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Writing

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

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Ascension

The Son of Man in the Clouds | Part 1

References to the Son of Man coming on the clouds occur five times in the Synoptic Gospels. Three times such expressions appear in the parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:36; Luke 21:27). Then, in parallel accounts of Jesus’ trial before the leaders of Israel, such expressions…

by Ralph Allan SmithMarch 3, 2020
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Biblical Studies

The New Torahs

Just what the difference is in the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the New Testament is a question not so easily answered. The distinction is often said to be that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is on the believer, but in the New…

by Richard BledsoeFebruary 25, 2020
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Movies

1917: A Visible Word

1. Introduction You should think of 1917 at church on Sunday. Why? Let me explain. There's one film every Oscar season which everyone seems to have watched—your parents, your colleagues, even your pastor. This year, it's 1917— Sam Mendes' WW1 epic following two British Tommies on a seemingly impossible quest…

by Rhys LavertyFebruary 18, 2020
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Immigration

Greater Israel

This piece was originally part of the Bowyer response to the Theopolis series surrounding Professor McDermott’s essay, “Rethinking Israel.” For the sake of brevity, it was removed from the initial response, to be published as a standalone piece. As we’ve argued previously , we are strongly supportive of the right…

by Jerry and Charles BowyerFebruary 11, 2020
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Matthew

Matthew the Tax Collector

Richard Bauckham’s groundbreaking work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony , is profoundly insightful, but the message of the book is hampered by the presupposition of Marcan priority. Ironically the place where this assumption perhaps does its most damage is in Bauckham’s discussion of the apostle Matthew…

by Ralph Allan SmithFebruary 4, 2020
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Good Works

Faith as the Highest Work

The Protestant Reformation was defined by certain clarifying disagreements between the medieval Church and those who came to be known as Protestant Reformers. Chief among these was the nature of justification: whether one was justified by works, or by faith and works, or—as Martin Luther contended—by faith alone. Now over…

by Alexander WhitakerJanuary 28, 2020

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Literature

Plus choses changent

Long before Greenblatt and the New Historicists, Shakespeare had been interpreted as a commentator on the religious or political circumstances of Elizabethan England. Among the interpretations of Hamlet summarized by Ernest Jones in his essay on Oedipus and Hamlet (first published in 1910!) are the notions that the play is…

January 25, 2006

Jesus’ Thoughts

Donald Macleod offers some intriguing insights in his IVP book on the Person of Christ: In many respects, Jesus’ human knowledge was like our own, as He learned about His Father through revelation: “his own capacity for such knowledge would differ significantly from that of ordinary men. But it would…

January 24, 2006

Jesus’ Thoughts

Donald Macleod offers some intriguing insights in his IVP book on the Person of Christ: In many respects, Jesus’ human knowledge was like our own, as He learned about His Father through revelation: “his own capacity for such knowledge would differ significantly from that of ordinary men. But it would…

January 24, 2006
Literature

Hamlet: Act 1

Still more. ACT 1, SCENE 1 Several things about the first scene are worth examining. First, the play begins on a cold and bitter night on the ramparts of Elsinore. The darkness provides a fitting setting for the revelation that the world is out of joint, that something is rotten…

January 24, 2006
Literature

Hamlet: Texts

More notes toward a lecture. Shakespeare’s Hamlet exists in three significantly different forms. The earliest published text, the First Quarto or the “Bad Quarto,” appeared in 1603. Though recognizably Shakespeare’s play, it is different in many significant ways, and scholars have speculated that it is the product of one of…

January 24, 2006
Literature

Hamlet: Sources

Some notes toward a lecture on Hamlet. When Shakespeare put the story of Hamlet on stage in the early seventeenth century, the story was already an old one. Saxo Grammaticus, a 12th-century monk, told the story of Amleth, Prince of Jutland in his Historiae Danicae. According to Saxo’s version of…

January 24, 2006

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