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Writing

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

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Apostle Paul

Jonah’s Pauline Move: Finding Mercy for Gentiles in Texts about Mercy for Israel

Jonah is Paul’s typological opposite. Indeed, in the whole Old Testament, it would be difficult to find a more perfect foil to Paul than Jonah. Whereas Paul crosses the sea to enact God’s saving purposes for the Gentiles, Jonah crosses the sea to avoid bringing Gentiles God’s mercy. For that…

by Josh JensenJanuary 11, 2024
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Family

A House for Me

Years ago, I realized that if my children wanted to feel like their house was a home, I needed to be intentional about making our physical shelter a place of spiritual refuge. I began to see the Holy Spirit as the indwelling person of the Trinity—the one who makes His…

by Mandi GerthJanuary 9, 2024
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Charity

On Parrhesia and Gospel Witness

When the crowds encircle Christ in Solomon’s Porch during the Festival of Dedication, they charge him: “tell us boldly who you are!” 1 They do not draw-up to him to with excited anticipation as they did earlier in the Gospel, 2 instead they flank him like a gang of wolves.…

by Mark BriansJanuary 4, 2024
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Deuteronomy

Misunderstanding Moses

1 In Deuteronomy 7:1-5, Moses wrote: When Yahweh your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 3, 2024
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Advent

40 Theses on Christmas

Every Advent witnesses the gruesome reanimation of the voice that whispers “you know , Christmas is just a pagan holiday…” with that sort of conversational ellipsis that does not so much invite further reflection but halts and forecloses it. The claims are several and equally spurious: Jesus wasn’t born on…

by Mark BriansDecember 26, 2023
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Genesis

The Twelve Trials of Abraham

Abraham's life in Genesis is a series of trials. He travels hundreds of miles from his family into a new land, flees from a famine into the hands of a king who takes his wife, and after returning, has to rescue his brother from a war. He's involved with two…

by Donald LinnemeyerDecember 26, 2023

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Feeding of the Five Thousand

Luke 9 is largely about the final stages of the training of the Twelve before Jesus moves from Galilee to Jerusalem. Part of their training comes in the story of the feeding of the five thousand. Eugene LaVerdiere’s treatment of this incident in Dining in the Kingdom of God highlights…

October 5, 2003

More on Two Faces of Islam

Well, there’s a problem with speaking well of a book before reading far enough in it. I’m still learning a lot from Stephen Schwartz’s Two Faces of Islam , but fairly early in the book he makes it clear that he’s working with the view that at least all “Abrahamic…

October 4, 2003
Theology

First Comes Love

Scott Hahn’s First Comes Love is, overall, a very fine book. It is a Trinitarian treatment of biblical theology that focuses on sacrificial self-giving as the mode of divine life that is to be replicated in the life of the church and to transform family life. “Family” is the dominant…

October 4, 2003

Schwartz on Islam

I have been reading Stephen Schwartz’s wonderful pieces on Islam in the Weekly Standard for several years. Schwartz has done as much as any journalist to highlight the responsibility and role of Saudi Arabia for the rise of radical Islam, and particularly the central importance of the Wahhabi sect in…

October 4, 2003
Politics

Bush Hatred

Jonathan Chait begins an article on “Bush hatred” ( TNR ) with the kind of rant that journalists are supposed to keep to themselves. He hates Bush’s policies, but he also hates the way Bush walks, the way he talks, the look on his face, and every thing else about…

October 3, 2003
Politics

Arnold’s Campaign

From the radio reports I hear, it seems that Arnold’s campaign is an extension of his movie career. At one stop, he unveils a bus bearing his mug, and buses for the press labeled “Predators.” At another stop, he talks about taxes, and says that in the movies he destroys…

October 3, 2003

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