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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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Philosophy

Mirrors, ancient and modern

In her recent book The Mirror of the Self , Shadi Bartsch argues that ancient notions of introspection and self-examination do not employ the image of the mirror in the way we do in post-Cartesian philosophy. In the words of the TLS reviewer, for the ancients “the mirror was the…

June 27, 2007

Enjoyment in God

Wilken summarizes Augustine’s social vision of perfection this way: “This peace for which the city of God yearns is a ‘perfectly ordered and harmonious fellowship in the enjoyment of God,’ a peace of ‘enjoying one another in God.’ Notice that Augustine’s language is social, not individualistic. He does not say,…

June 26, 2007

Ecclesiology of perfection

When Plato thought about politics, he thought about an ideal city (at least in the Republic ). Not Augustine. Augustine recognized that Plato had portrayed “what kind of city ought there to be.” But Augustine was after something different. He presented an actual human society, a city of God in…

June 26, 2007
Theology

Empty minds

Aquinas wrote: “If the teacher determines the question by appeal to authorities only, the student will be convinced that the thing is so, but will have acquired no knowledge or understanding, and he will go away with an empty mind.”

June 26, 2007

Cyril and the Bible

In his wonderful book, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought , Robert Louis Wilken criticizes the Formula of Chalcedon as “formulaic and abstract,” which described Jesus as “one person,” but “seemed to divide Christ into a divine nature that, for example, healed the sick and raised the dead and a…

June 26, 2007
History

No heavenly good

Alcinous, a pagan philosopher of the second century AD claimed that God is “eternal, ineffable, self-sufficient, without need . . . and perfect in every respect.” The only way to know such a God was to ascend from earthly things to higher realities: “First one contemplates the beauty found in…

June 26, 2007

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