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Writing

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

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Books

Let us Fix the World: An Admonition from the Strugatsky Brothers

That there is something wrong with the world is obvious. It does not take much time or brilliance to notice it. Once we get the feeling that we could imagine a better world, we are tempted to fix it or, if we cannot, to escape it. For both the world-fixers…

by Bogumil JarmulakApril 6, 2021
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Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer Exposited

“Our Father in heaven,” what is man that we should be called your sons and daughters, beloved children of God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, Yahweh of Hosts, the Ancient of Days. You are not a father preoccupied with work or engrossed in your smartphone; you are a present…

by Drew KnowlesMarch 30, 2021
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Pastoral Ministry

Pastoral Reflections on Purity Laws

The Son of God took on human flesh and entered into the sin and suffering of our world. His life and teaching and suffering from His conception to His suffering on the cross teaches us a lot about how the good news enters into the world. Recently, I was teaching…

by Nathan ZekveldMarch 23, 2021
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Hermeneutics

The Ass and the Messiah

There is an unspoken rule about typology that permeates Evangelical thinking. It goes something like this: “If the New Testament authors don’t use an Old Testament character as a type, we don’t either.” There is a soundness in this reasoning, at least in a preliminary sense. There is no better…

by Garrett SoucyMarch 16, 2021
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Church Calendar

The Sound of Silence

In The world of Silence, Max Picard writes, “There does not seem to be any space left where there could possibly have been anything but noise. We take it for granted much as we take the air itself for granted. Everything begins and ends with noise.” Is it fair to…

by Jacob SkogenMarch 9, 2021
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Hermeneutics

The Absent Presence of God: The Storied Theology of Esther for the Modern Age

God is Not There God is not in the book of Esther. Do a word search and you will get 0 results. Also try Lord, Yahweh, Prayer, Temple, or Sacrifice. Even names with God’s name in them, like Elijah, Jeremiah, or Daniel are missing. The fool says in his heart,…

by Ryan HandermannMarch 4, 2021

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Numerology

17 and 26

C J Labuschagne ( Numerical Secrets of the Bible ) discovers repeated numero-literary uses of the numbers 17 and 26 in the Old Testament. Texts are comprised of multiples of one or the other of these numbers. Why? 26 is relatively easy: It's the gematria of Yahweh, the sum of…

June 1, 2016

Handles

D uring Wittgenstein's hiatus from philosophy in the 1920s, he worked for an architect to build a home for his sister Margarete. His task was to design the door and window handles. As Christopher Benfey points out in a splendid essay on handles at the NYRB , this was no…

May 31, 2016

John Williamson Nevin, Public Theologian

J ohn Williamson Nevin is remembered, when he is remembered at all, for his anti-revivalist and pro-sacramental writings. Those more familiar with his work know of his catholicity and his emphasis on the centrality of the Incarnation to the Christian vision of reality. On of the great virtues of Richard…

May 31, 2016

Approaching God

I n his contribution to Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice in the Bible , Christian Eberhart points out that the term qorban is Leviticus's generic term for the variety of offerings used in tabernacle worship. The terminology “captures the dynamic movement of sacrificial material toward the sanctuary and ultimately toward God…

May 31, 2016

Natural-Born Cyborgs

H uman beings,” asserts Andy Clark at the beginning of his Natural-Born Cyborgs , “are natural- born cyborgs” (3). By that, he means that “the human mind, if it is to be the physical organ of human reason, simply cannot be seen as bound and restricted by the biological skinbag.…

May 30, 2016

On the Creed

O f late, many within the evangelical Protestant world have been calling for some form of ressourcement , renewed attention to the early church's creeds, theologians, liturgies, and practices. Michael Bird's What Christians Ought To Believe is one of the best of the lot. Bird, a New Testament scholar at…

May 30, 2016

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