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Tyranny of the Agreeable

Inspired by the “Moscow Mood” Debate In a shocking 1961 study, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram would don an official-looking white lab coat and tell a volunteer to administer increasing shocks to another “volunteer” in an adjacent room strapped into an “electric chair” just out of sight. The shocks were incrementally…

by John CarpenterJuly 22, 2024
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Apostle Paul

Why Doesn’t Paul Quote Jesus?

My title and the substance of the article are borrowed from a section of David Wenham’s excellent book, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? I am appropriating ideas from the pages in his book which address the question, “Why Does Paul refer to Jesus’ Life and Ministry so…

by Ralph Allan SmithJuly 9, 2024
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James

The Epistle of James: Shotgun or Sniper

Some of us may be familiar with the notion that the epistle of James is like a New Testament version of Proverbs or other wisdom literature. According to this line of thinking, the epistle of James (together with the other wisdom literature) is basically a collection of timeless sayings without…

by Chris JohnsonJuly 4, 2024
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Virtue

Doing What You Don’t Want to Do

This summer I started walking a long trail that ran north from our home. On my best days, I would walk a total of five miles at a brisk pace. This trail follows the power lines that serve a significant portion of North Dallas and stretches far past the two…

by Mandi GerthJune 25, 2024
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American Culture

Is Queer Theology Christian?

I am an Australian. I went to the American Academy of Religion mega-fest last year to meet up with some friends, to present a paper at a ‘science and religion’ panel, and to marvel at the sheer scale of how Americans do things. It was quite a ride. Looking at…

by Paul TysonJune 18, 2024
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Ecclesiology

Consumerism, Oikos, and the Role of Women in the Church (Part 4)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 We evangelicals do not often understand the roles of men and women in ministry. Because our consumerist culture has gutted the notion of family as it was historically understood, all Biblical passages about women in church ministry (a familial organism) are almost incomprehensible to…

by John CarpenterJune 11, 2024

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Like a Young Kid

On his way to visit a pleasing woman in Timnah, Samson is attacked by a lion (Judges 14). He defeats the lion, tearing it “like a young goat,” and then heads on to visit the lady. Does tearing a lion “like a young goat” mean tearing a lion “easily”? Is…

October 2, 2014

Jugation and Hierarchy

I summarize and interact with more of Naphtali Meshel’s The “Grammar” of Sacrifice at the Trinity House site , examining his concepts of “jugation” and “hierarchy” in “P.”

October 1, 2014

Epic Tetris

“It’s a very big, epic sci-fi movie,” says Larry Kasanoff of Threshold Entertainment. He’s talking about a movie based on Tetris, the game of falling geometric shapes. The movie is going to be much, much more than geometry. We’re going to learn that “‘Tetris’ is the teeny tip of an…

October 1, 2014

Evangelical Atheism

John Gray’s TNR review of Richard Dawkins’s An Appetite for Wonder is the very definition of withering. It should be read in full. As a public service, a few of the juicier quotations: “No two minds could be less alike than those of the great nineteenth-century scientist [i.e., Darwin] and…

October 1, 2014

Engaging John, Engaging One Another

The Paradosis Center of John Brown University put on an ecumenical conference on the gospel of John last week. I posted a brief report on the event on the Trinity House site .

September 30, 2014

Narrow, Repetitive Road

The TLS reviewer says that Richard Flannagan aspires to poetry, and fails dismally, in his Man Booker nominated The Narrow Road to the Deep North . “The Narrow Road to the Deep North confuses poetry, the higher register, with the trope of repetition - and it is fatal. . .…

September 30, 2014

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