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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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Scripture and Trinity

“God speaks in Jesus in and through the texts of the Old and New Testament,” writes Francis Watson in an appreciative critique of Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology . “These texts do not merely report divine speaking, they enact it; and that they do so is the distinctive work of the…

November 12, 2015

Now I Know

In a 2002 essay on “The Bible and the Trinity, Jenson reflected on the Trinitarian features of Genesis 22, the Aqedah. Some are obvious and traditional - the relationship between the Angel of Yahweh and Yahweh. Some not so much. Jenson stresses that the issue at stake in Yahweh's test…

November 12, 2015

Jesus the Prophet

David Turner offers a detailed study of Jesus' “woes” to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23 ( Israel's Last Prophet ). He sets the polemic in the context of a Deuteronomistic theological perspective as employed by the prophets of Israel. Together, these add up to a “motif of prophetic…

November 11, 2015

God's Mercy in Time

Here’s an effort to summarize Robert Jenson’s take on God-and-time, written with faux-Jensonesque pithiness. Is God eternally and infinitely the eternal and infinite God that He is? Of course. He’s God. Is God dependent on creation for His fulfillment? Of course not. He’s God. The biblical God uniquely does not…

November 11, 2015

Action, Time, Eternity

Robert Jenson begins his classic The Triune Identity with a succinct analysis of the religious import of human action. “Every human action moves from what was to what is to be: It is carried and filled by tradition but intends new creation” (1). Every action proposes and is something new;…

November 11, 2015

Double Citizens

In his closing at one of the second-tier GOP Presidential debate, Governor Bobby Jindal expressed a perspective that is common among conservative Christians: “The reality is the idea of America is slipping away. As Christians, we believe that the tomb is empty. As Americans, we believe that our best days…

November 10, 2015

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