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Writing

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

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Art

The Artist's Litany

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8) O God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, who inspired Creation with the breath of your nostrils, who placed Adam in the…

by Christian LeithartFebruary 2, 2016
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American Culture

American Sodom

For nearly a half-century, Sodom has been a key symbol in the American culture wars. On the one side, we have an aggressive movement among homosexuals that has first decriminalized homosexual conduct, then to force cultural and legal recognition of homosexuals as a minority and to normalize homosexual behaviors, finally…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 28, 2016
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Biblical Theology

The Meaning of the Mount of Olives

Speaking of the Church, Romans 11:16-17 says, "And if the root be holy, the branches are also. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root of the fatness of the…

by James B. JordanJanuary 26, 2016
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Isaiah

No Sabbath for God

At the end of Isaiah 61, Yahweh's Servant rejoices because the Lord clothes Him with salvation and righteousness. He decks Him like a bridegroom with a garland on His head. He wears jewels like a bride. He is a new bridegroom in a new garden of Eden, a garden of…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 21, 2016
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Biblical Law

Approaching the Torah

Before anything else, a word about “Torah” may be in order. I have been persuaded that “law” is a bad translation of “Torah,” even though it is evident that what is called “Torah” does have commandments, statutes, and ordinances in abundance. Why not “law?” “Law” as a translation for “Torah”…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 19, 2016
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Biblical Horizons

Jane Austen, Pundit

Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 14, 2016

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Sins Stuck to Heaven

A heavenly voice (Revelation 18:4) tells the saints to flee Babylon because her sins have “piled” to heaven (v. 5). That translation is questionable. The verb kollao means to “cling,” as a marriage man clings to his wife (Matthew 19:5; cf. 1 Corinthians 6:16-17; Genesis 2:24, LXX) or as dust…

November 4, 2015

Double Double Retribution

Revelation 18:6 is made of two chiastic sentences that double back on each other. A. Pay B. her B'. as also she A'. paid. And: A. Double double according to her works B. in the cup C. she mixed C'. mix B'. her A'. double. Verse 7 says that she…

November 4, 2015

City Depopulated and Repopulated

The opening description of Babylon in Revelation 18 suggests a city depopulated and repopulated. The people have been moved out, and in their place it has been infested with impurity. There are four categories of new inhabitants: demons and unclean spirits, unclean and abominable birds, and they are divided into…

November 3, 2015

A Brief for Sabellius

Christian Faith , Brian Gerrish's new dogmatics, is well named, echoing as it does Schleiermacher's classic text. Gerrish is Schleiermachian in many ways, not least in his repetition of what has become, after Barth, one of Schleiermacher's most notorious gestures: His placement of the doctrine of the Trinity at the…

November 3, 2015

Memory, Meaning, Metaphor

“Memory is the sine qua non of the creation of meaning,” writes Nicholae Babuts in his Literature and the Metaphoric Universe in the Mind . “Human beings are capable of interpreting the world because they remember not only the moments that have just elapsed, but also events that have taken…

November 3, 2015

Sons of God, Daughters of Men

In her contribution to Medieval Exegesis & Religious Difference , Nina Caputo analyzes Nahmanides' interpretation of the sons of God/daughters of men passage in Genesis 6. The notion that the passage was about angelic intercourse with humans was already current, but Nahmanides rejected it. He wrote, “The correct interpretation in…

November 2, 2015

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