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abortion
Abortion

Letters on Abortion, (Part 1)

What is below is fairly self-explanatory. This is an exchange I had with a local liberal clergyman on the subject of abortion. The circumstances of the debate are included in the text itself. I initially e-mailed this out to a list of clergy in our city after a local (and…

by Richard BledsoeNovember 17, 2015
wall-2
Ezra

The Perfumed Butler and the Wisdom of Civil Obedience

The seemingly humdrum parts of the Bible often hide overlooked wisdom. Take, for example, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their stories aren't exactly the most gripping or memorable. They are far less concrete than, say, the story of the Exodus. No one in Ezra is stricken blind or devoured…

by Christian LeithartNovember 10, 2015
sparkler
Happiness

"Happy! Happy! Happy!" Authentic Happiness and Its Knock-Offs

For most of the past century, philosophical perspectives on life in the western world have been overtly grim and pessimistic. The optimism of the Enlightenment, generated by confidence in the scientific method and the potential of an increasingly civilized humanity to redress the evils of the world, was shattered by…

by Bill DeJongNovember 5, 2015
aaron-burden-1ebsmyrau-s-unsplash
Hermeneutics

How Does a Chiasm Mean?

Chiastic structures are found all over the Bible, and in recent decades commentators have become more adept at spotting them. But identifying these literary structures is only part of the challenge. There remains the challenge of understanding what they mean. Part of the answer is found in the recognition that…

by Steve JefferyNovember 3, 2015
last-supper
Eucharist

How To Change the World, (Part 2)

Part 1 can be found HERE . Clearly, more than just getting worship right is important in changing the world, but since worship is the central act of God’s people, performed on the first day of the week at the center of the world before the very face of God,…

by James B. JordanOctober 29, 2015
solomonsidolatry
Biblical Theology

Big Love: A History of Stolen Fruit

“Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed.” ( Luke 11:27 ) Arguing for Christian morality in a secular society is difficult. A culture which accepts evolutionary dogma has no intellectual place — or inherent desire — for absolute morality, since it believes morality…

by Mike BullOctober 27, 2015

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Theology

Beauty’s authority

Von Balthasar says somewhere that beauty makes demands, and suggests that this is a natural analogy to the attitude of faith, which is like an aesthetic response to the form of Christ. Beauty makes demands. If I hear the central movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata or any of a dozen other…

September 8, 2006
Theology

Beauty’s authority

Von Balthasar says somewhere that beauty makes demands, and suggests that this is a natural analogy to the attitude of faith, which is like an aesthetic response to the form of Christ. Beauty makes demands. If I hear the central movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata or any of a dozen other…

September 8, 2006
Theology

Imprecations

A friend, Jim Rogers, offers some thoughtful reflections on imprecatory prayers at: http://lutheranguest.blogspot.com/2006/09/imprecatory-prayer.html

September 8, 2006
History

Globalization

Globalization is the unification of cultures, the formation of the many cultures of the world into a single, global culture. This is facilitated, obviously, by communications technologies, the worldwide spread of media, entertainment, and advertizing, and by the restructuring of corporations so that they are no longer confined to a…

September 7, 2006
History

Enlightenment and the Gothic

Enlightenment was not only a movement of illumination through reason but a movement of exposure, an effort to bring light to all the dark and secret places of European society. Foucault noted in an inverview: “A few haunted the latter half of the eighteenth century: the fear of darkened spaces,…

September 7, 2006

Sermon outline, Romans 12

INTRODUCTION Last week, I made a case for the legitimacy of imprecatory prayers and Psalms. But that leaves a lot of questions unanswered – When are prayers of imprecation legitimate? Against whom is it legitimate to pray imprecations? And, most importantly, how do imprecations square with the NT’s command, “Bless…

September 6, 2006

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