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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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Culpable gloom

“Follow the ways of your heart and what your eyes see; and know that on account of all these, God will bring you into judgment.” The last part of this is often taken as a warning about the limits of joy and pleasure-taking. Seow thinks otherwise: “Human beings are supposed…

January 25, 2006

Calvinist Proof Text

Ecclesiastes 11:5 emphasizes the limitations of human knowledge by emphasizing that God works everything: “you do not know the works of God (ELOHIM) who does all (Y’SH ET-HAKOL).” There are two possible translations of the last relative clause: 1) “who does all.” If we go with this translation, we have…

January 25, 2006

Portions to eight

I saw a man hoarding his treaures, building bigger barns and stuffing his safety deposit boxes and worrying over his portfolio. Disaster struck, and he lost everything because he had everything to lose. He didn’t even have three comforters. I saw a man throwing around his money with abandon, emptying…

January 25, 2006

Bread on Waters

I saw a man with a bag of seed. He looked at the sky to discern the weather, and decided tomorrow would be a better day to plant. The next day, he invented instruments to test the humidity and to predict the wind, and decided that tomorrow would be a…

January 25, 2006

Historicist Reduction of Freud

As Jones presents it, the logic of repression of sexual desires is as follows: 1) The desires are most likely to be repressed are those that are socially disapproved, disapproved by the “herd.” 2) We unconsciously push back those disapproved desire. The imagery is hydraulic: Repressing disapproved desires creates pressure,…

January 25, 2006

What Psychology Taught Us

Ernest Jones notes an essential contribution of modern psychology: “We are beginning to see man not as the smooth, self-acting agent he pretends to be, but as he really is, a creature only dimly conscious of the various influences that mould his thought and action, and blindly resisting with all…

January 25, 2006

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