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Writing

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

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Biblical Studies

A Daughter of Abraham

Some of the key ways Biblical writers draw attention to important details in their stories are by the use of key words, repetition, and structural devices like chiasms and parallel constructions. The Bible sounds different, even odd, to us sometimes because of the use of these and similar literary conventions.…

by Ralph Allan SmithApril 16, 2019
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Autonomy

Rehabilitating Autonomy

It is pretty standard in conservative Christian circles to condemn unbelief for pretensions of “autonomy.” Cornelius Van Til famously (at least among those of us who knows who he is) said that “There is no alternative but that of theonomy and autonomy.” Greg Bahnsen appealed to this quotation by labeling…

by Mark HorneApril 9, 2019
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John

Jesus: Preacher of Paradox

Jesus was the greatest teacher who ever taught — the Light of the World, whose pure Truth brought sight to the blind (John 9). Almost no one — even those who speak openly against Him — disputes His reputation as a wise and good teacher of the way of love.…

by Ralph Allan SmithApril 2, 2019
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Esther

The Book of Esther in Covenant History

It is clear that the events in Esther are an integral part of the history of the formation of the Restoration Covenant Era. Amalek attacks. Amalek is spoiled. The spoils are used to build the Temple, in the sense that the crude Temple of Zerubbabel can now be glorified with…

by James B. JordanMarch 28, 2019
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How to Worship

A Positive View of Music

It is not coincidental that John Calvin speaks most strongly in defense of vernacular language just after his defense of singing in church. "From this also it plainly appears that public prayers must be couched not in Greek among the Latins, nor in Latin among the French or English, as…

by John AhernMarch 26, 2019
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Biblical Theology

The Reopened Wounds of Jacob

In A Voyage Around the World , George Anson recounts the effects of scurvy upon an unfortunate man: But a most extraordinary circumstance, and what would be scarcely credible upon any single evidence, is, that the scars of wounds which had been for many years healed, were forced open again…

by Alastair RobertsMarch 19, 2019

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Literature

Seneca’s failure

Wallace again on Timon of Athens . Wallace argues that Shakespeare has written a play to explore Seneca’s society of benefits and gratitude, and shows that the classical model of social order is impossible: “the cast would appear to have been designed to test the Senecan hypothesis about the nature…

November 1, 2007
Literature

Seneca’s failure

Wallace again on Timon of Athens . Wallace argues that Shakespeare has written a play to explore Seneca’s society of benefits and gratitude, and shows that the classical model of social order is impossible: “the cast would appear to have been designed to test the Senecan hypothesis about the nature…

November 1, 2007
Philosophy

Elizabethan Seneca

Wallace again on Seneca in Shakespeare: “The first separat e publication of De Benficiis in an English translation was Nicholas Haward’s The Line of Liberalitie in 1569, which included only the first three books, but William Baldwin’s popular Treatise of Morall Philosophie had appeared in 1547 and contained one chapter…

November 1, 2007
Literature

Senecan Shakespeare

In a 1986 article in Modern Philology , John Wallace argues that Timon of Athens is “Shakespeare’s Senecan Study,” reflecting on the issues raised by Seneca’s de Beneficiis : “Shakespeare must have been thinking of Seneca, but a safer argument could have been constructed on the premise that Shakespeare was…

November 1, 2007
Literature

Roman trilogy

Paul Cantor describes three of Shakespeare’s Roman plays as a trilogy, moving from the Republic ( Coriolanus ) to the early empire ( Julius Caesar ) to the decadence of Octavian ( Antony and Cleopatra ). Together they form “a kind of historical trilogy, dramatizing the rise and fall of…

November 1, 2007

Fat, Body Parts, Liver Lobes

In her Leviticus as Literature , the late Mary Douglas offers some interesting possibilities for interpreting the prohibition of eating fat and for the arrangement of animal portions on the altar. Her interpretation is guided by her recognition of analogies between Sinai, the tabernacle, and the body, both of the…

November 1, 2007

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