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

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Acts

Journeys of the Prophets in Luke-Acts

In an earlier paper 1 I argued that the story of Jonah belongs in the book of KINGS. Jonah and the unnamed Judean prophet in 1K13 are paired by the author through literary links. The Judean prophet travels longitudinally to confront national paganism and is killed but not swallowed by…

by Scott FairbanksNovember 15, 2022
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Biblical Theology

The Liturgical Day and the Eschatological Day

The Scriptures have much to say about “the day.” “This is the day that the Lord has made,” sings the Psalmist (Psalm 118:24). But what exactly is the day ? Or, more broadly, what even is a day? Days make up human life like water, light, and air. There’s no…

by Jackson ShepardNovember 8, 2022
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John

Worship in Spirit and Truth

According to the Westminster Confession of Faith 21:5, “God is to be worshipped everywhere, in spirit and truth, …” A similar phrase is found in the OPC’s Directory for Public Worship (II.6). In my experience in the OPC and other Reformed churches, the phrase is often interpreted to mean that…

by Brian NolderNovember 1, 2022
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Genesis

Through New Eyes: Eve's Desire and Adam's Rule

Introduction In Genesis 3:16, after the fall, God said that Eve would “desire” her husband and that her husband would “rule” over her. It is popular for Christians to interpret Eve's desire as sinful, that she would try to usurp her husband's authority. Likewise, some interpret Adam's rule as sinful,…

by Adam McIntoshOctober 25, 2022
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American Culture

LGBTQ+ Is Not Enough! — TMPZ+

White Western/Christian society has long discriminated against lesbians and homosexuals — ever since the days of Moses — who was neither white nor Christian, but that is beside the point — who claimed that God gave him revelation about what a man or woman is and how they should relate…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 18, 2022
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Humor

A History of Quiet Times

They Found a Book in a Wall, You Won’t Believe What Happens Next The secret behind the history of quiet times will make your quiet times more effective than ever. One of the enduring mysteries of American Evangelicalism is the question of the source of Quiet Times: A Handbook ,…

by George EdemaOctober 11, 2022

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Arbitrary Signs

A couple of weeks ago, I mused on whether Saussure would have agreed with Barr’s rejection of the idea that different mentalities are built into different languages. In his superb book on Saussure, Jonathan Culler provides further evidence that Saussure would not agree with Barr. Culler’s argument, to put it…

April 9, 2008

Person and essence

Gilles Emery writes concerning Thomas’s view of essence and person in the Trinity, defending Thomas against Rahnerian-style charges: “There is . . . not ‘derivation’ of persons from an essential act in Thomas. This observation clarifies anew the structure of the treatise on God: the distinction of the two sections…

April 8, 2008

Greatest good

Bonaventure wrote: “Behold, therefore, and observe that the highest good is unqualifiedly that than which no greater can be thought. And this good is such that it cannot rightly be thought of as non-existing, since to exist is absolutely better than not to exist.” So far, so Anselmian. Then Bonaventure…

April 8, 2008

Branch and Stone

The “seven-eyed” stone in Zechariah 3:9 has been variously interpreted - for example, as the crown on the head of the high priest Joshua (the seven eyes being the letters engraved on the crown), as the kingdom of God, as a stone with seven “springs” (in Hebrew, the same word…

April 8, 2008
History

Holy City

Babylon was considered a holy city in the ancient world, its kings consecrated by power given by Marduk. This is the reason the Persians destroyed the temple of Esagila and deported the statue of Marduk to Persia (or, by some accounts, melted it down) when the Babylonians revolted against Persian…

April 7, 2008

Protestantism and the Postmodern Self

Postmodernism has, we are told, “decentered” the modern self, that unified, sovereign, isolated, godlike “thinking thing” discovered by Rene Descartes. The postmodern self is not single but multiple; not sovereign but controlled by external forces; not isolated but “embedded” in the world and in relation; not godlike, but human, all…

April 7, 2008

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