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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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Proverbs 24:8-9

Verse 8 returns to some of the concerns of verse 1. Evil men meditate on violence (v. 1), and they also calculate, plot, and deliberately work out how to do evil (v. 8). This, again, is not simple foolishness or naïvete. This is deliberate, planned evil. In some passages the…

November 1, 2008

The Name of Jesus

Barth insists that the center of the New Testament is Jesus, and that without Him there is nothing to be said. The list found in 1 Corinthians 1:30 - wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption - “become a meaningless statement in spite of the high content of its predicates” without Jesus. For…

October 31, 2008

Anselm the rationalist?

Not according to Barth ( CD 1.2) Anselm does not move from the possibility of incarnation to its reality, but instead throughout his argument assumes the reality he’s attempting to understand: “his method cannot be called rationalistic, because of all the decisive elements by which he proves that the incarnation…

October 31, 2008

Proverbs 24:1-7

INTRODUCTION Back in 22:20, Solomon writes that he has written “excellent things” to his son. Waltke, following other commentators, suggests that the word for “excellent” is better understood as a number, thirty. Thus, Solomon asks rhetorically, “Have I not written to you thirty sayings?” Those thirty sayings are contained in…

October 31, 2008
History

Offense of Christianity

Jones again, commenting on the different treatment of Jews and Christians by the Roman government: “The Jews were a race who practised the traditional worship of their ancestors, and had at an early date, while still a political unit, obtained from Rome legal recognition of their peculiar practices. With their…

October 30, 2008
History

Political religion

A.H.M. Jones notes that most of the considerable religious fervor of the third and fourth centuries was devoted to other-worldly, escapist religion. That makes the triumphalism of Constantine’s Christian faith all the most striking. Constantine regularly expresses the belief that service to the Supreme God, the Christian God, will guarantee…

October 30, 2008

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