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Writing

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

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Coronavirus

Does Corona Compassion Kill?

The corona virus hit Western society like a Biblical plague — almost. Biblical plagues were actually much more devastating. Still, as Peter Leithart describes the present situation, it is a judgment from God, because the disease itself together with our political solutions brought about a social situation that fits Deuteronomy’s…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 26, 2020
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Theology

Is Theology Useless?

“The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?” - Richard Dawkins One cannot be a Christian college president or seminary trustee (your essayist is both) without wondering if Richard Dawkins’s notorious take-down of theology…

by Alexander WhitakerMay 19, 2020
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How to Worship

How Should Churches Respond to One Another?

Nearly every church that I am aware of has adopted differing practices since the recent virus scare began. Some churches continued to meet during the state lock downs, and other churches left their building empty, meeting online through various video conference technologies. Some churches have gone back to life as…

by Jonah BarnesMay 12, 2020
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Fear

Fear

Fear is an inseparable companion of human life. We are afraid of illness and death, poverty and cataclysms, rejection and betrayal, failure and shame. We are afraid of the unknown, so in a sense we are afraid of the future and life itself. Unless we live in the illusory belief…

by Bogumil JarmulakMay 5, 2020
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Heresy

The Blessing of “Heresies”

In the title above, I put the word “heresies” in quotation marks because I would prefer that the word “heresy” be confined to erroneous beliefs about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, rather than be used broadly to describe any view that might be considered an error. 1 At…

by Ralph Allan SmithApril 30, 2020
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Fear

On Coping (or not) with a Crisis

I’ve been trying to work out why I’m feeling existentially disconnected from CoV-19-related fears. I’m taking it seriously, but it’s not registering in any deeply personal way. Partly it’s that my routines are largely undisrupted. But as I reflect on people’s reactions I think there’s more, because a lot of…

by Matthew MasonApril 28, 2020

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History

Enlightenment

Peter Hanns Reill, ed., and Ellen Judy Wilson, principal author, Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (revised edition; New York: Facts on File, 2004), 670pp. Contemporary critics of modernity, including Christian ones, often focus their attacks on ?The Enlightenment,?Ethe intellectual and cultural movement that endured through the ?long eighteenth century?Ebetween Louis XIV…

January 13, 2005

The Outlaw Sea

William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime (New York: North Point Press, 2004), 239pp. Landlubbers that we are, most tend to forget that, as William Langewiesche puts it, “our world is an ocean world.” First published as a series of articles in The Atlantic ,…

January 13, 2005
Literature

Garber on Comedy of Errors

Marjorie Garber offers many interesting insights into the themes of Shakespeare?s Comedy of Errors in her recent Shakespeare After All . Here are several of the highlights of her analysis: 1) She points out that, like many of Shakespeare?s comedies, the crisis of Comedy of Errors is provoked by ?an…

January 12, 2005

Sermon Outline, January 16

INTRODUCTION When the prophet Shemaiah confronted Rehoboam, the king turned from his plan (1 Kings 12:21-24). But Jeroboam is not so responsive to the word of the Lord. A man of God from Judah confronts him at his altar at Bethel (13:1-3), and Jeroboam responds by trying to arrest the…

January 12, 2005
Politics

Political Theology

Richard Neuhaus has his gleeful fun attacking John Milbank in the November 2004 issue of First Things . I don’t think he’s entirely fair to Milbank’s political thought, and his charge that Milbank’s attack on the Catholic Church is an “annoyingly unremitting rant” that is “mainly a product of deep-seated…

January 12, 2005

Creator and Reconciler

Barth interestingly ( CD 1.1, p. 410) suggests a correspondence between soteriology and Trinitarian theology: “reconciliation or revelation is not creation or a continuation of creation but rather an inconceivably new work above and beyond creation, so we have also to say that the Son is not the Father but…

January 11, 2005

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