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Writing

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

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Gatekeepers

1 Chronicles 9:1 seems to bring the genealogies of 1 Chronicles to an end. The Chronicler has recorded the genealogy of the human race from Adam, focusing on the descendants of Abraham through Jacob. Summing it all up, he says, “So all Israel was enrolled by genealogies; and behold, they…

by Peter LeithartJune 21, 2016
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Trinity

Are the Divine Persons Persons?

The “personalist” understanding of the Trinity, articulated most influentially in the work of John Zizioulas, has fallen on hard times. Recent scholars have attacked Zizioulas’s idea that Cappadocian Trinitarianism represented an ontological revolution, hammering on the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most drastic of…

by Peter LeithartJune 16, 2016
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Architecture

On Biblical Theology

Biblical Theology is often defined as the historical unfolding of God’s revelation, or of God’s revelation and of the history of his covenantal redemption and transformation of humanity and the world. In practice, Biblical Theology is usually broader than this, and also includes the study of literary structure and of…

by James B. JordanJune 14, 2016
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Humor

Wise Laughter

We are made to be happy. Created to enter into the eternal joy of God, our whole being inclines to that end, but the fallen world has put forth barriers and by our own sin we bar ourselves from that endless delight, and death blinds us to that reality. Yet…

by Remy WilkinsJune 7, 2016
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Liturgy

Why Theopolis? Take Two

At the end of Revelation, John sees the heavenly city descending to earth. The city shines with the brilliance of God's glory, which lightens the nations, so that kings bring their glory to the city. This is not a vision of the final new heaven and new earth. It's a…

by Peter LeithartJune 2, 2016
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Attributes of God

How Can We Talk About God?

“No one has ever seen God,” writes John (John 1:18). If this is the case, then how can we speak about God? Some people say we actually cannot. Or at least we cannot speak about God positively, i.e. who He is. We can only say who or what God is…

by Bogumil JarmulakMay 31, 2016

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Beethoven’s Triumphs

Jan Swafford’s biography of Beethoven, Anguish and Triumph , recounts the composer’s physical ailments in squirm-inducing detail: “deafness, colitis, rheumatism, rheumatic fever, typhus, skin disorders, abscesses, a variety of infections, ophthalmia, inflammatory degeneration of the arteries, jaundice and at the end chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver.” The NYTBR…

August 6, 2014

SuperVulnerable

Death, Disability, and the Superhero (forthcoming) by Joe Alaniz is more jargon-ridden than the average cultural study, which is of course saying a lot. That’s unfortunate, because the topic is of some interest. Alaniz summarizes the psychoanalytic, religious, and other studies of the superhero phenomenon, pointing out the obvious that…

August 6, 2014

Water for Sale

Karen Piper’s Price of Thirst is an expose of the global cabal of five companies that controls some 73% of the world’s private water supplies. Private companies provide an increasing proportion of water: “By 2025, the number of people served by private water companies is predicted to reach 21%. In…

August 6, 2014

Ethics of Resurrection

In a typically dense, brilliant essay in the Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology , Milbank argues that without faith in resurrection there is no ethical. Resurrection is the extreme Christian form of the embrace of moral luck, the basis for a Christian eudaemonism. From this conclusion, Milbank teases out three…

August 6, 2014

Immediacy and Apocalyptic

In an insightful reflection on Derrida’s essay on the apocalyptic tone in philosophy, Walter Lowe ( Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Philosophy ) observes that “Kant has ruled appeals to immediacy to be out of order in the court of reason.” Derrida “inquires whether Kant himself can abide by this rule.…

August 6, 2014

Living Water

Jesus promises that those who are thirsty can drink from Jesus. Those who drink/believe not only have their thirst assuaged. They become springs of refreshing, living water - John tells us the water is the Spirit (John 7:37-39). But living water is not only refreshing water. Most of the time,…

August 6, 2014

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