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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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Age of Bull, Age of Ram

Giorgio de Santillana ( Hamlet’s Mill , 59-60) gives a brief description of the sun’s precessional “year” as it moves through the constellations of the Zodiac: “The sun’s position among the constellations at the vernal equinox was the pointer that indicated the ‘hours’ of the precessional cycle - very long…

August 2, 2014

Darwinian Age

De Santillana ( Hamlet’s Mill , 68) on our the soporific of Darwin: “Our period may some day be called the Darwinian period, just as, we talk of the Newtonian period of two centuries ago. The simple idea of evolution, which it is no longer thought necessary to examine, spreads…

August 2, 2014

Covering

In a NYRB review of several new books on gay marriage, Edmund White reflects on the price paid by gays for the success of their efforts: “Why did mainstream America come to accept marriage equality? Gay leaders had made a convincing case that gay families were like straight families and…

August 2, 2014

Lamb and Cherub

When John first sees four multi-eyed living creatures, they are in the midst of the heavenly throne (Revelation 4:6-7). They lead the heavenly worship (4:8), but they don’t seem to act at all on earth. Then the Lamb takes the throne, and becomes the throne (5:6), displacing the creatures. And…

August 2, 2014

Pneumatology and the Neighbor

One of the most intriguing claims in Travis Ables’s Incarnational Realism is that “Christology and pneumatology do not operate on the same register; one is doctrinal, the other is the performative dimension of that doctrinal speech.” More fully: “The missions of the trinitarian persons do not necessarily entail distinct redemptive…

August 1, 2014

Earth and Sky

In his Sacred Geography of the Ancient Greeks , Jean Richer writes, “during more than two thousand years, the Phoenicians, the Hittites, the ancient Greeks, and then the Etruscans, the Carthaginians, and the R?mans, had patiently woven a fabric of correspondences between the sky, especIally the apparent course of the…

August 1, 2014

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