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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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Referees, Players, and Religious Liberty

I recently had an argument with my Lutheran brother concerning the subject of my forthcoming book, The End of Protestantism . The book is a plea to Protestants to pursue a deeper and wider unity within the church. My brother wasn’t convinced, and his response was severalfold: Lutherans aren’t going…

September 15, 2016

Jubilee

W illiam Johnstone points out ( 1 & 2 Chronicles , 1.15–16) that the Chronicler’s chronology “is related to the jubilee (Lev. 25:8–55): in the fiftieth year ‘you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family’ (Lev. 25:10). For C, the…

September 15, 2016

Stand, Serve, Sing

I t’s an ancient insight: Music tunes the soul. Music doesn’t just express what we’re feeling. It forms emotions. Emotions aren’t simply sensations. Emotions, as Robert Solomon has argued, are judgments about the world. Anger is a judgment concerning an outrage or injustice; fear is a judgment that a threat…

September 13, 2016

Sacraments and the Liberal Establishment

D avid L. Schindler ( Ordering Love ) exposes the “instrumentalism” that functions as the public philosophy of what he describes as the “juridical state,” an instrumentalism that he does not hesitate to describe as “violent” insofar as it excludes, in the name of fairness, any “ order of truth…

September 13, 2016

Liturgy and Totalizing Politics

I n his Political Worship , Bernd Wannenwetsch observes that “Worship again and again interrupts the course of the world. Through worship the Christian community testifies that the world is not its own. And this means also that it is not kept alive by politics, as the business of politics,…

September 12, 2016

Learning Like a Tudor

S cott Newstok urges students to learn like Shakespeare in a convocation address at Rhodes College . That means learning rhetoric: “in the Renaissance, rhetoric was nothing less than the fabric of thought itself. Because thinking and speaking well form the basis of existence in a community, rhetoric prepares you…

September 9, 2016

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