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Writing

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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Theology

Theology and the Political

Duke University Press has just come out with a collection of essays edited by Creston Davis, John Milbank and Slavoj Zizek on political theology. As one might expect from the list of contributors (Milbank, Pickstock, Ward, Conor Cunningham, Kenneth Surin, Terry Eagleton and others) it’s a dense collection. It was…

September 6, 2005

Fundamentalist Athens

There are still, surprisingly, some classical scholars who minimize the influence of religion on Athenian democracy. Hugh Bowden’s recent Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle is a direct assault on this secular vision. As summarized by Joy Connolly in the TLS, “Dismissing studies of Athenian politics that ignore religion, Bowden…

September 5, 2005
Philosophy

Plataristotelians?

Lloyd P Gerson has just published a book entitled Aristotle and Other Platonists , an effort to show that the two great philosophical opponents of ancient Greece are not opposed at all. He points to the “Neoplatonic” writers of antiquity, who attempted to harmonize the two philosophers. The TLS reviewer,…

September 5, 2005
Literature

Bellow’s Bible

James Wood (TLS August 5) explores the Englishness of Saul Bellow, and particularly his indebtedness to the rhythms and sounds of the Authorized Version. Some of his suggestions are quite a stretch (“By the factory walls the grimy weeds grew” is quite distantly related to Psalm 137:1 - Wood says…

September 5, 2005
Literature

Bellow’s Bible

James Wood (TLS August 5) explores the Englishness of Saul Bellow, and particularly his indebtedness to the rhythms and sounds of the Authorized Version. Some of his suggestions are quite a stretch (“By the factory walls the grimy weeds grew” is quite distantly related to Psalm 137:1 - Wood says…

September 5, 2005

Covenant and Consent

How does God’s covenant with Israel bind generations that did not consent to the covenant? asked Isaac Abravanel in his 15th-century Commentary on the Pentateuch . This problem was raised in particular by a rabbinic claim that “A person can be benefited without being present, but cannot be obligated without…

September 5, 2005

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