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Writing

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

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Ezra

Ezra: The Aaronic Rest-Giver

If you’re a preacher looking for good commentaries on Ezra, you’ll struggle. Certainly to find ones that wrestle in good detail with the text. And certainly ones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg. There’s a good bit more for Nehemiah, which is odd, as the two are…

by Rhys LavertyJune 8, 2021
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1 John

1 John in Community

Quick thought experiment: try to pretend you’ve never read 1 John before. Read 1:1-6. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Now, on to v. 7: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with ______….” What word would you expect in that blank, based…

by Tim NicholsJune 1, 2021
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Hermeneutics

Spending Time with Noah: Reflections on Prepositions in the Flood Narrative

In my work as a Bible translator, I was recently checking our translation team’s draft of Genesis 8:8, which says of Noah (translating the Hebrew quite literally): And he sent out the dove from with him to see: had the waters lessened from upon the face of the ground? Part…

by Josh JensenMay 25, 2021
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Philosophy

Steven Weinberg Destroyed My Faith

Just in case a reader may not know Weinberg, he is a theoretical physicist and the winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1979, as well as countless other prizes for his research. He is also a prolific, lucid, and captivating writer. If you want to read something on…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 18, 2021
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Colossians

Reconciliation in Colossians 1:20

Colossians 1:15-20 is a famous passage in Paul’s epistles because it is a succinct and powerful poem. It appears even to have been a hymn. Given the uniquely Pauline language — “reconciliation” is a term used only by Paul — it should not seem odd to attribute the poem/hymn to…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 11, 2021
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Movies

Terror of Knowing Myself

Stalker (1979) is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky based on Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It shows a day from the life of a stalker, a man who enters the so-called "Zone", an Alien landing site, where he leads people to a room that grants people’s innermost desires, which…

by Bogumil JarmulakMay 4, 2021

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A Few Haiku

her bandanna blue through the cattails by the pond in the green pasture in the pond morning clouds and sun flecks of moonlight like fireflies ?E the ripples of the pond across her chair shafts of sunlight through the lace curtain

April 26, 2004

Exhortation, April 25

Trinity Reformed Church is large enough that it is difficult to know everyone in the church. And now we have been around long enough that it is awkward and embarrassing for us to meet each other. When you introduce yourself and say something like ?Are you visiting??Ethe response might well…

April 26, 2004

Eucharistic Meditation, April 25

Leviticus 22:10-16 In the sermon today, I addressed the some of the challenges and temptations of young adulthood, the priestly stage of life. It is biblically appropriate, as I tried to show, to describe young adulthood in these terms. But we should not let this perspective obscure the more fundamental…

April 25, 2004
History

Making Our Enemies

Lee Harris has some fascinating comments on how the liberal West constructed the Islamic threat in his recent book, Civilization and Its Enemies . Harris points out that the early modern state developed in a kind of Darwinian political world, where only the powerful states could survive. A state was…

April 22, 2004

Freedman Again

Freedman comments, “It may be pure coincidence that the Book of Genesis begins with the words beresit . . . elohim , ‘In the beginning, . . . God . . . ,’ while the book of Ezra-Nehemiah ends with the words elohay letoba , ‘ . . . my…

April 21, 2004

Chronicles and Writings

David Noel Freedman suggests in his book on the unity of the Hebrew Bible a reason for the repetition of the decree of Cyrus at the end of 2 Chron and the beginning of Ezra. He points to certain manuscripts in which Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah enclose the Writings: Chronicles at…

April 21, 2004

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