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American Politics

Voting, Praying, and Purity: Two Different Versions of Civil Religion

Pastor John Piper has written on why he (probably) won’t be voting in this month’s presidential election. Reading his argument, I couldn’t help wondering if voting has a cultic significance to Piper. As much as self-admitted Christian Trump-voters are characterized as cult followers, Never Trump Christians often strike me as…

by Mark HorneOctober 30, 2020
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Literature

Pastor Frankenstein

Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself… –– Victor Frankenstein In Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Victor Frankenstein is a young intellectual with an excessive thirst for glory and worldwide acclaim. Having lost his beloved mother, Frankenstein works to…

by Drew KnowlesOctober 27, 2020
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How to Worship

Against Practical Preaching

“Our daughter is just like a baby hippo,” my wife says to me as I hang my coat up. “After we watched a video of hippos munching whole watermelons, she sat down to her own watermelon lunch. She gobbled them up with those same puffy cheeks and big eyes.” My…

by John HigginsOctober 22, 2020
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Abortion

Evangelicals for Adolf: Christians in Hitler’s Germany

Christian compromise with Nazi Germany’s political leadership is well documented in painful detail. There was resistance, but it was the exception rather than the rule. German Christianity was terribly timid. Leadership lacked spiritual strength because of serious Biblical ignorance and unbelief. But it was not just the leaders. Christians in…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 20, 2020
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Abortion

For Whom Should a Christian Vote: Moral Reasoning and the 2020 Election

Can a Christian vote for Donald Trump? That might seem like a surprising question given the widespread evangelical support for the President. Yet for a growing number of evangelicals, to vote for Trump is to endorse his moral repugnancy and further discredit gospel-believing Christians who have sold their birthright for…

by Blake JohnsonOctober 13, 2020
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Hermeneutics

Two Yeshuas and a Fish

Thirty-eight years is a long time to take getting somewhere (Deut. 2:14). You could just ask anyone in the unfaithful generation of people whom God brought to the edge of the Promised Land the first time under Moses—if they were still alive, that is (Num. 14:22-23, 32-35). But there are…

by Eric RobinsonOctober 6, 2020

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Apocalypse in the Stars

Scholars have long speculated on the astronomical imagery of Revelation. Astronomy plays a big role in Austin Farrer’s Rebirth of Images , and Bruce Malina has written a couple of books on the subject ( Social Science Commentary on Revelation ; On the Genre and Message of Revelation ). He…

August 4, 2014

Seated on a Horse

Who are the horsemen riding the white, red, black, and green horses that are summoned when the Lamb breaks the first four seals? (Revelation 6:1-8). Perhaps a grammatical/syntactical observation will help. Nowhere in the Old Testament is anyone said to “sit” on a horse. People “ride” horses, or don’t ride,…

August 4, 2014

Empowering Medea

Mary Beard describes Ben Power’s production of Medea “impressive.” But she wonders if the modernized version of the tragedy is Euripides. “Euripides’ play is a complex work, raising difficult issues about gender, sincerity, self-interest and responsibility. But, although Medea ends up killing her sons (with all the terrible conflicts that…

August 4, 2014

Entangled Trinity

Ernest Simmons’s The Entangled Trinity is an effort to work out the relation of theology and science through Trinitarian theology, and particularly through the concept of perichoresis, which leads into a panentheistic understanding of God’s relation to the world. He uses the metaphor of “complementarity” the quantum idea that what…

August 4, 2014

Scandinavian State Formation

In recent years, historians have argued that the state didn’t exist in the medieval period. States are born of war, argues Charles Tilly, especially the wars of the early modern era. Annales scholars and their descendants saw tiny medieval duchies and counties as antitheses to centralized state power. Sverre Bagge…

August 4, 2014

Sporting Apocalypse

Marcia Shoop is extraordinarily well-positioned to reflect on the theological dimensions of contemporary sports. A college athlete with a PhD from Emory University, Shoop is married to John Shoop, a former college quarterback who has coached both in the NFL and the NCAA. Shoop’s Touchdowns for Jesus bills itself as…

August 4, 2014

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