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Writing

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

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Apostle Paul

Paul in Prison: Ephesus or Rome?

In the books of 1 and 2 Corinthians, Paul refers to hardships in his ministry in Asia, specifically Ephesus (1 Corinthians 4:9-13; 15:32; 2 Corinthians 1:8; 4:8-12; 6:4-5; 11:23-25). However, the multiple imprisonments Paul mentions are not fully reflected in Luke’s account of Paul’s ministry — Luke only records a…

by Ralph Allan SmithFebruary 15, 2022
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Epistemology

Vertical Living

After all these months pondering integration, I have come to the point of believing that the dynamic of integration just is the real at its heart. Everything that is real or comes to be real is a dynamo of integrative coherence. I also believe it is true that the real…

by Esther Lightcap MeekFebruary 1, 2022
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Books

Tom Holland and the Liberating Power of Christianity

Have you heard of Tom Holland? Not the young Tom Holland of Spiderman fame. No doubt you’ve heard of him. I’m referring to the middle age Oxford-trained historian who recently wrote Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind . (Both Hollands are British, so you’ll be forgiven for confusing them.)…

by Gerald HiestandJanuary 25, 2022
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Biblical Horizons

"Do This!"

This article was originally published in 1990. (The essay that follows concerns a rather touchy subject: how the Lord’s Supper is to be done. I am not writing to insult or offend, but to challenge. To that end I have not "held back" but have "gone ahead" and said what…

by James B. JordanJanuary 19, 2022
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American Culture

The Dominion Trap

This article was originally published in 1990. In Genesis One, God told Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on…

by James B. JordanJanuary 13, 2022
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Biblical Studies

Will Few Be Saved?

On several occasions the gospels record Jesus teaching that only a few will be saved (Matthew 7:14, Matthew 22:14, and Luke 13:23). Careful readers of Scripture should begin to wrestle with how these passages found in the gospels fit together with other passages that teach that many will be saved…

by Manny LucasJanuary 11, 2022

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Liquid Life

Postmodern thinkers like Zygmunt Bauman have pointed to the “liquidity” of contemporary life, its shape-shifting instability. We have nothing on Bonaventure and other medieval doctors, for whom creation was a river flowing from a Triune source. Zachary Hayes ( The Gift of Being: A Theology of Creation (New Theology Studies)…

November 21, 2012
History

Chinese Calvinism

Over at The Guardian , Andrew Brown reports on the surprising strength of Calvinism in China. He cites Dr. May Tan of Singapore who predicts that Calvinism is becoming “an elite religion in China.” The reason, Tan says, is that Calvinism has a theology of resistance. Brown writes, “The great…

November 21, 2012

Trinity Institute: A Student Perspective

Peter Leithart is one of those exceptional teachers who instills not merely his knowledge in his students, but a bit of himself as well—his patient character, his charitable and jovial spirit, his boundless curiosity—so that they are never quite the same. He always acts as both a pastor and a…

November 21, 2012
Philosophy

Clothes make the Man

In his Philosophy and Its Others (Suny Series in Systematic Philosophy) , William Desmond commends on the self-definition of clothing: “Clothes are not simply artificial protection against the unruly elements to compensate for bald bodies. They may define a kind of self, may communicate the color of a personal presence.…

November 21, 2012
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Violence and Metaphysics

In his essay “Violence and Metaphysics” in Writing and Difference , Derrida summarizes Levinas’s claim that metaphysics is a pursuit of totality, of totalizing explanations, that invariably involves conceptual and real violence. Being is not so because it “commands nothing or no one.” He elaborates: “As Being is not the…

November 20, 2012
Philosophy

Deconstructible content

In his fine treatment of Jacques Derrida: Live Theory , James K.A. Smith assesses Derrida’s debt to Marx. Despite owing a real debt, Smith notes that there is “a fundamental logic of dissociation at work in Derrida’s ‘spirit of Marxism’ whereby he distances himself from the doctrines and dogmatics of…

November 20, 2012

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