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

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Leviticus

Cathedral Offerings

Interwoven within Leviticus’ opening offerings is a redemptive storyline meant to be rehearsed. Each offering makes a particular contribution to the retelling of the Exodus deliverance. Like learning a dance, Israel’s opening rituals recount their steps from Egypt to Sinai in a fashion meant to perpetually imprint its experience on…

by Ben LoveladyMay 15, 2025
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Mark

Mark 7 in Color

In Capernaum, the leaders of Israel questioned Jesus in their hearts. Beside the sea, they questioned his disciples about their rabbi’s practices. They challenged Jesus in the grain fields, sought to trap him in the synagogue, tried to seize him, thinking he was mad, and accused him of being possessed.…

by George EdemaMay 13, 2025
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Psalm-singing

Rascals in a Cave

An essay on ministry taken from recent notes for a ‘solemn charge’ I gave our pastoral team (together with their spouses) at All Saints Honolulu, a church-plant that enters its fifth year. I. After receiving the sword of Goliath from Ahimelech at Nob, and after fleeing first to and then…

by Mark BriansMay 6, 2025
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Biblical Theology

A Theology of Tombs: Burial and the Promises of God

When thinking about the book of Genesis, we often think of beginnings, the beginning of the world, humanity, the elect people of God. The word “genesis” itself means beginning. Genesis is also known as the book of promises. Genesis contains three of the major Old Testament covenants: Adamic, Noahic and…

by Matthew DarbyApril 30, 2025
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Luke

Mountain, Tomb, Table: Moses and Elijah as the First Witnesses at the Empty Tomb

A Theological and Typological Commentary on Luke 24:4 In Luke 24:4, we are told that as the women arrived at the tomb on Easter morning, they encountered “two men in dazzling apparel” standing beside them. This description, on its own, may not immediately provoke questions. The traditional interpretation identifies these…

by Bruce GrimmetApril 29, 2025
Acts

Easter Meditation (Part 2)

For Part 1, click HERE . The four Gospel accounts give us their strange and wonderful historical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. The rest of the New Testament, either explicitly or by suggestion, refers to the resurrection in every book except 3 John. Unlike the Gospel accounts, however, most…

by Ralph Allan SmithApril 22, 2025

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Gone Fishin’

June 24, 2014

Impure Holiness

Isaiah 65 piles up charges of idolatry and impurity against Israel. They are supposed to offer continuous sacrifices, but their sacrifices are a continuous provocation (65:3). They build their altars from bricks rather than from stones, as the law requires (65:3). The sacrificial smoke doesn’t sooth Yahweh but is an…

June 23, 2014

Coding Trance

In an essay at Slate , David Auerbach tells a story about John Harris, a game-programmer: “While working on an 8-bit Atari port of Frogger in the early 1980s, Harris said, “’ glued my hands to the keyboard.’ One day he started programming midafternoon, losing himself in work. The next…

June 23, 2014

Smart Dumb

P oet Kenneth Goldsmith gives a taxonomy of smartness and dumbness. There are various permutations. He prefers dumb, but it has to be smart dumb: “There is dumb dumb and there is smart dumb. There is also smart smart. Dumb dumb is plain dumb and smart smart is plain smart.…

June 23, 2014

Kynics and Cynics

In a 1987 review of Peter Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reason , Neil Wilson observes that for Sloterdijk “cynicism is enlightenment turned sour: a sourness which results from the self-denial that self-survival in a society dominated by instrumental rationality requires” (55). It is not a new attitude, but an ancient…

June 23, 2014

Physiognamy’s revenge

Peter Sloterdijk distinguishes in his Critique of Cynical Reason (139-40) between the objectifying and distancing aims of Enlightenment thought and the inescapable “physiognomic sense” of life among fleshly humans: “Whereas the process of civilization, whose core is constituted by the sciences, teaches us to distance ourselves from people and things…

June 23, 2014

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