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Writing

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

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Soothing Pain is not Enough

In Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood (2024), Keith Hayward says that we live in a “therapy culture.” This is “a way of thinking” about upbringing and education “when the values and language of counseling and psychotherapy break out from the clinical setting and take hold within the cultural imagination…

by Bogumil JarmulakJune 5, 2025
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Biblical Theology

Sarah, Abraham’s Helper

In Genesis 20:13, Abraham reveals that when he and his wife left their father’s house, he asked Sarah to call him her brother, not her husband. Abraham looked ahead to the land before them, a land full of violence, and he didn’t trust men there. He believed they would see…

by Donald LinnemeyerJune 3, 2025
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Biblical Studies

Why You Should Read the Biblical Languages

Introduction I am sitting in a rural village in the northern part of a West African country. I’m in the courtyard of an imam. Two other Christians are with me. It’s hot and dusty, but we have come to read Scripture and talk together. As a local Christian takes the…

by Calvin HaysMay 29, 2025
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On Merriment

This is the wey to al good aventure; Be glad, thou reder, and thy sorwe of-caste -Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parlement of Foulys, 131–132 In January I had the honor and delight of speaking at the Church of the Redeemer’s 2025 Christendom Lectures. What follows are drawn from the notes for…

by Mark BriansMay 27, 2025
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Galatians

The Letter: A Fictional Account of the Writing of Galatians

I had often heard that wisdom is visible in the countenance and I thought that I had seen examples of it in the past. But the man who stood before me, loosely holding the reins of the mare and peering around him with sharp interest, gave no outward hint of…

by Christian LeithartMay 22, 2025
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Revelation

Satan’s Final Throne Room Accusation

And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light — 1 Corinthians 11:14 In Revelation 5:2, the first of three “Mighty Angels” appears before the throne of God and preaches in a great voice, asking, “Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the…

by Ryan SpencerMay 20, 2025

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Decolonized World

I n their just-released Decolonization: A Short History , Jan Jansen and Jurgen Osterhammel observe that decolonization not only remade the maps of former colonies, but also involved the “Europeanization of Europe” and produced changes in political norms and expectations. “Decolonization,” they write “led to ‘Europe falling back on itself,'…

January 13, 2017

Caldwell on America's Fighting Faith

Christopher Caldwell's review of Walter McDougall's The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy is sooo good. McDougall explains (as his subtitle has it) “How America's Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest.” That betrayal arises from several sources. One is the vagueness of American civil religion, which means, Caldwell says, that it…

January 13, 2017

Eucharistic Sacrifice

T he joint Lutheran-Catholic reflection on the Reformation, From Conflict to Communion , acknowledges that medieval Catholicism was muddled on Eucharistic sacrifice. As a result of a “loss of an integrative concept of commemoration, Catholics were faced with the difficulty of the lack of adequate categories with which to express…

January 12, 2017

Iustus et Peccator?

F rom Conflict to Communion , the Lutheran-Catholic commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, offers a summary of Luther's theology, particularly on the points of dispute between Catholics and Lutherans. They offer the following summary of Luther's claim that believers remain simul iustus et peccator , simultaneously just…

January 12, 2017

David's Ammonite War

1 Chronicles 18–20 record David's wars with immediate neighbors of Israel. The chapters are organized chiastically: A. War with Philistia and Moab, 18:1 B. War with Ammon, Aram, and Edom, 18:2-13 C. David reigns with justice and righteousness, 18:14-17 B'. War with Ammon and Aram, 19:1-20:3 A'. War with Philistia,…

January 11, 2017

The Geography of David's Conquest

1 Chronicles 18–20 brings together David's conquests into a neatly packaged unit. (In Samuel, the same wars are scattered over several chapters.) By the end of chapter 20, David has established control over greater Israel, the ideal kingdom promised to Abraham (Genesis 15), stretching from the Euphrates (18:4) to the…

January 10, 2017

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