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

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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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Atonement and Theology

In his recent Atonement, Law, and Justice , Adonis Vidu examines historical atonement theories in relation to accepted notions of law and justice that were current in the world of the theologians who produced the theories. His book is “an interdisciplinary reading of the development of atonement theory from the…

September 30, 2014

Eat an Almond, Kill a Bee

James Hamblin reports on new research that shows almonds are even better for us than we thought. Eating an ounce of almonds a day is associated with lower rates of heart disease, prevention of diabetes and arthritis, lower changes of Alzehimer’s. No wonder the almond has overtaken the peanut as…

September 29, 2014

Was Jesus A Pauper?

David Fiensy tries to avoid “polar opposites” in the essays collected in Christian Origins and the Ancient Economy . He doesn’t think Jesus was “desperately poor” or that Galileans in general were “half-starving.” Galilee wasn’t a “boom center” but it wasn’t famine-ridden either. On Jesus in particular, Fiensy explores the…

September 29, 2014

Mediated Immediacy

At the Paradosis conference at John Brown University, Edith Humphrey remarked briefly on the paradox of mediation and presence. Her point was that, though God’s presence to us is mediated, that mediation is embedded in or infused by an immediacy of presence. This must be so if we are going…

September 29, 2014

Wall Street Temptations

In an insightful piece at BloombergView , Michael Lewis analyzes the ways Wall Street affects the character of the eager young graduates who come to make their fortunes. Some of the temptations, he says, are obvious - emphasizing short-term gains or using financial success as a cover for moral laziness…

September 29, 2014

Animal Grammar

The first installment of a review of Naphtali Meshel’s The “Grammar” of Sacrifice at the Trinity House site .

September 29, 2014

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