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

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John

Engaging John, Engaging One Another

The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 30, 2014
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Leviticus

Zoemics

Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 29, 2014
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Isaiah

God in the Dock

Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 24, 2014
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Baptism

Recreated in Four Dimensions

Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 22, 2014
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Matthew

The Least Of These

Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 17, 2014
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Galatians

Paul and the Troublers of Galatia

Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 15, 2014

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Modernity's Wager

A dam Seligman compares Modernity's Wager to Pascal's: Pascal’s wager of the seventeenth century, of reason for faith, was replaced in the eighteenth century by a wager over the terms of sacrality. Modern culture and politics, I argue, staked its all on the ability to construct an authoritative locus of…

December 16, 2016

Tale of Two Monsters

T imothy Beal ( Religion and Its Monsters ) analyzes Fritz Lang's film Metropolis (1926) as a tale of two monsters. First is “unhindered industry . . . as a cult of human sacrifice to the industrial machine.” The city's “power house” is a “giant, steam-spewing industrial machine . .…

December 16, 2016

Medieval Figures

I n his recent study of figural exegesis, Time and the Word , Ephraim Radner traces the “fate of figural reading.” The Middle Ages form a crucial stage in that history. Drawing on the work of Friedrich Ohly, Radner argues that the “medieval typology was part of a long-standing outlook…

December 16, 2016

Lessons from Alabama

F ellow Alabamian Quin Hillyer says that Trump should pay attention to what's happening in Alabama if he wants to help American workers. Forbes.com rated Mobile America's top mid-sized city for manufacturing growth in 2015, and the growth has come from foreign companies: With 4,200 employees, Austal Shipyards is the…

December 16, 2016

Berkeley's Book of Nature

C ostica Bradatan wants us to attend to The Other Bishop Berkeley . The Berkeley that is most often studied is the one who addresses issues of interest to contemporary philosophy. Bradatan looks instead at Berkeley's sources and the uses he makes of them. From this angle, it becomes apparent…

December 16, 2016

Novel-Reading and Enlightenment

A llison Coudert ( Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America ) speaks of an “anthropological revolution” taking place in the eighteenth century, as Europeans became optimistic about the future prospects of human evolution and improvement. This was partly the result of assaults on the doctrine of…

December 16, 2016

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