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Writing

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

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Technology

Simulation as Inoculation

Every advent of new media creates the justifiable reaction from some that the necessarily accompanied amputation may not be worth the extension made possible by the new tools. This is not unique to the Digital Age. Lamoignon Malesherbes, the French politician who was counsel for the defense of Louis XVI,…

by Garrett SoucyApril 2, 2024
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Eschatology

Reject Optimism

A response to Gage Crowder's " The Hole in our Hope ?" Already, the first pages of the Bible promise a bright future. The story starts with the creation of heaven and earth, where heaven is perfect, but the earth is in a state of formless emptiness. Yet, God takes…

by Bogumil JarmulakMarch 27, 2024
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Eschatology

The Hole in our Hope? A Rejoinder

A rejoinder to Bubu Jarmulak's essay, " Embrace Pessimism ." Whereas calumnious critiques are reflections of more on the critic than the work criticized, good critiques are always opportunities for reassessment and improvement if they are received as such . Since its renaissance, the biblical doctrine of postmillennialism—or “optimistic eschatology,”…

by Gage CrowderMarch 26, 2024
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Biblical Studies

Jesus Did Not Pray to Avoid the Cross at Gethsemane

Several decades ago, a pastor (and friend) mentioned in passing at one of our regular breakfasts together that he wasn’t satisfied with the usual reading of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane, the usual reading being that Jesus asked the Father to avoid the Cross at Gethsemane. We turned to the passage,…

by James R. RogersMarch 19, 2024
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Church Music

Holy Toledo: A Critique of Eclecticism

On May 21, 1604, the cathedral of Toledo in Spain held job interviews for the post of choirmaster, the head of music at the church. The position had been vacated when the previous occupant, Alonso Lobo, was poached by the nearby cathedral of Seville, and Toledo needed a replacement who…

by John AhernMarch 5, 2024
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Covenant

The Docetic Covenant and Phantom Church Membership

Imagine — counterfactually: on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus held up an empty hand and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant poured out for you. Drink of it.’ But there was no cup, no wine, nothing. If there’s no sign of the covenant, is there…

by John CarpenterFebruary 27, 2024

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Theology

Gift and Causation

Further along his his treatment of de Lubac, Milbank discusses the change in the meaning of causality and divine causality in the medieval period. Drawing on the work of Jacob Schmutz, he gives this account: Prior to 1250, influentia was understood in its etymological sense as a “flowing-in” from God…

April 5, 2006
Theology

Henri de Lubac: A Brief Introduction

INTRODUCTION The French Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) was one of the most significant Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, a central figure in the ressourcement movement and the nouvelle theologie movement that inspired the change of atmosphere in the Catholic church leading up to Vatican II. In his…

April 5, 2006

Sermon Outline, Palm Sunday

Much of the following was inspired by a lecture by Dr. David Powlison of the counseling center at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia. INTRODUCTION As disciples of Jesus, we are all called to take our cross to suffer with Him. He suffered because He provoked murderous hatred from his enemies. Our afflictions…

April 5, 2006
Art

Noah and the Sinners

At the end of his intriguing discussion of Gericault’s painting Scene of Shipwreck, Julian Barnes gives a brief summary of the fortunes of Noah in Western art, which he says change significantly after the Sistine Chapel: “In the Sistine Chapel the Ark (now looking more like a floating bandstand than…

April 2, 2006
Philosophy

Existing

JL Austin once suggested that many people think of existing as something over and above the various activities of a thing, something things do all the time: “like breathing, only quieter - ticking over, as it were, in a metaphysical sort of way.”

March 31, 2006

Aquinas and Cooperation

Exploring George Hunsinger’s criticisms of Thomas’ views on grace, Kerr argues that Thomas does not, as Hunsinger suggests, make human nature “conceptually prior to and independent of divine grace.” Rather “it is by grace that the soul of the sinner is open to God. Paradoxically, fallen human beings are open…

March 31, 2006

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