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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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Exhortation, October 2

The church is the body and bride of Christ, the people of God and the new Israel, the temple of the Spirit and the house of prayer for all nations. In our sermon text (Eph 6), we learn that the church is also an army. Like soldiers, we must be…

October 2, 2005

Proverbs 10:17-26

INTRODUCTION Proverbs 10 begins a long central section of Proverbs. This is largely a collection of sayings, labeled “The Proverbs of Solomon” in 10:1. The organization is not random, but it is not obvious. At least one can discern topical categories in this section: speech, wealth, expectations for the future.…

October 1, 2005
Philosophy

Philosophy and Theology

Some reflections on a lecture by Mitch Stokes, a new fellow at NSA, concerning the differences between philosophy and theology. Ultimately, I don’t believe there is any room for an absolute distinction of theology and philosophy. This is what Stokes said: He defined both theology and “philosophy broadly construed” in…

October 1, 2005

Idolatry and Comparative Religion

In its origins, the study of comparative religion in the West arose within a Christian context. Many of the early writers in this field emphasized the imperfections of other world religions, and attempted to show how those imperfections were realized or corrected in Christianity. In an 1871 volume entitled Ten…

September 30, 2005

Pillars

Why so much attention to the pillars of Solomon’s temple in 2 Kings 25? It is likely that these were the last major items left. Ahaz had already dismantled the bronze sea and the water chariots. King after king plundered the temple for bribe money. When Nebuchadnezzar came, not much…

September 30, 2005
History

American empire

Fred Anderson and Andrew Clayton suggest a revisionist, imperial reading of American history: “At least from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present, American wars have either expressed a certain kind of imperial ambition or have resulted directly from successes in previous imperial conflicts. ‘Imperialism’ is, of course,…

September 30, 2005

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