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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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Theology

Limited Sovereignty?

Reformed theology has always stressed the utter sovereignty of God. He has planned all things, and works all things. But in certain forms of Reformed theology, this is subtly undermined and turns into its opposite. I’m thinking of Reformed theology (a hyper-Calvinist tendency) that so stresses God’s sovereignty that it…

July 29, 2014

Politics and the Romantic Comedy

Over at Grantland , Wesley Morris traces the shift in romantic comedy in the 1980s to the politicization of the genre: “By the 1980s, romantic comedy had started to turn inward, away from fights between two equals. Women took center stage — unless the movie was Tootsie , in which…

July 29, 2014

Food Purity

Mark tells us in a parenthetical aside that Jesus purged all meats, and Peter saw a vision that taught him that he could eat anything (Acts 10-11). Still, as Allen Frantzen details in his recent Food, Eating, and Identity in Early Medieval England , Western Christians continued to observe purity…

July 29, 2014

Lulz

Gabriella Coleman has done field work on the group “Anonymous,” and argues in Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy that the group is not violent or dangerous. They’re only out for laughs, laughs of a particular kind indicated by the term lulz, which Coleman defines as “a deviant style of humor and…

July 29, 2014

Abominable to Egyptians

Moses tells Pharaoh that Israel has to leave Egypt to perform their sacrifice before Yahweh because what they intend to do is abominable to the Egyptians. Why would it be abominable? For starters, bulls were divine - or at least mediated gods - to the Egyptians. Not appropriate for slaughter.…

July 28, 2014
Science

Faith, Science, Wisdom

Science and faith seem to be at odds. Many have suggested that’s because believers look to faith to do thing faith can’t do; if we adjusted our expectations about what kind of truth religion gives, science would be freed from the annoyances of the faithful, Tom McLeish ( Faith and…

July 28, 2014

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