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Writing

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

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Poetry

The Donkey

G.K. Chesterton assumes a surprising and memorable perspective from which to view the events of Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1-11) The Donkey by: G.K. Chesterton When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head…

by Arthur KayApril 14, 2022
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Hermeneutics

The Tree, the Cross, and the Supper

There is a common biblical principle: you must give back what you steal. In the Bible, restitution is repayment with interest. If you rob someone of their money, you have to pay back double what you stole. A thief must pay back fourfold if he steals a sheep, and if…

by Kyle LammottApril 12, 2022
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Isaiah

The King’s Cure

Identifying Isaiah’s suffering servant with the promised Messiah is unthinkable for a Jew because it combines the offices of humble priest and victorious king. While it is frustrating that Jews refuse to see the sufferings of Christ in Isaiah 53, the reluctance of Christians to interpret the passage in its…

by Mike BullApril 5, 2022
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How to Worship

When Our Men Sing Again

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Psalm 150:6 (ESV) The command to praise God is pervasive throughout Scripture. In the verse above the Spirit calls all things with breath to praise the Lord. Song is also clearly featured all throughout Scripture and is a featured…

by Grant Van BrimmerMarch 29, 2022
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Culture

The Transgender Bait and Switch

“Gender is a social construct.” That’s shocking to people who have assumed that gender and sex were synonyms but at least since I was in college, in the ‘80s, we were taught that “gender” refers to the forms, the customs, the traditions that our culture teaches us to define what…

by John CarpenterMarch 22, 2022
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Biblical Studies

Israel, Judah, and the Narrative Flow of the Bible

In Genesis 49, Jacob prophesies about (blesses and curses?) his twelve sons. The first three of them don’t fare well. Jacob recalls Reuben’s offense of taking his concubine (Genesis 35:22) and the murderous violence of Simeon’s and Levi against the Canaanite inhabitants of the city of Shechem (Genesis 34). He…

by Mark HorneMarch 17, 2022

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Clever Drudge

Drudge couldn’t care a whit for Hillary Clinton, but his increasingly provocative headlines (most recently, “Diss-Off”) for a story on how Obama never considered Hillary as a veep candidate can have only one result: To get Hillary’s supporters, already cool toward Obama, hopping mad.

August 22, 2008

Enlightenment and elementary principles

Kant regards positive religions or ecclesiastical faiths (including Christianity) as temporary moral crutches that we can shed as we approach the pure natural religion of reason. Christianity’s institutions, sacraments, dogmas, are the stoicheia leading us to enlightenment. Here we see the problematics of Christian sacramental theology, going back at least…

August 22, 2008
Philosophy

Changing past and realism

Weberman returns to Danto to advance his argument. He notes that Danto shies away from saying that past events change, and suggests that he did this in order to remain a realist about past events; Danto held that “past events are what they are in a mind-independent way.” He insists…

August 19, 2008
Philosophy

Nonfixity of past

In an article in the Review of Metaphysics (1997), David Weberman argues for the “nonfixity of the historical past.” He starts from Arthur Danto’s argument that historical inquiry and writing cannot be a reconstruction available to an “ideal chronicler” who knows everything that happens the moment it happens and sets…

August 19, 2008

Union card

E. Miner wrote, that “the ability to declare typology absent is a kind of proof of sound modern critical method.” Which translated means, Skepticism about typology is the union card of serious biblical scholarship.

August 19, 2008

Brick Hermeneutics

A. K. A. Adam offers a useful critique of what he calls “brick hermeneutics.” Taking a cue from George Herriman’s early 20th-century comic strip Krazy Kat, he describes brick hermeneutics as follows: “Most of our discourses take for granted the premise that we communicate by infusing ‘meaning’ into some expression,…

August 19, 2008

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