Items included on this page come from a variety of sources. The perspectives conveyed may or may not express a Lutheran ethos. They can serve our instruction as discussion-starters, examples (positive and negative), and illustrations of intersections between God’s two kingdoms, intersections sometimes characterized by tension, sometimes by congruence. Inclusion does not imply endorsement.
Why Does the Bible Require New Mothers to Atone after Childbirth? — Leviticus 12-13 says that when a woman gives birth, she is impure for several weeks, after which she must offer two distinct sacrifices: an “olah,” or burnt offering, and a “ḥatat,” or sin offering. This article offers some different views on the text. How might […]
What’s It Like To Be A Squirrel? This brief update (including a great 2 min video of a squirrel with a GoPro!) on Thomas Nagel’s famous essay on consciousness can introduce students to the problem of consciousness, subjectivism, objectivism, and the difficulties of arriving at a common baseline for reality. Students in apologetics should be […]
Why the Lord Doesn’t Allow David to Build the Temple: This essay from Jewish poet Atar Hadari discusses why David is not God’s person or politician of intersection between the Temple and Israel. David remains a revolutionary hero, a guerrilla leader and desert tribal bandit—too much of a renegade at heart to be entrusted with His house. […]
The Science of Sinning Less: What new research reveals about self-control and willpower — Few topics in social science right now are hotter than willpower and self-control, considering both the number of studies on the subject and the disputes over their validity. Psychologists, sociologists, and other scientists aren’t just interested in self-control’s practical benefits. They want to […]
Under Caesar’s Sword (from the University of Notre Dame): By all counts, religious freedom violations are on the rise worldwide. Islamist extremism and ethnic nationalism have pushed persecution to record levels three years in a row, according to Open Doors research. Christians bear the brunt, experiencing between 60 percent to 80 percent of religious discrimination, UCS […]
Don’t Bet On The Emergence Of A ‘Religious Left’: It’s doubtful that a revitalized “religious left” will materialize. The first and perhaps most significant reason for skepticism is that there are far fewer religious liberals today than there were a generation ago, but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. Advocacy based in religion offers a host of […]
God in the machine: my strange journey into transhumanism — a former dispensationalist Christian (see the Schofield Study Bible) found herself adrift in the world but then found solace in Ray Kurzweil’s radical technological philosophy of transhumanism. But its promises of immortality and spiritual transcendence soon seemed unsettlingly familiar. Students can examine this first person account […]
ON CAPITOL HILL: First Liberty Testifies About Hostility Against Religious Students — This advocacy piece from a religious legal organization discusses testimony before the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice of the House Judiciary Committee. The brief article includes three cases on secular campuses and three recommendations and could be useful for classes in […]
Secular power balances the harshness of Israel’s religious courts: In Israel, marriage and divorce among Jewish citizens is regulated by a religious body, the Orthodox Rabbinate, but secular justice can still occasionally intervene. This overview article can introduce students to various tensions in such dual systems (which also exist in the U.S. to some extent).
Death Penalties and the Divine: This two-part essay offers students some critique on the exegesis of the usual biblical texts and a biblical-but-not-necessary perspective on using the death penalty in today’s society. “While I don’t think there are strong practical reasons to keep the penalty around these days—except, perhaps, for exceptional cases—the Biblical evidence in […]
