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Writing

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

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Christendom

The Fundamentals of the Faith

Reflecting on the centennial of the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, Theopolis contributor Tim Nichols asked Dr. Leithart and me what the five fundamentals of the faith were today . His thoughts went something like this: Back in the early 20th century, in response to a ruinous drift away from the historic Christian…

by Jackson WatersNovember 26, 2025
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Matthew

Testimonium Negativum: Josephus, Matthew’s Gospel, and New Evidence for the Coming Christ

1. Introduction In this article, I delve into some parallels found in the scholarly analysis of two important literary works: the Testimonium Flavianum by Josephus ( Antiquities 18.63–64) and the Olivet Discourse in the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 24–25). These texts have been at the center of countless academic discussions,…

by Jonathan SedlakNovember 18, 2025
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Genesis

Trauma and Glory: Overcoming Suffering with Joseph

Over the last twenty years, our American culture has created a culture of obsession over trauma. This could be a result of publications such as The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, which explores the lasting effect on health that traumatic experiences can have. Or it could…

by Lindsey TollefsonNovember 11, 2025
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Uncategorized

Lips like a Thread of Crimson: Midrash on a Theme from the Song of Solomon

The Beloved celebrates the beauty of his Shulamite’s lips, describing them as “a thread of crimson” upon a mouth that is altogether lovely (Song 4:3). It were easy perhaps to pass by this all too quickly, passing it off, if we attend to it at all, as a kind of…

by Mark BriansNovember 4, 2025
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Culture

The Rule of the Incarnate

This article originally appeared at American Reformer on October 29, 2025. Reproduced with permission. Why the West Was Never Meant to Be Governed by Law Alone Back in the early nineties, I was in the candidate process for Undergraduate Pilot Training with the Texas Air National Guard, hoping to fly…

by Ronald DodsonOctober 31, 2025
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Deuteronomy

A Father’s Liturgical Logic: The Pastoral Aim of the Davidic Revolution

In his book From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution , Peter Leithart shows that David, the author of so many Psalms and the musician who trained choirs, instituted a musical and liturgical revolution of how the people of Israel worshipped. The liturgical revolution in turn was designed to…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 29, 2025
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Our Religious War

M ary Eberstadt doesn't believe we're in a war of the religious v. the secular. In an adapted excerpt from her newly-released It's Dangerous To Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies , she argues that the battle is between “competing faiths: one in the Good Book, and the other in…

June 27, 2016

What Brexit Can't Fix

I an Morris puts the discontent with Western elites, reflected most dramatically in Britain's departure from the E.U., in a larger historical perspective. “Throughout history, when things have gone wrong, people have blamed their leaders,” Morris writes. “In the West, things are now going wrong more than they used to,…

June 27, 2016

Beloved Son and Vineyard

I n his long-anticipated and dramatically-completed (read the Preface) Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels , Richard B. Hays devotes a few pages to the parable of the vineyard as recounted in Mark 12. He observes, as every commentator does, that Jesus is the son who is finally sent to…

June 27, 2016

He Is Not Here

P lace, writes Robert Pogue Harrison ( The Dominion of the Dead ), is established by a hic jacet : “here lies” the body of my ancestors. To this the gospel poses a direction challenge: When the women show up at the tomb of Jesus, angels tell them hic non…

June 24, 2016

Darkness Rebuked

D on't participate in ( sugkoinoneo ) darkness, Paul says (Ephesians 5:11). Communion with darkness is fruitless, sterile ( akarpos ). Instead of communing with the works of darkness, instead of joining them in one dead flesh, we are to “expose” the works of darkness. Elegcho , “expose,” can also…

June 24, 2016

Tomb Culture

I n an essay on “The Evangelical Subversion of Myth,” René Girard examines Matthew 23:27, Jesus's comparison of the Pharisees to whited sepulchers, and Jesus's condemnation of the Pharisees who are sons of those who kill the prophets. On the last passage, Girard cleverly observes that the Pharisees' effort to…

June 23, 2016

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