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Writing

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

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Christmas

Rachel’s Reward: A Review of The Night of the Hunter

Thus says the Lord: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jer 31:15). The Night of the Hunter belongs on every Christian’s Christmas list. My family has even…

by Brian McLainDecember 30, 2025
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Advent

Angels, Angels, and More Angels

One important part of Jesus's birth narrative is the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, announcing that she would bear a son. And then, on the night Jesus was born, a whole host of angels appeared to the shepherds. Angels are mysterious creatures to us.…

by Adam McIntoshDecember 24, 2025
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Culture

Devilish Irony: The Blind Service of The Satanic Temple

I was settled nicely into my chair and listening to the conversation in an undergrad religion seminar, my last required course to graduate. Though a few Christians sat scattered around the room, the course itself was dedicated to poking holes in traditional understandings of the Bible: our readings deconstructed notions…

by Alexander HibbsDecember 18, 2025
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Christmas

The Typology of Home Alone

God’s symbols belong to Him and to His people. They are constantly at work in the world, including the world of film, music, painting, architecture, and other artforms. You cannot escape God’s symbols or the meaning He has woven into the created order. Artists use and borrow God’s symbols, whether…

by Brian MoatsDecember 17, 2025
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Theology

The Old Testament’s Multiethnic Israel

For centuries, Christians identified Israel in the Old Testament as a single, literal ethnic group, often called “the Jews.” Even supersessionists – those who believed the Church superseded Israel – assumed the clear-cut, technical definition of “Israel” in the Bible is the ethnic group. However, a deeper dive into Genesis,…

by John CarpenterDecember 9, 2025
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Matthew

Mission Accomplished: John the Baptizer and the Highway to Holiness (Matthew 11:1–6)

Misreading Intent In the opening verses of Matthew 11, the reader is confronted immediately by John the baptizer who has been imprisoned since 4:12. John poses a question to Jesus, inquiring from prison as to whether or not he is Israel’s awaited Messiah or if they should anticipate another: “Are…

by Jonathan SedlakDecember 2, 2025
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Trinitarian love

Toward the end of Love’s Work , Rose offers a quasi-Augustinian account of love: ” L’amour se revele en retirer . If the Lover retires too far, the light of love is extinguished and the Beloved dies; if the Lover approaches too near the Beloved, she is effaced by the…

May 12, 2009
Philosophy

Violence deeper than violence

Of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas, Gillian Rose wrote, “The separation in their work of the lesson of love or perficient commandment from the actualities of law or coercion suffuses their ethics with an originary violence that has been borrowed from the political modernity which they refuse to historicize.” That opens…

May 12, 2009

Analogy of being

David Hart ( In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments ) explains the analogy of being by pointing to the difference between God (whose essence is existence) and us (whose essence in no way implies existence, and who do not even possess our essence, since we become “by losing what we…

May 11, 2009
History

Against the Priests

Jesus castigates corrupt priests and scribes for oppressing the people of God. So does Luther. So do the leaders of the Enlightenment. Shouldn’t we at least give the last of these credit for getting something fundamentally right?

May 11, 2009
Media

Constantinian media

Miami priest Alberto Cutie is found in an illicit sexual relationship. A few days later he’s on CBS “Early Show” confessing and explaining what happened. Did his bishop approve the media appearance? “Constantinianism” is, in Yoder’s terms, the church’s peace with the world; as RR Reno has explained Hauerwas, the…

May 11, 2009

Doing what I do not wish

Romans 7 is about the law, and the effects that the law has on someone (Paul) who is living in the flesh. When the law comes, it divided Paul into two, like a sacrifice, killing him and leaving him desperate for new life, which he found in Christ and His…

May 11, 2009

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