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Writing

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

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Poetry

The Donkey

G.K. Chesterton assumes a surprising and memorable perspective from which to view the events of Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1-11) The Donkey by: G.K. Chesterton When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head…

by Arthur KayApril 14, 2022
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Hermeneutics

The Tree, the Cross, and the Supper

There is a common biblical principle: you must give back what you steal. In the Bible, restitution is repayment with interest. If you rob someone of their money, you have to pay back double what you stole. A thief must pay back fourfold if he steals a sheep, and if…

by Kyle LammottApril 12, 2022
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Isaiah

The King’s Cure

Identifying Isaiah’s suffering servant with the promised Messiah is unthinkable for a Jew because it combines the offices of humble priest and victorious king. While it is frustrating that Jews refuse to see the sufferings of Christ in Isaiah 53, the reluctance of Christians to interpret the passage in its…

by Mike BullApril 5, 2022
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How to Worship

When Our Men Sing Again

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Psalm 150:6 (ESV) The command to praise God is pervasive throughout Scripture. In the verse above the Spirit calls all things with breath to praise the Lord. Song is also clearly featured all throughout Scripture and is a featured…

by Grant Van BrimmerMarch 29, 2022
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Culture

The Transgender Bait and Switch

“Gender is a social construct.” That’s shocking to people who have assumed that gender and sex were synonyms but at least since I was in college, in the ‘80s, we were taught that “gender” refers to the forms, the customs, the traditions that our culture teaches us to define what…

by John CarpenterMarch 22, 2022
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Biblical Studies

Israel, Judah, and the Narrative Flow of the Bible

In Genesis 49, Jacob prophesies about (blesses and curses?) his twelve sons. The first three of them don’t fare well. Jacob recalls Reuben’s offense of taking his concubine (Genesis 35:22) and the murderous violence of Simeon’s and Levi against the Canaanite inhabitants of the city of Shechem (Genesis 34). He…

by Mark HorneMarch 17, 2022

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Doorkeeper

From the whirlwind, Yahweh reveals His creative power to Job, challenging Job with a repeated “where were you when. . . ?” The focus is on Yahweh’s power to create, but several times He describes His power as the power to set up dates and doors. It was Yahweh who…

April 29, 2014
Art

The Made

Comparative literature is a standard discipline in our universities. Comparative arts is less familiar. Daniel Albright has written a treatise on comparative art in his recent Panaesthetics . Debates about the unity and diversity of art have been common in Western thought. Albright thinks that the question is unanswerable since…

April 28, 2014

Natural Sex Again

My friend Rich Bledsoe in response to a recent post on sexual ethics: “it has been pointed out in relation to JD Unwin’s work, that the great, revolutionary destructions of traditional sexual morality (in Russia when marriage was virtually banned as bourgeois, and every form of deviance encouraged, and later…

April 28, 2014
Economics

Unintended Capitalism

Brad Gregory ( Unintended Reformation , 268-9) observes that “like radical Protestants, the magisterial reformers, including Calvin, unambiguously condemned avarice, acquisitive individualism, and any separation of economic behavior from biblical morality or the common good.” The Reformers rejected voluntary poverty, but “their attitudes about the proper human relationship to material…

April 28, 2014

Tradition and Innovation

Wisdom from Yves Congar, as compiled by Brother Emile of Taize in his Faithful to the Future (43): “The problems of the fifth century and the resources of Augustine are not those of the third century and Hippolytus; the problems of the thirteenth century and the resources of Thomas Aquinas…

April 28, 2014

Fall from heaven

Revelation 12 opens with a tableau of a laboring cosmic mother threatened by a devouring dragon. During the course of the chapter, the dragon’s prey is snatched from his teeth (v. 5) and the dragon is driven from the sky (vv. 7-12). But as soon as the dragon gets to…

April 28, 2014

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