word for concise writing. Inevitably, he quotes Hemingway: “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is…

September 9, 2015

Cinematic Song

Josh Timmermann suggests that Terrence Malick's To the Wonder takes its cues not from love stories but from love songs - one in particular, the Song of Songs: “Its narrative logic is specifically poetic. Its structure is built carefully upon a cadence of clear, beautiful rhymes and faint yet significant…

September 8, 2015

How Big Is Religious Liberty?

The Federal District court in the Kim Davis case concluded that requiring her to sign same-sex marriage licenses didn't violate her free exercise of religion. She still could do all those quaint things that religious people do: “Davis remains free to practice her Apostolic Christian beliefs. She may continue to…

September 8, 2015

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