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Writing

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

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Ezra

Ezra: The Aaronic Rest-Giver

If you’re a preacher looking for good commentaries on Ezra, you’ll struggle. Certainly to find ones that wrestle in good detail with the text. And certainly ones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg. There’s a good bit more for Nehemiah, which is odd, as the two are…

by Rhys LavertyJune 8, 2021
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1 John

1 John in Community

Quick thought experiment: try to pretend you’ve never read 1 John before. Read 1:1-6. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Now, on to v. 7: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with ______….” What word would you expect in that blank, based…

by Tim NicholsJune 1, 2021
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Hermeneutics

Spending Time with Noah: Reflections on Prepositions in the Flood Narrative

In my work as a Bible translator, I was recently checking our translation team’s draft of Genesis 8:8, which says of Noah (translating the Hebrew quite literally): And he sent out the dove from with him to see: had the waters lessened from upon the face of the ground? Part…

by Josh JensenMay 25, 2021
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Philosophy

Steven Weinberg Destroyed My Faith

Just in case a reader may not know Weinberg, he is a theoretical physicist and the winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1979, as well as countless other prizes for his research. He is also a prolific, lucid, and captivating writer. If you want to read something on…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 18, 2021
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Colossians

Reconciliation in Colossians 1:20

Colossians 1:15-20 is a famous passage in Paul’s epistles because it is a succinct and powerful poem. It appears even to have been a hymn. Given the uniquely Pauline language — “reconciliation” is a term used only by Paul — it should not seem odd to attribute the poem/hymn to…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 11, 2021
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Movies

Terror of Knowing Myself

Stalker (1979) is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky based on Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It shows a day from the life of a stalker, a man who enters the so-called "Zone", an Alien landing site, where he leads people to a room that grants people’s innermost desires, which…

by Bogumil JarmulakMay 4, 2021

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Theology

All Time and None

My colleague Jonathan McIntosh pointed me to Anselm’s discussion of God’s relation to time in the Monologion (available in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works ). It’s a complex discussion. On the one hand, the infinite nature cannot exist finitely ( determinate ) at a particular place or time, so…

April 30, 2013

Apocalypse in nuce

Four simple points to guide any sane reading of Revelation. 1) Revelation is a book of the Bible. It is packed with Old Testament language and imagery, and cannot be understood without that Old Testament background. One scholar has suggested that Revelation uses the Old Testament “compositionally” rather than “expositionally”…

April 30, 2013

Let there be light

Edison is credited for inventing the electric light, but as Ernest Freeberg notes in his The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America , Edison was part of a transAtlantic network of researchers and relied on capital investments to keep his experiments going. And once he…

April 29, 2013

Christ Clothed

Segundo Galilea notes in The Way of Living Faith: A Spirituality of Liberation that sacramentality represents a problem for contemporary spirituality. But sacraments are not the problem. Sacraments, and “the Word of God that shapes every sacrament,” are the solution. As Galilea says, “Jesus, his life and liberation, is found…

April 29, 2013

A Cusan Modernity?

I summarize some aspects of the work of Nicholas of Cusa at the Trinity House web site.

April 29, 2013

Eucharistic meditation

1 Corinthians 11:20: Paul calls this meal the “Lord’s Supper.” We have eaten together about five hundred times. This is the last time I’ll serve at this table as pastor of Trinity Reformed Church, but after I’m gone, you’ll have the same host. Jesus is the host of this meal.…

April 28, 2013

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