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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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Food and Air

Ackerman points to an intriguing phenomenological difference between our dependence on air and our dependence on food. We breathe involuntarily; if we try to suffocate ourselves, we will pass out before we die, and we’ll begin breathing again. But (under normal circumstances) we don’t get food unless we seek it…

July 17, 2004
Theology

Wedding Sermon, July 16

Proverbs 9:1-6, 13-18: Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out her seven pillars; she has prepared her food, she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table; she has sent out her maidens, she calls from the tops of the heights of the city: ?Whoever is…

July 16, 2004

Aphrodisiacs

The always-interesting Diane Ackerman gives this wonderful list of aphrodisiacs: “Looked at in the right light, any food might be thought aphrodisiac. Phallic-shaped foods such as carrots, leeks, cucumbers, pickles, sea cucumbers (which become tumescent when soaked), eels, bananas, and asparagus all have been prized as aphrodisiacs at one time…

July 16, 2004

Deadlines

hordes rushing at me armed to the teeth from the future

July 16, 2004
Literature

Shakespeare’s Two Romes

Robert S. Miola’s article on Shakespeare’s Rome in the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays is superb. Here are a couple of excerpts: ?The spectacle of such bloodshed and death defines Shakespeare?s ancient Romans as other, as deeply alien and strange. But Roman violence had other significations for original audiences,…

July 15, 2004
Literature

Shakespeare’s Two Romes

Robert S. Miola’s article on Shakespeare’s Rome in the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays is superb. Here are a couple of excerpts: ?The spectacle of such bloodshed and death defines Shakespeare?s ancient Romans as other, as deeply alien and strange. But Roman violence had other significations for original audiences,…

July 15, 2004

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