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

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American Religion

Protestantism's Lost Soul

D. G. Hart’s The Lost Soul of American Protestantism vividly clarifies the differences between evangelical and Confessional Protestantism. In part the book is a manifesto for historians of American religion. Hart argues that historians of American Protestantism have operated with a simplistic binary contrast of evangelical/conservative v. liberal/progressive. At best,…

by Peter LeithartAugust 18, 2015
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Books

The Idiot and the Limits of Compassion

Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Idiot , like his other major works, is a complex evaluation of the human condition—a juxtaposition of the innate goodness and innate evil that resides within every human heart. There is much one can say about The Idiot . I am no specialist of Russian literature, or…

by Gerald HiestandAugust 13, 2015
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Homosexuality

If There is “Natural Law” How Can People Believe in Same-Sex Marriage?

At risk of violating some secret handshake agreement on some important nuance to “natural law,” I will sum up what I understand in my own words. As far as I can tell natural law is supposed to be an area of knowledge that all people should be able to agree…

by Mark HorneAugust 11, 2015
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Biblical Studies

Cosmic Language, 2

The first installment of this article may be found here . The Image of Man This brings us to a substitutionary atonement which we do understand, the fulfilment of the cruciform Tabernacle in the cross of Christ. Although Jesus’ execution was Physical and Social, it was primarily Personal . Beginning…

by Mike BullAugust 6, 2015
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Genesis

Every Noise Appalls

The first two essays in this series drew attention to the structure of the first part of Macbeth and to the way Shakespeare incorporates the Garden of Eden into his story. Macbeth , we saw, is a temptation story in which, compared to the Biblical story, the temptation itself is…

by Ralph Allan SmithAugust 4, 2015
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Revelation

The Warrior and the City: A Wedding Homily

Revelation 19:6-9 Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, “Hallelujah! For theLord our God, the Almighty, reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him,…

by Peter LeithartAugust 3, 2015

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Music of Light

Jonathan Ree’s delightful I See A Voice glances at Enlightenment-era efforts to work out analogies between color and musical harmonies. Newton’s Optics was key. He argued that “just as all different tones can be located on a single scale running from the highest to the lowest pitch of audible sound,…

March 29, 2014

Phenomenology of Sound

We don’t hear sounds, Heidegger said. That’s an abstraction. What we hear are things making sounds - “the creaking wagon, or the motor cycle . . . the column on the mark, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling” (quoted in Jonathan Ree, I See A Voice ,…

March 29, 2014

Expression or Echo?

Voice has often been seen as expression, as the coming into public space of something within. Given its reliance on breath, it was easy to conclude that voice is the expression of the soul. According to Ree ( I See A Voice ), it was Herder who broke through this…

March 29, 2014

Word among words

Diane Thompson concludes her essay in Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition with this superb description of the place of God’s Word in the words of Dostoevsky’s novels, and his characters: “Dostoevsky’s feeling for the dynamic aspect of the Logos was exceptionally strong, as was his gift for making it a…

March 28, 2014

Witness, Judge, World

Consciousness enters the world and the stones remain stones and the sun the sun. Still existence becomes completely different when consciousness arises, Bakhtin argues in Speech Genres . This happens become the coming of consciousness is the coming of “the witness and the judge” (137). “A stone is still stony…

March 28, 2014

Whores with Hearts of Gold

Nabokov didn’t much like Dostoevsky. What interests him in literature is “enduring art and individual genius,” and from this viewpoint Dostoevsky is mediocre: “with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between” ( Lectures on Russian Literature , 68). His characters are mentally unbalanced, his…

March 28, 2014

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