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

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Judges

Book Review: E. John Hamlin, At Risk in the Promised Land: A Commentary on the Book of Judges

E. John Hamlin, At Risk in the Promised Land: A Commentary on the Book of Judges International Theological Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990. For anyone who has developed a taste for the rich biblical theology of Meredith Kline, James B. Jordan, Vern Poythress, and others, it is difficult to find…

by Peter LeithartJuly 17, 1993
Exodus

The Rock That Followed Them

". . . and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4). Paul’s passing comment about the rock that followed the Israelites in the wilderness has often been treated as a bit of…

by Peter LeithartJuly 17, 1993
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Biblical Studies

Elijah and Moses

Several months ago, my brief article entitled "Elijah’s Exodus" was published in Biblical Horizons . Since that time, further study has made it evident that Elijah’s exodus in 1 Kings 17 is part of a larger pattern in which Elijah’s ministry closely parallels Moses’. The following parallels are evident: Elijah…

by Peter LeithartJuly 17, 1993
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Exodus

The Footstool of His Feet

The translation and theology of the Hebrew term kapporet have long been puzzling to scholars. On the translation of the term, I have nothing new to offer. I wish instead to concentrate on the theological symbolism of the kapporet . The kapporet was the solid gold slab that laid "above"…

by Peter LeithartJune 17, 1993
Exodus

A Note on Exodus 22:31

Peter Leithart's article entitled " Prey in My House" pointed out that tearing flesh is a sign of kingly rule and dominion, and that God is portrayed as the Lion-King who tears flesh. The tithe brought to God’s house provides the money for the torn flesh of the sacrifices offered…

by James B. JordanJune 4, 1993
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Biblical Chronology

Jubilee (Part 3)

The Seventy Years of Sabbaths 2 Chronicles 36:20-21 reads: "And those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and there they were slaves to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of Yahweh by the mouth…

by James B. JordanApril 4, 1993

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Light

The premise of Bonaventure’s “reduction of arts to theology” is that all knowledge, skill, perception is about light. Good and perfect gifts come down from the Father of Lights, James says, and Bonaventure sees that light refracted into four types of light. Some are obvious: the inner light of reason…

September 11, 2009

Soul on soul

God alone, Augustine says, can act directly on souls. We cannot, but that doesn’t mean we can’t act on other souls. In Augustine’s anthropology, this is done through the body, by “signals conveyed by the physical body.” Such physical signs might be gestures, facial expressions, or “conventional indications such as…

September 11, 2009
Philosophy

Thin souls

Augustine, of course, says that pride is the beginning of revolt and sin. A prideful soul is one that refuses to recognize that “the whole quality of the soul’s existence is from God” and therefore that it is “enlivened in mental activity and in self-consciousness by God’s presence.” God, Augustine…

September 11, 2009
Philosophy

Desiring order

In his early treatise de musica , Augustine arranges everything into a hierarchy: God and other immutable objects above; human souls between; bodies and other carnal things below. It’s a Neoplatonic and hardly Christian notion. But embedded within that Augustine gets at something more sound. “Delight or enjoyment sets the…

September 11, 2009

Boston Public Park

Washington, Augustus on a prancing horse, sword pointing toward sunset. Over the pond, fringed with ice, droop the weeping willows. And what I miss most in the pine-blanketed West: leafless trees in cold sunshine.

September 11, 2009
Science

The Real is the Relational

In expounding on the coherence of Trinitarian theology with contemporary physics, Polkinghorne notes htat “it is striking that so methodologically reductionist a subject as physics has pointed us in this relational and holistic direction. This tendency is surely reinforced by chaos theory’s discovery that at the macroscopic level of physical…

September 9, 2009

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