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Epistemology

Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World: Covenant Epistemology: The Integrative Regard of the Other

Fragmentation characterizes our era. Bits, bytes, chips, data points. Ourselves as reducible to the meaningless. We can feel dehumanized and lost. We seek wholeness, integration. We rightly believe that integration brings meaningfulness, somehow doing better credit to ourselves as humans and to the world. More than that, integration somehow aligns…

by Esther Lightcap MeekJune 5, 2018
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Proverbs

The Dramatic Structure of Proverbs

The book of Proverbs appears as a largely random collection of aphorisms drawn from experience saturated in law. Despite its random arrangement, however, the book does have an over-arching structure that reinforces its main themes. One way to gather clues regarding the structure of a biblical book (or any book)…

by Peter LeithartMay 31, 2018
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Baptism

Infant Baptism in the History of the Church

Ancient practice in the Church sets an important precedent for present day practice. This certainly doesn’t mean that Christians are bound to only do things as they have always been done, but the principles of catholicity and unity move us not to break from historic church practice on a particular…

by Timothy LeCroyMay 29, 2018
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Biblical Studies

Babel Academy, Part 2

For Part 1, click HERE . Genesis 1 describes the creation of the physical order. Genesis 2 recapitulates the pattern of Genesis 1 as it describes the creation of the social order. Genesis 3 describes the intended founding of an ethical order. It was here that sin entered into the…

by Mike BullMay 24, 2018
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Biblical Studies

Babel Academy, Part 1

The Business of Keeping the Saints in the Dark Let there be light! The first recorded “spoken” words of God. Curiously, even this creative decree was a deed whose fruit required an appraisal. God judged the light and separated it from the darkness. As the cardinal act within a newborn…

by Mike BullMay 22, 2018
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Course Announcement

A Week with Esther Meek - An Introduction to Covenant Epistemology

We are very pleased to announce that Esther Lightcap Meek will be the instructor for our 2018 Trinity Course in August. The course is titled "Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology" and will be held August 13-17 at Beeson Divinity School. Esther Meek, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Geneva…

by TheopolisMay 21, 2018

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Music and words

CS Lewis says that language cannot do what music and gesture do, that is, “do more than one thing at once.” He admits that “the words in a great poet’s phrase interinanimate one another and strike the mind as a quasi-instantaneous chord, yet, strictly speaking, each word must be read…

August 4, 2008

Sermon Notes

INTRODUCTION At the middle of Matthew’s story of Jesus, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ ( 16:16 ). But he doesn’t yet understand what that means. He still has to learn that being Christ means taking up a cross and losing life to find it. THE TEXT “When Jesus…

August 4, 2008

Showing signs

Matthew uses the word “sign” in only four contexts. In the closely parallel passages 12:38-45 and 16:1-4, the Jewish leaders ask Jesus for a sign; the word is used several times in chapter 24, and a last time in 26:48 to describe Judas’s kiss. Chapters 12 and 16 are obviously…

August 3, 2008

Testing God

Yahweh rained bread from heaven to test Israel, to see if they would follow His instructions (Exodus 16:4). They didn’t follow Him. Instead, they disobeyed the instructions about manna (16:13-21) and turned the tables to put God to the test (17:2, 7). Jesus follows the same pattern. He is Bread…

August 3, 2008

Sign from heaven

The Pharisees and Sadducees ask Jesus for a sign from heaven (Matthew 16:1). The first “signs” in the heavens were the sun, moon, and stars. A sign from heaven is a sign of new creation, and Jesus’ response, alluding to the evening-morning pattern of the creation week, continues the creation…

August 3, 2008
Uncategorized

Etymology rejected?

The tide started turning against the etymologists during the Renaissance. In Praise of Folly , Erasmus mocked the theologians for their obsessions with the minutiae of words: “I met with another, some eighty years of age, and such a divine that you’d have sworn Scotus himself was revived in him.…

August 1, 2008

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