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Writing

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Culture

Why We Should Jettison the “Strong Female Character”: (Part 1)

The trailer for the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story , was released last week. Following the success of the revival of the franchise in last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens , anticipation is unsurprisingly at a fever pitch. As in the case of The…

by Alastair RobertsMarch 6, 2018
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Epistemology

Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World: Integration Requires an Integrative Epistemology: Michael Polanyi

The word, “integration,” can sound abstract, technical, unhelpful. But as I represented it in my first installment on this matter , I take it instead to be the central desire of our lives. We long to integrate life, and to integrate ourselves. I offered as a preliminary definition, that integration…

by Esther Lightcap MeekMarch 1, 2018
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How to Worship

Worship as Ordination

Anyone who has read his Bible straight through has done it. Admit it. When you get to those parts in Exodus that deal with the instructions for and construction of the Tabernacle, your eyes glaze over and your mind begins to wander. Measurements, lists of materials, meticulous details about clothes…

by Bill SmithFebruary 27, 2018
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Biblical Theology

Bread and Cup

This article is a continuation of James Jordan's article, " From Bread to Wine ". We will here investigate the use of the word “cup” for the wine. I suggest that the cup itself corresponds to the firmament shell between heaven and earth, and that the liquid in the cup…

by James B. JordanFebruary 22, 2018
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Atonement

Streams in the Desert

And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered…

by Arthur KayFebruary 20, 2018
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Biblical Theology

From Bread to Wine

In the Bible, bread (and beer, usually translated “strong drink,” liquid bread made from grain) is priestly and wine is kingly and prophetic. Bread comes first and wine later. Bread is alpha food while wine is omega food. You eat bread in the morning and drink wine at night. Bread…

by James B. JordanFebruary 15, 2018

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Confessing Trinity

The point of Trinitarian theology is not simply that there are three instead of one. We can’t just plug our pre-conceptions about God into the Trinity, and say that now we are Trinitarian. We can’t assume Deism, the idea that God is a watchmaker who leaves the world to run…

December 15, 2015

The Common-Sensical Bishop Berkeley, 1

. He There is often a gap between the popular perception of a philosopher’s teaching and his own conception of his teaching. But the gap in Berkeley’s case is particularly wide. On the one hand, there is his own professed plan to justify common sense and combat skepticism. He reiterates…

December 15, 2015

Fathers and Sons in Ulysses

Joyce's Ulysses has a pendulum structure. JH Raleigh (in an essay in Joyce's Ulysses , 102) points out the contrast of filius and mater as these are the poles around which the action is organized: “solitary and single vs conjoined, both licitly and illicitly; homeless rover vs statonary huswife (husey);…

December 14, 2015

The God who Predestines

Paul begins the substance of the letter to the Ephesians by “blessing” God (1:3). As is well known, in Greek, verses 3-14 form a single long sentence, with one verb, “Blessed” (v. 3). This reflects a form of Jewish prayer, called the Berekah. It is not a request for God…

December 14, 2015

Rhetoric, Classical and Christian

In his The Invention of Christian Discourse , Vernon Robbins explains how and why Christian discourse and rhetoric diverged from classical models. Ryan Leif Hanson summarizes the argument in Silence and Praise : “Classical rhetoric understands the basic social reality of persons as based in the Graeco-Roman urban environment. In…

December 14, 2015

Retreat from Scripture

Marilynne Robinson is a theological anomaly. A self-confessed Calvinist, admirer of Calvin and Edwards, defender of original sin and predestination (which, she says right, is not determinism), she is also a self-described liberal Christian who tends to take predictably liberal positions on moral and political question and to use sneering…

December 11, 2015

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