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Writing

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

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Epistemology

A Cheer for the Mystics

Mystical theologians are often unguarded, extreme, un-nuanced, pressing to the edges of heresy, sometimes beyond. Still, the mystics are worthy of study. Why? Many reasons. Unlike some late medieval and post-Reformation dogmaticians, mystical theologians are often instinctively and richly Trinitarian. Historical-critical approaches to Scripture left mystical theologians virtually untouched; mystics…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 2, 2013
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Literature

Shadow and Substance in Shakespeare's Venice

Portia of Belmont is a “lady richly left,” as Bassanio says of her in the first Act of The Merchant of Venice . Plus, she’s beautiful and wise. Suitors clamber to Belmont in hope. Her father knew it would be so, and in his will set up a fairy-tale test…

by Peter LeithartAugust 28, 2013
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Liturgy

Liturgy Traps

[fve]http://vimeo.com/72195198[/fve]

by James B. JordanAugust 26, 2013
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Deuteronomy

Victory Food

In the nature of the case, “the” Christian meditation on Deuteronomy 14:1-21 cannot be written. Meditation offers too many possibilities, opens too many doors. There is not one and only one correct set of associations for a Christian to consider when thinking of Deuteronomy 14:1-21. We could, for example, consider…

by Ralph Allan SmithAugust 21, 2013
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Romans

David's Sin and Israel's Salvation, Part I

Having retold the story of the cumulative sin of Israel leading to the great atonement on the cross, Paul then reemphasizes that, just as both Jew and Gentiles were locked into sin and judgment, now they are both justified by faith: Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.…

by Mark HorneAugust 20, 2013
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Deuteronomy

You are what you eat

Deuteronomy 14 is full of allusions to events of Israel’s history and other portions of Scripture. What would an Israelite learn by mediation on these allusions? The answer, I believe, is at least fourfold. Faith, Worship, War For the ancient Israelite first hearing Moses’ sermon, or perhaps hearing it read…

by Ralph Allan SmithAugust 15, 2013

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Spirit, Charity, Grace

Peter Lombard argued (Book 1, distinction 17 of the Sentences ) that the Spirit is both the love by which God loves us and the origin of the love by which we love Him: “the Holy Spirit is the Love [amor] of the Father and the Son, by which They…

May 18, 2006
History

Dissent and Disestablishment

In another chapter of the same book, Larsen argues that British secularization promoted by Dissenters within England, and on specifically theological grounds. According to the “Protestant Dissenters’ Catechism” (published 1772, by Samuel Palmer), a church is “a congregation, or voluntary soceity of Christians, who meet together to attend gospel ordinances…

May 18, 2006
History

Strauss in England

In his book Contested Christianity (Baylor, 2004), Wheaton historian Timothy Larsen examines the reception of DF Strauss’s Life of Jesus in England. He suggests that only Darwin’s Origin of Species rivals Strauss’s book as a challenge to orthodoxy in Victorian England. Yet, the book’s impact had less to do with…

May 18, 2006

Road to Wittenberg revisited

In response to my comments about the “road to Rome” charge, Eric Enlow of Handong International Law School writes: “I would connect sacramentalism with the road to Rome for an empirical reason. The individuals that I have known who have been most interested in sacramentalism have converted to Roman Catholicism.…

May 16, 2006

Sermon Outline, Sixth Sunday of Easter

INTRODUCTION Manasseh undergoes a demonic “repentance”: Verse 3 says “he turned, he built,” using the Hebrew verb that normally designates repentance (“turn”). He “repents” of Hezekiah’s reforms. Because of this, the Lord determines to repeat in Jerusalem what he did in Shiloh (v. 12; cf. 1 Samuel 3:11; Jeremiah 19:3).…

May 15, 2006

Eucharistic Meditation, Fifth Sunday of Easter

2 Kings 20:8-11: Now Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord the third day? And Isaiah said, This shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord…

May 14, 2006

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