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Judges

God’s War Against Humanism: A Practical and Theological Review of "Judges" by James Jordan

This is the third of a three part symposium commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Dr. James B. Jordan’s publication of Judges: a Practical and Theological Commentary . Judges was the first book length exposition of Theopolitan Reading, a practice of reading Scripture in its fullness that Theopolis continues to refine…

by Stiven PeterDecember 19, 2024
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Judges

Politics and Conflict in Ancient Israel: A Critical Review of Judges by James B. Jordan

This is the second of a three part symposium commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Dr. James B. Jordan’s publication of Judges: a Practical and Theological Commentary . Judges was the first book length exposition of Theopolitan Reading, a practice of reading Scripture in its fullness that Theopolis continues to refine…

by Darren DukeDecember 18, 2024
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Judges

America in the Days of the Judges: A Pastoral Review of Judges by James Jordan

This is the first of a three part symposium commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Dr. James B. Jordan’s publication of Judges: a Practical and Theological Commentary . Judges was the first book length exposition of Theopolitan Reading, a practice of reading Scripture in its fullness that Theopolis continues to refine…

by Chase DavisDecember 17, 2024
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Advent

All Life is the Lord’s

From the moment I found out I was pregnant, I knew: the only way out of this is death. Either this life inside me disappears without my consent, or I lay my own life down to line the road for another. Like palm leaves at the city entrance, allowing the…

by MargaretAnn HesterDecember 12, 2024
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Apostle Paul

The Split of Paul and Barnabas

After the Jerusalem Council (AD 48/49), which endorsed Paul’s teaching of the Gospel and established a universal theology among Christian churches, Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch and taught for some time (Acts 15:30–35). Then, it occurred to Paul to go on a second missionary trip to visit the churches…

by Ralph Allan SmithDecember 10, 2024
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Acts

The Future of Jesus | The Bodily Resurrection as Essential Context

This essay first appeared at SolomonSays.net and has been lightly edited for publishing purposes. Before I go any further on what the Bible tells us about the future history of the mortal human race , I must address the end of that history: the final resurrection. When Paul was arrested…

by Mark HorneNovember 27, 2024

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Biting again

Philip Esler draws on the anthropological work of Anthony Cohen to suggest that Paul’s reference to “biting” and “devouring” may describe the actual internal life of Paul’s churches: “Anthony Cohen’s argument about the persistence of liminality among persons once they have crossed a boundary to join a new group raises…

February 24, 2009

Biting

Paul contrasts fulfilling the law of loving neighbor with biting, devouring, and consuming. Love for neighbor is human behavior; anything else is feral. The verb “bite” ( dakno ) is used only in Galatians 5:15 in the NT, and only twice in the LXX (Genesis 49:17; Deuteronomy 8:15), both references…

February 24, 2009

Linguistic reversal

Galatians 5-6 turns a number of Pauline terms inside out. After spending most of the letter polemicizing against seeking justification form the “works of the law,” Paul rehabilitates both “work” (5:6) and “law” (5:14; 6:2). After announcing that in Christ we have been freed from the Egypt of Judaic managers…

February 24, 2009

Chiasm upon Chiasm in Galatians 5-6

Galatians 5-6 is organized as a chiasm, with the exhortation to bear one another’s burdens, and fulfill the law of Christ, at the center. The structure suggests that that the freedom that the Spirit grants is precisely freedom to bear the burdens of others as Christ as done for us.…

February 24, 2009
History

Neutral

Freeman again: He claims that Constantine employed the image of the sun, used in both Christianity and paganism, to maintain “his neutral position between opposing faiths.” In part, his interpretation is based on HA Drake. But the neutrality that Drake talks about is a neutrality in “public space” that enabled…

February 24, 2009
History

Not so shrewd

Freeman says that Constantine’s “conversion” was a shrewd political act, basing this conclusion, he claims, on “recent research.” (Burckhardt is recent??) One sign of his shrewdness was his ability to satisfy both Christian and pagan: “Some very careful political manoeuvring was necessary if Constantine was to avoid offending either Christian…

February 23, 2009

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