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

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Epistemology

A Cheer for the Mystics

Mystical theologians are often unguarded, extreme, un-nuanced, pressing to the edges of heresy, sometimes beyond. Still, the mystics are worthy of study. Why? Many reasons. Unlike some late medieval and post-Reformation dogmaticians, mystical theologians are often instinctively and richly Trinitarian. Historical-critical approaches to Scripture left mystical theologians virtually untouched; mystics…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 2, 2013
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Literature

Shadow and Substance in Shakespeare's Venice

Portia of Belmont is a “lady richly left,” as Bassanio says of her in the first Act of The Merchant of Venice . Plus, she’s beautiful and wise. Suitors clamber to Belmont in hope. Her father knew it would be so, and in his will set up a fairy-tale test…

by Peter LeithartAugust 28, 2013
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Liturgy

Liturgy Traps

[fve]http://vimeo.com/72195198[/fve]

by James B. JordanAugust 26, 2013
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Deuteronomy

Victory Food

In the nature of the case, “the” Christian meditation on Deuteronomy 14:1-21 cannot be written. Meditation offers too many possibilities, opens too many doors. There is not one and only one correct set of associations for a Christian to consider when thinking of Deuteronomy 14:1-21. We could, for example, consider…

by Ralph Allan SmithAugust 21, 2013
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Romans

David's Sin and Israel's Salvation, Part I

Having retold the story of the cumulative sin of Israel leading to the great atonement on the cross, Paul then reemphasizes that, just as both Jew and Gentiles were locked into sin and judgment, now they are both justified by faith: Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.…

by Mark HorneAugust 20, 2013
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Deuteronomy

You are what you eat

Deuteronomy 14 is full of allusions to events of Israel’s history and other portions of Scripture. What would an Israelite learn by mediation on these allusions? The answer, I believe, is at least fourfold. Faith, Worship, War For the ancient Israelite first hearing Moses’ sermon, or perhaps hearing it read…

by Ralph Allan SmithAugust 15, 2013

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Eucharistic meditation, First Sunday After Easter

Matthew 11:19: The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners. Jesus’ teaching in this chapter is all about timing. He is the Coming One; the time of fulfillment has come, and the evidence is…

March 30, 2008

Baptismal meditation

Matthew 11:11, 13: “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he . . . . For all the prophets and the law prophesied until…

March 30, 2008

Reverse exodus

In Hosea 13:15, the prophet says of Ephraim, “Though he flourishes among the reeds, an east wind will come, the wind of the LORD coming up from the wilderness; and his fountain will become dry and his spring will be dried up; it will plunder his treasury of every precious…

March 30, 2008
Literature

Satan’s party?

In her introduction to a new edition of Paradise Lost (Blackwell), Barbara Lewalski notes the oddness of Milton’s epic protagonists and setting. Citing the Proem to Book 9, she writes that Milton “has indeed given over the traditional epic subject, wars and empire, and the tradition epic hero as the…

March 29, 2008
Philosophy

Rorty, the disappointed realist

Putnam writes, “I agree with Rorty that the metaphysical assumption that there is a fundamental dichotomy between ‘intrinsic’ properties of things and ‘relational’ properties of things makes no sense; but that does not lead me to view the thoughts and experiences of my friends as just the intentional objects of…

March 29, 2008
Philosophy

Fact/Value Dichotomy

Hilary Putnam has recently traced the “collapse of the fact/value dichotomy.” He does not deny that there is a distinction to be made, useful in some contexts, between statements of fact and statements of value, especially of ethical value. But he argues that a dichotomy between fact and value is…

March 29, 2008

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