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Writing

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

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Poetry

The Donkey

G.K. Chesterton assumes a surprising and memorable perspective from which to view the events of Palm Sunday (Matthew 21:1-11) The Donkey by: G.K. Chesterton When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head…

by Arthur KayApril 14, 2022
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Hermeneutics

The Tree, the Cross, and the Supper

There is a common biblical principle: you must give back what you steal. In the Bible, restitution is repayment with interest. If you rob someone of their money, you have to pay back double what you stole. A thief must pay back fourfold if he steals a sheep, and if…

by Kyle LammottApril 12, 2022
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Isaiah

The King’s Cure

Identifying Isaiah’s suffering servant with the promised Messiah is unthinkable for a Jew because it combines the offices of humble priest and victorious king. While it is frustrating that Jews refuse to see the sufferings of Christ in Isaiah 53, the reluctance of Christians to interpret the passage in its…

by Mike BullApril 5, 2022
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How to Worship

When Our Men Sing Again

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Psalm 150:6 (ESV) The command to praise God is pervasive throughout Scripture. In the verse above the Spirit calls all things with breath to praise the Lord. Song is also clearly featured all throughout Scripture and is a featured…

by Grant Van BrimmerMarch 29, 2022
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Culture

The Transgender Bait and Switch

“Gender is a social construct.” That’s shocking to people who have assumed that gender and sex were synonyms but at least since I was in college, in the ‘80s, we were taught that “gender” refers to the forms, the customs, the traditions that our culture teaches us to define what…

by John CarpenterMarch 22, 2022
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Biblical Studies

Israel, Judah, and the Narrative Flow of the Bible

In Genesis 49, Jacob prophesies about (blesses and curses?) his twelve sons. The first three of them don’t fare well. Jacob recalls Reuben’s offense of taking his concubine (Genesis 35:22) and the murderous violence of Simeon’s and Levi against the Canaanite inhabitants of the city of Shechem (Genesis 34). He…

by Mark HorneMarch 17, 2022

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Jonathan Edwards

Edwards on Union

Ross Hastings argues in Jonathan Edwards and the Life of God that union in the Spirit is the center of Edwards's theology: “union is a significant driving force in Edwards’s Trinitarian theology, if not its overarching trope, and that his theology essentially tells a ‘from eternity, to eternity' story of…

March 21, 2016

God Sending, God Sent

When Moses finds a bush burning on Mount Sinai, he turns aside to look. “Yahweh” sees him turn aside, so “God” ( elohim ) calls from the bush, Moses, Moses (Exodus 3:4). Earlier, we were told that the Angel of Yahweh “appearing in a blazing fire from the midst of…

March 18, 2016

The Music of Chemistry

Ben McFarland wants to convince his readers that the periodic table is a thing of beauty forever ( A World From Dust ). He admits that the table as normally presented is “not quite symmetric,” but points out that with a small adjustment “a mathematical pattern appears”: “By row, there…

March 18, 2016

Trinity in Theory and Practice

Making the Trinity practical seems like a very tall order. Few areas of Christian doctrine are more filled with technical mine fields, terms and concepts that must be used in very specific ways to avoid heresy. We have to talk about a God who is one God and yet somehow…

March 17, 2016

Islamic Syncretism

Andrew Walker's “Eat the Heart Out of the Infidel” reaches deep into the history of African Islam to explain the rise of the murderous Boko Haram movement in Nigeria. The Islam of Western Africa was not a pure Islam, but a syncretic Islam that retained and adapted the preexisting animism.…

March 17, 2016
Architecture

Whom is Architecture For?

In his recent biography of Frank Gehry, Building Art, Paul Goldberger recounts this incident: “a jet-lagged Gehry, already in his eighties, must make his way to a Spanish press conference from an interrupted nap: The first reporter asked him what his response was to charges that his buildings were more…

March 17, 2016

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