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Writing

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

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Parenting

Guarding Our Eyes

It is a well-known movie trope, the sports car drives up, a stiletto-heeled starlet steps out and the camera follows her leg up the prodigious slit of her dress, then it takes in the rest of her figure before settling on her face, usually primed and puckered for some pro-feminist…

by Remy WilkinsSeptember 15, 2015
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Books

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 again and again the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 10, 2015
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Culture

Face To Facebook

I sit here in my office and poke around on a keyboard that is not even physically connected to my laptop and characters appear on a screen. I have a phone in my pocket through which I talk to someone around the world, send a text message, and to which…

by Bill SmithSeptember 8, 2015
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Prayer

Repent of Your Piety

I want to give a pep talk. Nothing fancy, nothing clever. Jesus makes some astounding promises in Luke 11. I want to clear out the clutter and convince you to believe Him and to act on it. The chapter begins with Jesus praying and teaching His disciples to pray by…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 7, 2015
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John

The Strange Love of Jesus

Eleonore Stump in her book Wandering in Darkness invites us to re-read the story of Lazarus (John 11) from Mary’s perspective. Stump argues that the story of Lazarus is a story of Mary, since both Lazarus and Martha are identified by their relationship with Mary. The true ending of the…

by Bogumil JarmulakSeptember 3, 2015
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Movies

Movies and Music with James Jordan

In his introduction to The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift in Honor of James B. Jordan , Peter Leithart says this about him: “Jordan is an unclassifiable thinker because he is an unclassifiable person . . . he closes his eyes in ecstasy listening to Messiaen or Rachmaninoff . .…

by Brian MoatsSeptember 2, 2015

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Regulated disposition

In a summary of the patristic notion of the regula fidei in the Trinity Journal (2007), Paul Hartog helpfully stresses that the regulation of the regula was not only linguistic, doctrinal, dogmatic, or methodological. It had also to do with the reader’s disposition: “Certainly hermeneutical methods were employed, and there…

May 18, 2013

Fitted pieces

Jenson again ( Canon and Creed ), on the mutual support of canon and creed: “We cannot claim that the regula fidei actively shaped the very New Testament that came about. On the contrary, the material relation between the creedal tradition and the new canon is at first glance problematic.…

May 18, 2013

Who is Risen?

Resurrection is not necessarily good news. Jenson ( Canon and Creed ) observes that the announcement “Hitler is Risen” constitutes good news only to a perverse few. Resurrection is good news only if the Risen One is one we want to have back. Saying “Jesus is Risen” also doesn’t constitute…

May 18, 2013

Pattern in the carpet

According to Irenaeus ( Against Heresies , 1.8.1), reading the Bible is like discerning a face among the fragments of a mosaic. Heretics read the Bible using sources other than Scripture and so the portrait they assemble is of a dog or fox. The orthodox arrive at a different arrangement:…

May 18, 2013
Uncategorized

Sprinkled from the dead

One of Paul’s arguments for the resurrection is baptism for the dead: “What will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them?” (1 Corinthians 15:29). Paul is referring to Numbers 19, where those who are…

May 17, 2013

Child Catchers

Writing in The Nation , Melanie Mock summarizes the findings of Kathryn Joyce’s The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption . Mock writes: “Many secular adoption agencies have been implicated in corruption in the last decade and more. Joyce focuses on those evangelical adoption ministries that…

May 17, 2013

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