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Writing

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

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Astral imagery

The Lady and Her Jewels: An Epiphany Meditation

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery (Revelation 12:1-2). Then Joshua spoke…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 6, 2015
extreme-unction
Anointing

Fattening Our Suffering

In his post asking Ought we Anoint the Dying? Peter Leithart makes an excellent and important point about our suffering as members of Christ. However, he only parenthetically mentions that the verb in question in James 5 is not chrio but aleipho . By assuming that these words are interchangeable,…

by Robert MaddoxDecember 30, 2014
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James

Death as Frenemy

We spend a lot of time in the church talking about what it means to live like a Christian. But what does it mean to die like a Christian? If we are to follow Christ in life, what does it mean for us to follow him in death as well?…

by Rich LuskDecember 23, 2014
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Literature

Was Shakespeare A Christian?

How would one go about answering the question posed by my title? That depends on what the question means. Obviously, different definitions of the question would require different approaches to an answer. Right off hand, I can think of at least three possible — though not necessarily mutually exclusive —…

by Ralph Allan SmithDecember 23, 2014
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American Culture

Phobophobia

In recent weeks and months, we have seen events that are not the event. The drama around these events is not the events themselves, but the anxiety about the events, and then even the anxiety about the anxiety about the events. That is the real event. The events in Ferguson,…

by Richard BledsoeDecember 22, 2014
anointing-david
Anointing

Ought We Anoint the Dying?

Anointing the sick, including the dying, is one of the traditional seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. The Reformers denied that the rite qualified as a sacrament. Formally, this was because anointing did not have a direct authorization from Jesus; more theologically, it was not one of the marks that…

by Peter LeithartDecember 18, 2014

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Early Higher Critics

In his recent commentary on Daniel, Jim Jordan suggests that the modern notion that Josiah and his priests wrote “the book of the law” they claimed to discover in the temple was likely shared by people of Josiah’s time: “The image-users of the high places had always resented the official,…

March 18, 2008
Literature

For and Against Cromwell

Harold Bloom (in The Visionary Company ) writes that just as “French culture has been divided between those who have accepted the French Revolution and its consequences and those who have sought to deny and resist them,” so English culture is “divided between those who have accepted the Puritan religious…

March 17, 2008

Trinitarian reading

In her book on Joachim of Fiore, Marjorie Reeves notes that Joachim insists on diligent study of both testaments as the means for reaching the Spiritual interpretation: “The relationship is clearly a Trinitarian one: in Joachim’s phrase, the Spiritualis intellectus proceeds from both the Testaments, just as the Spirit proceeds…

March 17, 2008

Nero Revived

In the first of his Dialogues , the fifth-century Christian writer Sulpicius Severus said that “there is no doubt that Antichrist, conceived by an evil spirit, has already been born.” He spelled out his expectations for the future: Nero and the Antichrist would come, Nero ruling in the west and…

March 17, 2008
History

Prophet and priest

According to Weber, personal charisma was the key distinguishing feature of prophetic office, and also the feature that most clearly separated prophets from priests: :”the prophet declares new revelations by charisma, whereas the priest serves to a sacred tradition. It is no accident that almost no prophet has come from…

March 17, 2008
Theology

Naming God

Feminist theology overtly objects to masculine names for God, but Christopher Seitz says that the debate goes much deeper: “what is at stake in modern debates is not whether God is father or can be addressed as ‘he.’ Rather, what is at stake is whether we are entitled to call…

March 17, 2008

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