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Writing

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

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Culture

Birmingham Life and Culture Series

There’s something about joy that is infectious. And occasionally, we all have the opportunity to be in someone’s presence who is so happily engaged in their work, so joyous in their pursuits, that we want to learn from them. We want to know where that joy comes from and attain…

by Brian MoatsOctober 23, 2015
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How to Worship

How To Change the World, (Part 1)

Jesus has told us that He intends all nations to be discipled. Nations. Not just individuals. All nations as theocracies. That being the case, the Church exists for the life of the world. Being baptized is not only a matter of becoming part of a new family, it is also…

by James B. JordanOctober 22, 2015
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Literature

Adam, Saul, Macbeth

Harold Bloom’s essay on Macbeth includes the kind of penetrating insights that make Bloom the great Shakespearean scholar that he is, but it also includes his typical and intense anti-Christian bias. “If Lear was pre-Christian, then Macbeth is weirdly post-Christian. There are, as we have seen, Christian intimations that haunt…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 20, 2015
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Revelation

Inverted Atonement

Revelation 16 is a day of atonement text. The tabernacle of the testimony has been opened (15:5). The angels who receive the bowls are clothed in linen (15:6), the clothing of the high priest when he goes into the sanctuary on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:4). The temple is…

by Peter LeithartOctober 15, 2015
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Biblical Studies

Music and Hermeneutics

From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…

by James B. JordanOctober 13, 2015
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Biblical Studies

In the Fish: The Church as Tomb

"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). Some reflections on Jonah’s Big Fish have led to the following essay. Let me…

by James B. JordanOctober 8, 2015

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Amos

Donald Gowan’s The Theology of the Prophetic Books is one of the best books on the prophets around. He argues that the message of the prophets, rooted in warnings like Deuteronomy 5:25-31 and 8:19-20, is that Israel will die for her sins. It’s not just that her circumstances are going…

November 30, 2004
Biblical Studies

Allegory: A Test

The test: Who wrote the following comments on the birth of Jesus? “He lies in the manger. Notice here that nothing but Christ is to be preached throughout the whole world. What is the manger but the congregations of Christians in the churches to hear the preaching? We are the…

November 29, 2004
Literature

Greenblatt and the Oxfordians

Cristina Nehring’s Atlantic review of Stephen Greenblatt’s Shakespeare biography, Will in the World , is sharply critical of Greenblatt’s New Historicism: “The ‘commitment’ of New Historicists is to ‘particularity’ - or, one might say, to peculiarity. ‘Trans-historical’ dilemmas like ‘to be or not to be,’ to love or not to…

November 29, 2004

Word “Voiced” by the Spirit

The Son became flesh through the work of the Spirit. Once this pattern is fixed in our minds, we can see foreshadowings of this throughout the OT: God works through His Word, but it is a “voiced” Word, a Word empowered and given authority by God’s “breath.” Creation: Jesus, according…

November 28, 2004

Word “Voiced” by the Spirit

The Son became flesh through the work of the Spirit. Once this pattern is fixed in our minds, we can see foreshadowings of this throughout the OT: God works through His Word, but it is a “voiced” Word, a Word empowered and given authority by God’s “breath.” Creation: Jesus, according…

November 28, 2004

Eucharistic Meditation, first advent

1 Corinthians 15:45: And so it is written, the first man Adam became a living being. The Last Adam became life-giving Spirit. We are celebrating Advent, the coming of Jesus in the flesh, but we celebrate it as a people who have never known Jesus according to the flesh. Jesus…

November 28, 2004

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