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Writing

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

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Biblical Studies

Levels of Language

A couple years ago, I read Paul Graham’s ruminations on higher- and lower-level languages in Hackers and Painters . Although he’s talking about computer languages, his insights have bearing on biblical language and hermeneutics. So bear with me while I lay out some of the basic points, and then we’ll…

by Tim NicholsAugust 7, 2018
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Ecclesiology

The Church at the Center

Toward the end of the Revelation, John sees a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. The old created order in Adam has passed away, and the new order under the lordship of Jesus has been established. Within this new creation John also sees “the holy city, the…

by Bill SmithAugust 3, 2018
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Epistemology

Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World: D.C. Schindler: Integrative Metaphysics

I have been talking with you about integration—an elusive, allusive, word, pregnant with something we long for. I have suggested that what might be rightly a natural longing has been exacerbated by our own modern Western milieu’s dominating devotion to bits and bytes, a prevailing sense of fragmentation. Fragmentation is…

by Esther Lightcap MeekJuly 31, 2018
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Art

The Stone Upon the Well

Sunday morning found me kneeling at the foot of my bed, trembling, pebbles of sweat leaping off the edge of my brow and nose, and hitting the floor in front of me, but not from piety was I procumbent; though as a minister for over a decade, I had made…

by Remy WilkinsJuly 26, 2018
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Immigration

Counseling, Immigration, and the Politics of the Gospel

In April of this year, President Trump issued a zero-tolerance border policy that separated families, specifically children from their parents who had crossed the USA/Mexico border be it illegally or as asylum seekers . In mid-June, Trump dropped this policy of splitting up families, however there are still children who…

by Michael SpalioneJuly 24, 2018
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Biblical Studies

Joseph, the Righteous Husband

During the Middle Ages, Joseph, the husband of Mary, was the butt of many jokes. Medieval theater and art often depicted him as something of a buffoon, decidedly marginal to the gospel story. In part, this was the unfortunate obverse of the exaltation of Mary; any man would suffer by…

by Peter LeithartJuly 19, 2018

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Theology

Hegel the pietist

Still further evidence that a) Hegel can’t get away from Kant’s pietism and b) Hamann would have been as right about Hegel as he was about Kant.  Jean-Marie Schaeffer writes of the impact of the incarnation on history: “it is through God’s becoming man, through the life and passion of…

September 22, 2009
Music

Music and modernity

Andrew Bowie ( Aesthetics and Subjectivity : From Kant to Nietzsche ) challenges the typical postmodern characterization of modern philosophy by highlighting music.  Heidegger views “the growth of the importance of music in modernity as grounded in an attitude to art based just upon feeling ‘which has been left to…

September 22, 2009

Scapegoat

Esau is a “hairy man” ( sa’iyr ), something we learn only when Jacob dresses himself in goat hair to approach his father (Genesis 27:11, 23). Jacob becomes a hairy one, subbing in for his brother. The only other use of the word in Genesis is in 37:31, where it…

September 22, 2009

Yahweh and Pharaoh

When Moses objects that he cannot speak, Yahweh assigns his “brother Aaron” to be his spokesman and prophet (Exodus 4:14; 7:1-2).  The next time Aaron is identified as Moses’ brother is in Exodus 28, where he is given the garments of glory and beauty to approach Yahweh, and the phrase…

September 22, 2009
Art

Christian art

Greek art, Hegel says, brings art to its summit.  This presents a difficulty: The greatest sensuous artistic form occurs within a polytheistic, inadequate religion. In Jean-Marie Schaeffer’s summary, Hegel resolves this by pointing to the very brokenness of the bodily form of Christ in Christian art: “in Christian art, Christ…

September 21, 2009
Philosophy

Against Empiricism

Heidegger got it exactly right: “We never really first perceive a throng of sensations, e.g., tones and noises, in the appearance of things . . . rather we hear the storm whistling in the chimney, we hear the three-motored plane, we hear the Mercedes in immediate distinction from the Volkswagen.…

September 21, 2009

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