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Writing

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

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Books

Interpreting "The Man Who Was Thursday"

I just finished re-reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday . I have in the past had the temerity to say that I believe it to be the best novel of the 20th century. Be that as it may, I still maintain that it is at least one…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 7, 2022
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Hebrews

The Universality of Mary’s Wound

And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that thoughts out of many hearts may be…

by Garrett SoucyJanuary 4, 2022
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Music

An Argument for Heartier Hymnals

I was inspired to write this article after reading John Ahern’s The Case for Shorter Hymnals first published on Theopolis Institute’s website on November 16, 2021. Mr. Ahern and I are writing with different audiences and emphases in mind. I am thankful we both share a mutual desire to see…

by Jarrod RicheyDecember 30, 2021
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Biblical Studies

Image of God

If you’ve spent any time in the social-media galaxy of Christian cultural commentators, you have almost definitely run across the Latin phrase Imago Dei . It means image of God . Why they usually say it in Latin, I couldn’t tell you. We saw it in the wake of the…

by Daniel HoffmanDecember 28, 2021
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Advent

He Comes to Make His Blessings Known: "Son of David" and "Son of Abraham" in Matthew 1:1

The Gospel of Matthew—indeed, the New Testament—begins with a list of names, and that list of names is introduced by this heading: “The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Why start like this? Why “the son of David” and “the son…

by Josh JensenDecember 23, 2021
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Biblical Studies

On Not Needing to Cut the Baby in Half

A blade is raised. A child wails. But the brow under the crown is untroubled. Solomon knows that the raising of the sword will reveal the true parent and the identity of the son. But how did he know this? Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac certainly bears some of the…

by Jonathan WhiteDecember 21, 2021

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Radical Penance

According to the Muslim commentator Ibn Abbas, “after the fall, Adam and Eve fasted for forty days and Adam abstained from having sex with Eve for a hundred years.”

July 13, 2007
History

Longing for myth

George Williamson argues in Longing for Myth in Germany (Chicago, 2004) that the search for a “new mythology” developed from “the postrevolutionary experience of historical rupture and religious crisis.” Nationalist writers gave a particular spin to this by calling for a “German mythology.” Originally, in the early German romantics, the…

July 13, 2007
Philosophy

Fruhromantik and postmodernism

It is widely argued today that the early German romantic movement anticipates postmodernism; the early romantics were postmoderns before their time. Frederick Beiser differs, and notes three critical differences between German romanticism and the mainstream of postmodern philosophy. First, the early romantics were Platonists “in their belief in a single…

July 13, 2007
Philosophy

Germans Against Descartes

German idealism is often seen as the completion of the subjectivization of knowledge and reality begun by Descartes. Not so, says Frederick Beiser in his massive 2002 history of German idealism (Harvard): “In fundamental respects it is more accurate to say the exact opposite: that the development of German idealism…

July 13, 2007
Philosophy

Amo, ergo sum

Jean-Luc Marion challenges the Cartesian cogito by stressing the primacy of the erotic. According to Descartes’s formula ( Ego sum res cogitans ), “it follows by omission that I am no longer supposed to love, nor to hate; or better: I am of such a sort that I have neither…

July 12, 2007
Theology

Reasonable Christianity

Barth argues that 18th-century rational theology was rooted in prior commitments to peaceable citizenship and morality. The dynamic goes something like this: Christianity is interpreted pragmatically - it’s about the transformation of human life; but it doesn’t work - human life isn’t transformed; there must therefore be something wrong with…

July 12, 2007

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