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

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Leviticus

Cathedral Offerings

Interwoven within Leviticus’ opening offerings is a redemptive storyline meant to be rehearsed. Each offering makes a particular contribution to the retelling of the Exodus deliverance. Like learning a dance, Israel’s opening rituals recount their steps from Egypt to Sinai in a fashion meant to perpetually imprint its experience on…

by Ben LoveladyMay 15, 2025
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Mark

Mark 7 in Color

In Capernaum, the leaders of Israel questioned Jesus in their hearts. Beside the sea, they questioned his disciples about their rabbi’s practices. They challenged Jesus in the grain fields, sought to trap him in the synagogue, tried to seize him, thinking he was mad, and accused him of being possessed.…

by George EdemaMay 13, 2025
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Psalm-singing

Rascals in a Cave

An essay on ministry taken from recent notes for a ‘solemn charge’ I gave our pastoral team (together with their spouses) at All Saints Honolulu, a church-plant that enters its fifth year. I. After receiving the sword of Goliath from Ahimelech at Nob, and after fleeing first to and then…

by Mark BriansMay 6, 2025
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Biblical Theology

A Theology of Tombs: Burial and the Promises of God

When thinking about the book of Genesis, we often think of beginnings, the beginning of the world, humanity, the elect people of God. The word “genesis” itself means beginning. Genesis is also known as the book of promises. Genesis contains three of the major Old Testament covenants: Adamic, Noahic and…

by Matthew DarbyApril 30, 2025
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Luke

Mountain, Tomb, Table: Moses and Elijah as the First Witnesses at the Empty Tomb

A Theological and Typological Commentary on Luke 24:4 In Luke 24:4, we are told that as the women arrived at the tomb on Easter morning, they encountered “two men in dazzling apparel” standing beside them. This description, on its own, may not immediately provoke questions. The traditional interpretation identifies these…

by Bruce GrimmetApril 29, 2025
Acts

Easter Meditation (Part 2)

For Part 1, click HERE . The four Gospel accounts give us their strange and wonderful historical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. The rest of the New Testament, either explicitly or by suggestion, refers to the resurrection in every book except 3 John. Unlike the Gospel accounts, however, most…

by Ralph Allan SmithApril 22, 2025

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On the History of Charisms

“T he time has come,” writes Luigino Bruni ( The Wound and the Blessing ), “to rewrite the economic and civil history of societies, taking seriously the civil and economic role of charisms.” It's impossible “to understand either the past or the present situation in European economics deeply (or well…

May 8, 2017

Inequality and Inequality

I n Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue , Ryan Patrick Hanley explains why Smith considered the “inequality of precommercial societies [to be] infinitely more pernicious than the inequality to be found in commercial society.” He does this by demonstrating “how the conditions that afford the powerful with maximal…

May 5, 2017

Blue Arrogance

A t the Daily Beast , Joel Kotkin exposes the “arrogance of Blue America,” expressed in talk of Blue State secession and contempt for Red State Trump country. According to Kotkin, “The blue bourgeoisie’s self-celebration rests on multiple misunderstandings of geography, demography, and economics. To be sure, the deep blue…

May 5, 2017

Theology of Gift

I ’ve quoted this before, often, but it's so good it merits re-quotation. From Luther's 1528 “Confession”: These are the three Persons and the one God, Who has given Himself to us wholly with all that He is and all that He has. The Father gives Himself to us, with…

May 5, 2017
Architecture

Architectural Asceticism

R eviewing Adrian Forty's Concrete and Culture in the TLS , James Hall summarizes the shifting fortunes of concrete as a building material: “Reinforced concrete's global heyday spanned roughly from the 1920s to the 60s, when exposed, cantilevered concrete was all the (modernist) rage. Then a pragmatic and/or postmodernist reaction…

May 5, 2017
Shakespeare

Authentic Shakespeare

D on-John Dugas's recent Shakespeare for Everyman offers a revisionist account of the rise of “authentic” stagings of Shakespeare in the twentieth century. The very meaning of “authentic” changed, as Sally Barnden explains in her TLS review of Dugas's book: “Authentic Shakespeare performance was no longer understood to be that…

May 5, 2017

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