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Writing

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

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Culture

Birmingham Life and Culture Series

There’s something about joy that is infectious. And occasionally, we all have the opportunity to be in someone’s presence who is so happily engaged in their work, so joyous in their pursuits, that we want to learn from them. We want to know where that joy comes from and attain…

by Brian MoatsOctober 23, 2015
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How to Worship

How To Change the World, (Part 1)

Jesus has told us that He intends all nations to be discipled. Nations. Not just individuals. All nations as theocracies. That being the case, the Church exists for the life of the world. Being baptized is not only a matter of becoming part of a new family, it is also…

by James B. JordanOctober 22, 2015
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Literature

Adam, Saul, Macbeth

Harold Bloom’s essay on Macbeth includes the kind of penetrating insights that make Bloom the great Shakespearean scholar that he is, but it also includes his typical and intense anti-Christian bias. “If Lear was pre-Christian, then Macbeth is weirdly post-Christian. There are, as we have seen, Christian intimations that haunt…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 20, 2015
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Revelation

Inverted Atonement

Revelation 16 is a day of atonement text. The tabernacle of the testimony has been opened (15:5). The angels who receive the bowls are clothed in linen (15:6), the clothing of the high priest when he goes into the sanctuary on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:4). The temple is…

by Peter LeithartOctober 15, 2015
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Biblical Studies

Music and Hermeneutics

From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…

by James B. JordanOctober 13, 2015
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Biblical Studies

In the Fish: The Church as Tomb

"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). Some reflections on Jonah’s Big Fish have led to the following essay. Let me…

by James B. JordanOctober 8, 2015

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Judah's Pride

Isaiah’s name - "Yah saves" - is reassuring, and his message of rescue and salvation is a reassuring message because during Isaiah’s time, Judah needs saving, and they need saving again and again. There are many evils in Judah but more than other prophets of Israel and Judah Isaiah exposes…

January 16, 2018

Structure in 2 Chronicles 18

2 Chronicles 18 is the story of Ahab and Jehoshaphat's war with the Arameans at Ramoth-gilead. The battle occupies only a brief portion at the end. Most of the chapter is taken up with the kings' consultation of prophets. After a brief introduction, the bulk of the chapter consists of…

January 15, 2018

Losing Control

In The Breaking of Nations , Robert Cooper observes that "the spread of the technology of mass destruction represents a potentially massive redistribution of power away from the advanced industrial (and democratic) states towards smaller states that may be less stable and have less of a stake in an orderly…

January 12, 2018

Socrates or Swine

Our entertainment-drenched culture is a reflection of the colonizing power of liberalism. Liberalism is a drive for unlimited freedom, and any inequality or hierarchy stands in the way. Even the distinction between superior and inferior ways of life is anti-liberal. As Ryszard Legutko puts it ( Demon in Democracy ),…

January 12, 2018

Force and Matter

"All that exists consists of force and matter," says atheistic materialism. Very well, replies Vladimir Solovyev ( Lectures on Godmanhood , 81-2). Let's assume that is true and see where it leads. "Force" and "matter," he points out, are :very general conceptions": "We speak of physical forces, we speak of…

January 12, 2018

Not the End of History

Few accepted at face value the inflated claim that 1989 brought us to the “end of history” (Fukuyama), where democratic capitalism was left with an ideological monopoly. Still, many operated on the assumption that globalized trade would make the world more peaceful and democratic. It hasn't happened. History continues despite…

January 12, 2018

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