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Writing

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

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Culture

Birmingham Life and Culture Series

There’s something about joy that is infectious. And occasionally, we all have the opportunity to be in someone’s presence who is so happily engaged in their work, so joyous in their pursuits, that we want to learn from them. We want to know where that joy comes from and attain…

by Brian MoatsOctober 23, 2015
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How to Worship

How To Change the World, (Part 1)

Jesus has told us that He intends all nations to be discipled. Nations. Not just individuals. All nations as theocracies. That being the case, the Church exists for the life of the world. Being baptized is not only a matter of becoming part of a new family, it is also…

by James B. JordanOctober 22, 2015
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Literature

Adam, Saul, Macbeth

Harold Bloom’s essay on Macbeth includes the kind of penetrating insights that make Bloom the great Shakespearean scholar that he is, but it also includes his typical and intense anti-Christian bias. “If Lear was pre-Christian, then Macbeth is weirdly post-Christian. There are, as we have seen, Christian intimations that haunt…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 20, 2015
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Revelation

Inverted Atonement

Revelation 16 is a day of atonement text. The tabernacle of the testimony has been opened (15:5). The angels who receive the bowls are clothed in linen (15:6), the clothing of the high priest when he goes into the sanctuary on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:4). The temple is…

by Peter LeithartOctober 15, 2015
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Biblical Studies

Music and Hermeneutics

From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…

by James B. JordanOctober 13, 2015
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Biblical Studies

In the Fish: The Church as Tomb

"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea-monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). Some reflections on Jonah’s Big Fish have led to the following essay. Let me…

by James B. JordanOctober 8, 2015

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Science

Post-Newtonian Darwininism

In a typically dense article in a volume of essays on William Desmond, Milbank suggests that both Darwin and 18th-century design theories were operating with similar post-Scotist and Newtonian notions of God’s relation to the world. He sees a quite direct analog between the development of Darwinian theory and Newtonian…

November 20, 2007
Philosophy

Milbank on Metaphysics, etc

Radical Orthodox theologians interacted with Process Theologians at an AAR session. Milbank gave an off the cuff response to the process theologians, starting with common interests among them, which he said were greater than he expected. Among them was their common resistance to the anti-metaphysical trends of modern philosophy, particularly…

November 20, 2007
History

Religious mobilizations

Charles Taylor, the 2007 Templeton Prize winner, gave an excellent, though unfortunately poorly miked, lecture at AAR. His theme was “religious mobilization,” which he introduced first by discussing the peculiar modern phenomenon of “political mobilization.” Political mobilization means activating passive political actors. As Taylor developed this notion, he said that…

November 19, 2007
Politics

God in Public

N. T. Wright has been getting heat for expressing his political opinions of late, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from his SBL address on “God in Public.” In the event, I found very little to disagree with, much to affirm heartily, and, as always with Wright, much to…

November 19, 2007

Standard sizes

Virginia Postrel has a characteristically informative and entertaining piece on standardized clothing sizes in the December issue of The Atlantic. Clothing sizing, she says, began in the mid-twentieth century when “the U.S. government established and maintained size guidelines, using data from about 16,500 women, including 6,500 members of the women’s…

November 19, 2007

Word and thing

Ezra Pound wrote, “The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the damned and despised literatti - when their very medium, the very essence…

November 19, 2007

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