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Writing

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

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Soothing Pain is not Enough

In Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood (2024), Keith Hayward says that we live in a “therapy culture.” This is “a way of thinking” about upbringing and education “when the values and language of counseling and psychotherapy break out from the clinical setting and take hold within the cultural imagination…

by Bogumil JarmulakJune 5, 2025
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Biblical Theology

Sarah, Abraham’s Helper

In Genesis 20:13, Abraham reveals that when he and his wife left their father’s house, he asked Sarah to call him her brother, not her husband. Abraham looked ahead to the land before them, a land full of violence, and he didn’t trust men there. He believed they would see…

by Donald LinnemeyerJune 3, 2025
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Biblical Studies

Why You Should Read the Biblical Languages

Introduction I am sitting in a rural village in the northern part of a West African country. I’m in the courtyard of an imam. Two other Christians are with me. It’s hot and dusty, but we have come to read Scripture and talk together. As a local Christian takes the…

by Calvin HaysMay 29, 2025
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On Merriment

This is the wey to al good aventure; Be glad, thou reder, and thy sorwe of-caste -Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parlement of Foulys, 131–132 In January I had the honor and delight of speaking at the Church of the Redeemer’s 2025 Christendom Lectures. What follows are drawn from the notes for…

by Mark BriansMay 27, 2025
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Galatians

The Letter: A Fictional Account of the Writing of Galatians

I had often heard that wisdom is visible in the countenance and I thought that I had seen examples of it in the past. But the man who stood before me, loosely holding the reins of the mare and peering around him with sharp interest, gave no outward hint of…

by Christian LeithartMay 22, 2025
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Revelation

Satan’s Final Throne Room Accusation

And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light — 1 Corinthians 11:14 In Revelation 5:2, the first of three “Mighty Angels” appears before the throne of God and preaches in a great voice, asking, “Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the…

by Ryan SpencerMay 20, 2025

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Dangerous Tradition

Rex Koivisto argues ( One Lord, One Faith , 155-6) that all churches have traditions, including supposedly Bible-only Evangelicals. All traditions can harden into harmful habits, but Koivisto thinks that this danger is particularly threatening among Evangelicals who claim to be free of tradition. “The danger . . . comes…

April 13, 2015

The Marriage Pledge

The debate over the marriage pledge has died down, but it shouldn't be dismissed. It still has a useful function, a clarifying function. Those who signed the marriage pledge were refusing to sign state marriage licenses. The point behind the pledge was to distinguish between what the law now calls…

April 13, 2015

Springs and Rivers

Revelation is addressed to the church in a wilderness, a generation-long period between Jesus' exaltation and the fall of Jerusalem. Like Israel in the wilderness, the church needs to find sources of fresh, life-giving water. Fresh water is promised (7:17) and eventually given (21:5-6; 22:1, 17), but in between unpolluted…

April 13, 2015

Liberalism and the State

Steve Pincus argues that 1688 marked the “first modern revolution. The Glorious Revolution couldn't have taken the form it did without the “series of ideological debates that informed and transformed conceptions of state, religion, and society” in the middle of the century (8). From these debates emerged a vision for…

April 10, 2015

Pascalian Politics

Paul Griffiths ( Decreation ) argues that “quietism” about political interest and judgment is a sign here and now of the future quietus of heaven. “Quietism” doesn't mean a retreat from advocacy or passion. Citing Pascal, Griffiths lays out a version of political advocacy that renounces political calculations of a…

April 10, 2015

Judaizers Left and Right

Elizabethan Puritans were regularly denounced as “Judaizers” by others in the English church. After all, they were interested in Hebrew, kept the Sabbath, exhibited what others regarded as a legalistic strain in their piety. During the Laudian ceremony controversy of the 1630s, however, Puritans turned the tables and accused the…

April 9, 2015

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