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Writing

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

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Easter

An Easter Meditation

The resurrection stories in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are among the strangest stories in all of the literature of the world, even among the strangest stories in the Bible. That is true of each Gospel’s accounts individually, but even more of the collection as a whole. On the one…

by Ralph Allan SmithApril 20, 2025
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Technology

Ministering to Mooks on the Age of the Internet of Beefs

As a pastor, I’m interested in discipleship. Christians are called to be disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. Discipleship has everything to do with the disciplines we walk by in our lives. Things like Bible reading, prayer, and fasting are hallmarks of standard Christian discipleship. The basic thrust is that…

by Michael HansenApril 15, 2025
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Chiasm

Immobility or Infinity: Chiastic Trajectories in Psalm 1

Psalm 1 is justly famous among biblical texts. It opens the Psalter, it’s a paean to the life-giving power of the Law, and it beautifully describes righteous life as a stable, fruitful tree. It subtly weaves the contrasting threads of wickedness and righteousness into a succinct summary of biblical wisdom:…

by Joseph RheaApril 8, 2025
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Hebrews

Eight Lessons on the Psalms from the Book of Hebrews

No book is more quoted in Hebrews than the Psalter: there are quotations and allusions to psalms on virtually every page. And many of the quotations are not passing references but closely considered and repeatedly cited as the author of Hebrews develops his central arguments. Much of Hebrews is exposition…

by Alastair RobertsApril 1, 2025
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Theology

The God Problem

Howard Bloom is a beautiful hypocrite. The author of books in as different subjects as Mohammed, scientific theory, and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, he professes to be a “stone cold atheist.” Yet in spite of that profession, Bloom obviously writes as a Jew; that is, he writes with…

by Ralph Allan SmithMarch 27, 2025
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Art

The Comedic World of Flannery O’Connor

There may be some debate about who deserves the title “the King of American literature,” but, at least to my mind, there should be no debate over who deserves to be “the Queen” – let’s give the crown to Flannery O’Connor. She is, however, a very unlikely queen. Unlikely, not…

by Steve WilkinsMarch 25, 2025

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Sacrifice in the Spirit

Christ’s life, says John Owen in The Death of Death in the Death of Christ , is entirely an oblation and a gift. Though “the perfecting or consummating of this oblation be set out in the Scripture chiefly in respect of what Christ suffered,” still Christ’s offering includes everything He…

April 10, 2013

Law and History

The fifth of Ralph Smith’s studies in Deuteronomy is available today at the Trinity House site.

April 10, 2013

D&D

In a wide-ranging review of the evidence in the TLS, Eric Naiman concludes that Dickens never met Dostoevsky, and Dickens never confessed to Dostoevsky what Claire Tomalin says he confessed. Tomalin cited a letter from Dostoevsky describing Dickens’s confession: “All the good simple people in his novels, Little Nell, even…

April 10, 2013

Justification as Acquittal?

NT Wright, following a long tradition, explains that justification is a declaratory act. It is a verdict of acquitted, cleared, vindicated in the view of the court. There is an immediate communal dimension to this: The acquitted person is “in good standing in the community as the result of the…

April 10, 2013

Where Are the Fish?

Various commentators suggest that the four living creatures in Revelation (ox, lion, eagle, man) represent the whole of animate creation joined to praise God. Which raises the obvious question: Where are the fish? You have a sky animal, a wild land animal, a domesticated land animal, and a man to…

April 9, 2013

Called to Beauty

Bruce Ellis Benson summarizes his opening argument in Liturgy as a Way of Life: Embodying the Arts in Christian Worship with this: “the fundamental structure of our lives is that of the call and response. That call and response can rightly be considered artistic in that we are - in…

April 9, 2013

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