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Writing

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

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Abortion

Lady Macbeth Christians

I was still a high school student the first time I read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but I will never forget the powerful impact the book had on me. Of course, as a second year student, I did not fully digest the book. In spite of subsequent readings, I…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 26, 2021
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Book Review

Embracing Orthodoxy and Complexity: A Review of Orthodox Anglican Identity by Charles Erlandson

Crises force questions of identity. Identities may remain assumed until some event, or series of events, challenge what may have been taken for granted. The search for identity is an anxious one precisely because it tends to happen in times of upheaval and uncertainty. In his recent book, Orthoxox Anglican…

by Blake JohnsonJanuary 19, 2021
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Biblical Studies

The Half Shekel Temple Tax

Peter Leithart recently wrote a fascinating short piece about the Half Shekel Temple Tax as an atonement. Leithart argues three main points. First that the Sanctuary Shekel was heavier, i.e., more valuable than the everyday shekel. Second, he offers some analysis about the order of magnitude of the purchasing power…

by Jerry BowyerJanuary 12, 2021
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Symbolism

Sandwich for a Fool

There is no denial from the careful reader that 1 Samuel 24 and 26 are telling the same story. Perhaps we should say, virtually the same story. But that the stories are cut from the same cloth is undeniable. What we have over these three chapters—1 Samuel 24-26—is a very…

by Eric RobinsonJanuary 5, 2021
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Marriage

Building Altars & Fire from Heaven: A Wedding Homily

In his novel That Hideous Strength , C.S. Lewis is able to masterfully illustrate in narrative form so many of his insights about the subversive dangers of Leftist political dogma to Christian civilization. Perceptive essays from Lewis like “The Abolition of Man” and “The Inner Ring” are fleshed out in…

by Jeff MeyersDecember 31, 2020
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Ecclesiology

10 Theses of Ecclesiastical Conservatism

At a very practical level, the Evangelical Church has been injected with counterfeit spiritualities. We are a people looking for a city, whose builder may only be in office for four years. Our temptation to veer to the side of the temporal is striking in our day, especially as the…

by Uri BritoDecember 29, 2020

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Jonathan Edwards

Edwards on Union

Ross Hastings argues in Jonathan Edwards and the Life of God that union in the Spirit is the center of Edwards's theology: “union is a significant driving force in Edwards’s Trinitarian theology, if not its overarching trope, and that his theology essentially tells a ‘from eternity, to eternity' story of…

March 21, 2016

God Sending, God Sent

When Moses finds a bush burning on Mount Sinai, he turns aside to look. “Yahweh” sees him turn aside, so “God” ( elohim ) calls from the bush, Moses, Moses (Exodus 3:4). Earlier, we were told that the Angel of Yahweh “appearing in a blazing fire from the midst of…

March 18, 2016

The Music of Chemistry

Ben McFarland wants to convince his readers that the periodic table is a thing of beauty forever ( A World From Dust ). He admits that the table as normally presented is “not quite symmetric,” but points out that with a small adjustment “a mathematical pattern appears”: “By row, there…

March 18, 2016

Trinity in Theory and Practice

Making the Trinity practical seems like a very tall order. Few areas of Christian doctrine are more filled with technical mine fields, terms and concepts that must be used in very specific ways to avoid heresy. We have to talk about a God who is one God and yet somehow…

March 17, 2016

Islamic Syncretism

Andrew Walker's “Eat the Heart Out of the Infidel” reaches deep into the history of African Islam to explain the rise of the murderous Boko Haram movement in Nigeria. The Islam of Western Africa was not a pure Islam, but a syncretic Islam that retained and adapted the preexisting animism.…

March 17, 2016
Architecture

Whom is Architecture For?

In his recent biography of Frank Gehry, Building Art, Paul Goldberger recounts this incident: “a jet-lagged Gehry, already in his eighties, must make his way to a Spanish press conference from an interrupted nap: The first reporter asked him what his response was to charges that his buildings were more…

March 17, 2016

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