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Writing

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

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Ezra

Ezra: The Aaronic Rest-Giver

If you’re a preacher looking for good commentaries on Ezra, you’ll struggle. Certainly to find ones that wrestle in good detail with the text. And certainly ones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg. There’s a good bit more for Nehemiah, which is odd, as the two are…

by Rhys LavertyJune 8, 2021
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1 John

1 John in Community

Quick thought experiment: try to pretend you’ve never read 1 John before. Read 1:1-6. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Now, on to v. 7: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with ______….” What word would you expect in that blank, based…

by Tim NicholsJune 1, 2021
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Hermeneutics

Spending Time with Noah: Reflections on Prepositions in the Flood Narrative

In my work as a Bible translator, I was recently checking our translation team’s draft of Genesis 8:8, which says of Noah (translating the Hebrew quite literally): And he sent out the dove from with him to see: had the waters lessened from upon the face of the ground? Part…

by Josh JensenMay 25, 2021
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Philosophy

Steven Weinberg Destroyed My Faith

Just in case a reader may not know Weinberg, he is a theoretical physicist and the winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1979, as well as countless other prizes for his research. He is also a prolific, lucid, and captivating writer. If you want to read something on…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 18, 2021
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Colossians

Reconciliation in Colossians 1:20

Colossians 1:15-20 is a famous passage in Paul’s epistles because it is a succinct and powerful poem. It appears even to have been a hymn. Given the uniquely Pauline language — “reconciliation” is a term used only by Paul — it should not seem odd to attribute the poem/hymn to…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 11, 2021
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Movies

Terror of Knowing Myself

Stalker (1979) is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky based on Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It shows a day from the life of a stalker, a man who enters the so-called "Zone", an Alien landing site, where he leads people to a room that grants people’s innermost desires, which…

by Bogumil JarmulakMay 4, 2021

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Hand to Hand to Mouth

A “mighty angel” descends from heaven holding an open book (Revelation 10:1). I agree with Richard Bauckham’s argument ( Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation ) that this is the same as the book opened by the Lamb. When the book first appears, it is on the…

October 19, 2012

Trinity Institute: R. R. Reno says

Peter Leithart and James Jordan are among America’s most penetrating Christian preachers and teachers, at once rigorously biblical and richly catholic. Their ambitious vision of the Lordship of Christ gives a vital role to the liturgical worship, helping us to see that the church is the New Israel, a nation…

October 18, 2012

Yahweh’s image

Ancient temples were houses for the gods, represented by images. That is what Isaiah is talking about when he describes idolaters carrying their gold images, setting them in place, standing them up, and bowing to them (46:5-7). Yahweh too brings something to His House. Isaiah 46:13 pictures Yahweh as a…

October 18, 2012

Speech Formed

In Isaiah 46:11, Yahweh announces that He is bringing a bird of prey from the east to do all his counsel and pleasure. It is a “man,” a reference back to Cyrus, the Shepherd who does all Yahweh’s pleasure (44:28). This is proof of the kind of God Yahweh is,…

October 18, 2012
Theology

God who delivers

Isaiah describes the Babylonian planet gods Bel (Jupiter) and Nebo (Nabu, Mercury) at the beginning of chapter 46. They are weary, bowed and stooped in defeat and fatigue. Their images are being carried on carts because they are incapable of bearing them themselves. The could not deliver ( malat )…

October 18, 2012
Literature

Dante without Beatrice

In her TNR review of Andrew Frisardi’s translation of Dante’s Vita Nova , Helen Vendler observes that Dante’s autobiographical cycle of prose and poems was not published until 1576, “almost three hundred years after its composition.” How was the Comedy understood in its absence? Beatrice appears in the Comedy of…

October 18, 2012

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