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Writing

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

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Technology

Simulation as Inoculation

Every advent of new media creates the justifiable reaction from some that the necessarily accompanied amputation may not be worth the extension made possible by the new tools. This is not unique to the Digital Age. Lamoignon Malesherbes, the French politician who was counsel for the defense of Louis XVI,…

by Garrett SoucyApril 2, 2024
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Eschatology

Reject Optimism

A response to Gage Crowder's " The Hole in our Hope ?" Already, the first pages of the Bible promise a bright future. The story starts with the creation of heaven and earth, where heaven is perfect, but the earth is in a state of formless emptiness. Yet, God takes…

by Bogumil JarmulakMarch 27, 2024
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Eschatology

The Hole in our Hope? A Rejoinder

A rejoinder to Bubu Jarmulak's essay, " Embrace Pessimism ." Whereas calumnious critiques are reflections of more on the critic than the work criticized, good critiques are always opportunities for reassessment and improvement if they are received as such . Since its renaissance, the biblical doctrine of postmillennialism—or “optimistic eschatology,”…

by Gage CrowderMarch 26, 2024
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Biblical Studies

Jesus Did Not Pray to Avoid the Cross at Gethsemane

Several decades ago, a pastor (and friend) mentioned in passing at one of our regular breakfasts together that he wasn’t satisfied with the usual reading of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane, the usual reading being that Jesus asked the Father to avoid the Cross at Gethsemane. We turned to the passage,…

by James R. RogersMarch 19, 2024
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Church Music

Holy Toledo: A Critique of Eclecticism

On May 21, 1604, the cathedral of Toledo in Spain held job interviews for the post of choirmaster, the head of music at the church. The position had been vacated when the previous occupant, Alonso Lobo, was poached by the nearby cathedral of Seville, and Toledo needed a replacement who…

by John AhernMarch 5, 2024
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Covenant

The Docetic Covenant and Phantom Church Membership

Imagine — counterfactually: on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus held up an empty hand and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant poured out for you. Drink of it.’ But there was no cup, no wine, nothing. If there’s no sign of the covenant, is there…

by John CarpenterFebruary 27, 2024

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Sermon outline

INTRODUCTION John’s readers are in danger of being misled, and John writes to warn them about false teachers and deceivers. John is confident that his “little children” will be delivered from the deceivers because they have an “anointing” from God. THE TEXT “Little children, it is the last hour; and…

October 31, 2006
Theology

Liberalism

Christopher Insole wants theologians who attack “liberalism” to be more careful about what they’re attacking. He favorably cites Robert Song, who distinguishes the constitutional liberalism of Locke and Kant from the laissez-faire liberalism of Hayek from the welfare liberalism of Hobhouse. Fair enough. But Insole’s own definition of liberalism seems…

October 23, 2006

Eucharistic meditation

1 John 2:15-16: Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. When John talks about “the world,” he’s talking, as we’ve seen, about a cultural, social, and political system organized in hostility or…

October 22, 2006

Exhortation

Cultures have traditionally been rivers (Z. Bauman). The current carries everyone along in the same direction, whether or not they like where they’re going. When someone asks, “Why are we going this way?” it’s a sufficient answer to say, “We always have.” The only way to go a different direction…

October 22, 2006
History

Legitimacy of modernity

Modernity arose to tame the chaos and carnage of 16th and 17th-century European wars. To form a Europe reduced to formlessness, modern thinkers and politicians drew boundaries - the boundaries between Protestant and Catholic established in the Peace of Westphalia and the boundaries between religion and political life, among others.…

October 19, 2006
History

High and Low Theater

Katherine Newey suggests that “a class-based divide between popular culture and literary or ‘high,’ remaining to this day, emerged in debates over the reform of the theatre [in the 19th century]. Much of what still endures of the concept of ‘legitimate’ theatre in the early twenty-first century was formed out…

October 18, 2006

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