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Writing

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

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Ezra

Ezra: The Aaronic Rest-Giver

If you’re a preacher looking for good commentaries on Ezra, you’ll struggle. Certainly to find ones that wrestle in good detail with the text. And certainly ones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg. There’s a good bit more for Nehemiah, which is odd, as the two are…

by Rhys LavertyJune 8, 2021
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1 John

1 John in Community

Quick thought experiment: try to pretend you’ve never read 1 John before. Read 1:1-6. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Now, on to v. 7: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with ______….” What word would you expect in that blank, based…

by Tim NicholsJune 1, 2021
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Hermeneutics

Spending Time with Noah: Reflections on Prepositions in the Flood Narrative

In my work as a Bible translator, I was recently checking our translation team’s draft of Genesis 8:8, which says of Noah (translating the Hebrew quite literally): And he sent out the dove from with him to see: had the waters lessened from upon the face of the ground? Part…

by Josh JensenMay 25, 2021
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Philosophy

Steven Weinberg Destroyed My Faith

Just in case a reader may not know Weinberg, he is a theoretical physicist and the winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1979, as well as countless other prizes for his research. He is also a prolific, lucid, and captivating writer. If you want to read something on…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 18, 2021
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Colossians

Reconciliation in Colossians 1:20

Colossians 1:15-20 is a famous passage in Paul’s epistles because it is a succinct and powerful poem. It appears even to have been a hymn. Given the uniquely Pauline language — “reconciliation” is a term used only by Paul — it should not seem odd to attribute the poem/hymn to…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 11, 2021
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Movies

Terror of Knowing Myself

Stalker (1979) is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky based on Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It shows a day from the life of a stalker, a man who enters the so-called "Zone", an Alien landing site, where he leads people to a room that grants people’s innermost desires, which…

by Bogumil JarmulakMay 4, 2021

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Atheists in America

The “new atheism” has given atheists in America a new lease on life, but there have been comparatively few studies of atheist beliefs, backgrounds, and experiences. Melanie Brewster’s compilation, Atheists in America , tries to fill that gap by presenting “voices of atheist individuals who represent a diverse array of…

July 22, 2014

Who is Hillary?

At the New Republic , Anne Applebaum tries to pinpoint the genre of Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices . Too superficial and sentimental to be a policy book, to guarded to be a memoir, too cliched to give insight into people or events, the book is best read, Applebaum argues, as…

July 22, 2014

Egyptian Renaissance

Ancient Athens and the Renaissance are today seen as the two great peaks of Western Civilization. Renaissance thinkers would not have seen things that way. Obsessed with sources as they were, they wanted to push behind Rome to Greece and from Greece to Egypt. Those who were seeking an alternative…

July 21, 2014

Musical Wit

After wonderful books on Bach, Handel, and the early Christian understanding of music, Calvin Stapert had added a volume on what he calls “music’s wittiest composer,” a composer full of surprises, Joseph Haydn ( Playing Before the Lord ). The book is organized biographically, and the account of his life…

July 21, 2014

Bread for the World

As Joseph turns Egypt into a vast grain story, it’s said that he “stored grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he stopped measuring, for it was beyond measure” (Genesis 41:49). That “sand of the sea” reminds us of promises made to the patriarchs about the…

July 21, 2014

Exodus in Antiquity

In the fourth century BC, the Greek historian Hecataeus of Abdera offered this account of ancient Egyptian history (quoted in Bernal, Black Athena , 1.109): “The natives of the land surmised that unless they removed the foreigners their troubles would never be resolved. At once, therefore, the aliens were driven…

July 21, 2014

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