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Writing

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

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Protestantism

More Anti-Catholic Than Thou

The “second Reformation” introduced Reformed liturgy and teaching into Lutheran Germany. This was seen by some as a continuation of the Reformation and a purgation of Catholic remnants. The effort to carry on “further reformation” led to disputes with Lutherans. As Bodo Nischan has put it, the hottest debate in…

by Peter LeithartMarch 28, 2017
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Literature

Bilbo: A Reformation Hero?

In J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century , Tom Shippey observes that Bilbo is a member of the middle class, a bourgeois. Bilbo does not have any servants, but his hole is “the home of a member of the Victorian upper-middle class of Tolkien’s nineteenth-century youth, full of…

by Bogumil JarmulakMarch 23, 2017
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Isaiah

God In the Dock

Idolatry has deprived Israel of her senses. This was one of the early messages to Isaiah (Isaiah 6). Yahweh sent him out to a people who had been deprived of their senses because of their commitment to idols. They become like the idols they serve. They still have eyes, but…

by Peter LeithartMarch 21, 2017
jesus-baptism
Trinity

Triune Personhood

In the current climate of Trinitarian discussion concerning personhood, it's good to reach back to David Bentley Hart's treatment of the subject in his wonderful Beauty of the Infinite . Hart addresses the dangers of misreading Rahner’s rule, namely, the danger of dissolving the ontological Trinity into the economic. In…

by Peter LeithartMarch 16, 2017
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Certificate Program

Chris Kou Completes the Certificate Program

Chris Kou is the oldest son of Chinese immigrants. Chris and his brothers run a branding and marketing business, Imagineering, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. In his spare time, he takes online courses from Reformed Theological Seminary, and aspires to be a pastor. Chris is also one of our…

by Peter LeithartMarch 15, 2017
church-monet
Architecture

House of Living Stones

The following was delivered as the Solemn Charge and Exhortation to Theopolis students beginning the Easter term course on Architecture and Liturgical Space . As we will be reminded repeatedly throughout the week, the Bible has a lot to say about building and buildings. Long stretches of Exodus, Kings, Chronicles,…

by Peter LeithartMarch 14, 2017

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Jealous Mammon

Many have observed the connections between consumerism and abortion. It’s an ancient insight. The prophet Micah charged that Zion had been built with blood and Jerusalem with violent injustice (Micah 4:10). He immediately followed with a charge against Judah’s leaders: Judges accept bribes, priests teach for money; prophets please the…

March 3, 2014

Social Animal

It was much better for God to create humanity from one individual than from several, Augustine argues ( City of God , 12.21). Noting the difference between the creation of animals from the ground and the creation of Eve from Adam, Augustine notes, “as to the other animals, He created…

March 3, 2014

Herbert’s Accessibility

“What kind of an appeal does this have for a reader - especially one from a post-Christian society like our own-who does not share Herbert’s theological premisses?” asks Stephen Prickett in his TLS review of John Drury’s Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert . Coleridge already…

March 3, 2014

Porn and Empire

Augustine discerns an inner connection between imperium and pornography. Imperium is the political form of the libido dominandi . Pornography is the sexual form of the same libido . Both imperium and porn reduce human persons to bodies to be manipulated for the manipulator’s pleasure. Decadence is built into imperium…

March 3, 2014

Israel among the Nations

In 1907, Ira M. Price, a member of the original faculty of the University of Chicago and professor of ancient languages and literatures from 1892-1925, concluded a discussion of the parallels between Genesis and other ANE documents with this observation ( The Monuments and the Old Testament ): “How .…

March 3, 2014

Anxious Age

Jody Bottum’s new An Anxious Age is as idiosyncratic, quirky, eloquent, and insightful as its author. Bottum offers a spiritual reading of contemporary America, starting from the insight that American culture has been re-enchanted, our “metaphysical realm . . . repopulated with social and political ideas elevated to the status…

March 3, 2014

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