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American Politics

Voting, Praying, and Purity: Two Different Versions of Civil Religion

Pastor John Piper has written on why he (probably) won’t be voting in this month’s presidential election. Reading his argument, I couldn’t help wondering if voting has a cultic significance to Piper. As much as self-admitted Christian Trump-voters are characterized as cult followers, Never Trump Christians often strike me as…

by Mark HorneOctober 30, 2020
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Literature

Pastor Frankenstein

Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself… –– Victor Frankenstein In Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Victor Frankenstein is a young intellectual with an excessive thirst for glory and worldwide acclaim. Having lost his beloved mother, Frankenstein works to…

by Drew KnowlesOctober 27, 2020
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How to Worship

Against Practical Preaching

“Our daughter is just like a baby hippo,” my wife says to me as I hang my coat up. “After we watched a video of hippos munching whole watermelons, she sat down to her own watermelon lunch. She gobbled them up with those same puffy cheeks and big eyes.” My…

by John HigginsOctober 22, 2020
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Abortion

Evangelicals for Adolf: Christians in Hitler’s Germany

Christian compromise with Nazi Germany’s political leadership is well documented in painful detail. There was resistance, but it was the exception rather than the rule. German Christianity was terribly timid. Leadership lacked spiritual strength because of serious Biblical ignorance and unbelief. But it was not just the leaders. Christians in…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 20, 2020
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Abortion

For Whom Should a Christian Vote: Moral Reasoning and the 2020 Election

Can a Christian vote for Donald Trump? That might seem like a surprising question given the widespread evangelical support for the President. Yet for a growing number of evangelicals, to vote for Trump is to endorse his moral repugnancy and further discredit gospel-believing Christians who have sold their birthright for…

by Blake JohnsonOctober 13, 2020
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Hermeneutics

Two Yeshuas and a Fish

Thirty-eight years is a long time to take getting somewhere (Deut. 2:14). You could just ask anyone in the unfaithful generation of people whom God brought to the edge of the Promised Land the first time under Moses—if they were still alive, that is (Num. 14:22-23, 32-35). But there are…

by Eric RobinsonOctober 6, 2020

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Ritual and Ceremony

The terms “ceremony” and “ritual” became sneer-words nearly as soon as they were introduced into English and other European languages, according to Edward Muir’s Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2005): “Around the turn of the sixteenth century, as Thomas Greene has persuasively shown, ‘a kind of crisis confronted the…

December 1, 2006

Re-creation

Richard Davidson, writing in the Andrews University Seminary Studies (Spring 2004), shows that the restoration of the world after the flood follows the creation week: 1. Spirit/wind, Gen 1:2; 8:1 2. Division of waters, 1:6-8; 8:1-5 3. Dry land and plants, 1:9-13; 8:5-12 4. Lights, 1:14-19; 8:13-14 5. Animals (birds…

December 1, 2006

Thoughts on Jonah

Some random thoughts on Jonah, inspired by a conversation with my student, Brillana McLean. 1) The first chapters of Jonah seem to follow something of an exit-and-return story. Jonah gets in a boat and crosses some water; he is cast out and is swallowed by the waters and by a…

November 30, 2006
Uncategorized

Sermon notes, First Advent

INTRODUCTION Individual angels, particularly the angel of Yahweh, appear regularly in the Old Testament (Genesis 16:7, 11; Exodus 14:19; Numbers 22:23-24; Judges 13:3; 2 Kings 1:3, 15). Occasionally, individual angels are named (Daniel 8:16; 10:13, 21). Far less frequently, groups of angels appear (Genesis 19:1 [a pair]; 28:12; 32:1; Job…

November 30, 2006
Philosophy

Nietzsche and Foucault

If postmodern theorists are Marxists, they are Marxists of a particular stripe, in that their Marxism is crossed by Nietzschean pessimism. They believe that power struggles are at the center of history but no longer believe that these power struggles will end in an ideal classless society. Revelations concerning the…

November 30, 2006
Literature

Rise of fictionality

Novels, we say, are long prose fictions, but general the terms of that definition are left unexamined. What is “prose” after all? What, Catherine Gallagher wants to ask, is fiction? And how did fictionality become established as the matter-of-factly defining characteristic of the novel. It is often assumed that “fiction”…

November 27, 2006

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