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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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Social Immobility

With income inequality and social mobility in the air, two articles in the Economist challenge the conventional wisdom. One is a report on a study conducted by economists at Harvard and Berkeley that concludes, in the Economist ’s words, “Despite huge increases in inequality, America may be no less mobile…

February 3, 2014
Uncategorized

Parenting As We Know It

Andrew Solomon begins his NYTBR review of Jennifer Senior’s All Joy and No Fun with the arresting claim that “parenting as we know it—predicated on the unconditional exaltation of our children—is no more than 70 years old.” The key shift in the past century has been, Senior says, our children’s…

February 3, 2014

Calves at Dan

When Jeroboam I split the northern tribes from the house of David, he secured the unity of his area by establishing shrines for golden calf worship at the northern and southern borders of his territory—at Dan and Bethel respectively. Both were obvious choices. Bethel had been a holy place since…

February 3, 2014

Memoria Passionis

Memoria passionis is a central feature of Johann Baptist Metz’s “postidealist theology,” a theology that is founded in practice and knows its own historical embeddedness. For Metz, this doesn’t just involve memory of Christ. For moderns, it’s equally the memory of Auschwitz. In A Passion For God , he recalls…

February 3, 2014

Banality v. Apocalyptic

Metz ( A Passion for God , 49-53) suggests that the “sickness unto death of religion is not naivete, but banality.” Banality arises from some of the deep seeds of modernity. Our “cult of possibility,” our confidence that “everything is possible” has an underside, resignation to the fact that everything…

February 3, 2014

Repenting Repentance

Noah is named as the rest-bringer for the human race. And he does just that, not simply by enduring the flood but by offering righteous worship on the holy mountain after the flood. Yahweh initially repents that He made “the man”; in the end, He has a change of heart…

February 3, 2014

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