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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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Exhortation, Third Epiphany

According to what has become the “traditional” interpretation of the Constitution, every American woman has the right to kill her unborn baby. Since the Roe v. Wade decision in January of 1973, over 45 million babies have been killed, and, though the abortion rate has slowed since 1990, more than…

January 22, 2006
Philosophy

Same and Other

Evaluating Levinas and his criticisms of Husserl, Derrida probes the coherence of Levinas’ notion of “infinitely other.” Contrary to Levinas, who argues that we are incorrectly seduced by everyday life to think of the other as an “alter ego,” Derrida says: “The other as alter ego signifies the other as…

January 21, 2006
Media

Art for Art

Adorno points out in an essay on television that “it would be romanticizing to assume that formlerly art was entirely pure, that the creative artist thought only in terms of the inner consistency of the artifact and not also of its effect upon the spectators. Theatrical art, in particular, cannot…

January 20, 2006

Sermons and such

Auden said, “In my opinion sermons should be a) fewer b) longer c) more theologically instructive and less exhortatory. I must confess that in my life I have very seldom heard a sermon from which I derived any real spiritual benefit. Most of them told me that I should love…

January 20, 2006

Totality and Dialogue

In “Violence and Metaphysics,” Derrida says that no “logos as absolute knowledge can comprehend the dialogue and the trajectory toward the other” because “the other is the other” and “all speech is for the other.” For Derrida, “A total logos still, in order to be logos, would have to let…

January 19, 2006
Philosophy

Eros and epistemology

For Aquinas, knowledge begins with knowledge of the effects of a thing. When faced with those effects, we naturally have a “desire to know about the cause what it is. This desire is one of wonder and causes inquiry.” The inquiry ceases when we arrive at knowledge of the essence…

January 19, 2006

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