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

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Ephesians

“Be Holy for I am Holy”

Below is an excerpt from Mark Horne’s manuscript from his forthcoming commentary on Ephesians, specifically on Paul’s reference to Christians as “saints” (Ephesians 1:1). “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.” Paul greets…

by Mark HorneMarch 25, 2025
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Exodus

The Perishable in the Ark of the Covenant

There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets that Moses put there at Horeb, where the LORD made a covenant with the people of Israel, when they came out of Egypt (2 Chronicles 5:10). When Solomon finally brought the ark of the covenant to the finished temple in…

by Jonathan WhiteMarch 18, 2025
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Exodus

The Stages of a Man’s Life and the Second Table of the Law

In As You Like It , Shakespeare famously describes the seven ages of a man’s life. The division of man’s life into stages is not an invention by Shakespeare, nor merely a common medieval artifice, but an expression of the real journey taken in life. Shakespeare seems to divide up…

by Ryan HandermannMarch 13, 2025
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Christology

The Essence of God’s Image

Is there a chief characteristic which best illumines the image of God in Man? What is it exactly that makes Man as a lens through which to see God? Moses thoughtfully and deliberately escorts the reader to the characteristic showcased above all else: humility. Though much ink has been spilled…

by Ben LoveladyMarch 11, 2025
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Liturgy

Two Ways of Being Liturgical: A Baptist Response to the High Church Exodus

Note: This essay is adapted from a talk delivered at the Howell E. Jackson Committee conference on “Foundations of Baptist Education,” held at Union University, Oct. 4-5, 2024. It’s no secret that evangelicals are converting to High Church traditions, a term I will use to refer to Anglo-Catholicism, Roman Catholicism,…

by Ryan SinniMarch 4, 2025
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Icons

Don’t Convert: Icons and Images in the Early Church

In recent years, there has been a flurry of conversions from Protestant Christianity towards Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, at least in part due to their supposed early church heritage relative to Protestantism. In the words of Rod Dreher, a former Methodist who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, “Many evangelicals seek…

by John CarpenterFebruary 25, 2025

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Philosophy

Reason and reasoning

Knight criticizes Frederick Beiser’s treatment of rationality in the early English Enlightenment because he “does not relate ‘reason’ to reasoning together, converse, public talk, and the skills of the development of public talk. Reason therefore for him never appears as faith doing what it must do to remain faithful -…

June 26, 2008

Atonement and Anthropology

Knight writes at the end of a couple of chapters exploring Israel’s calling and the role of her cult in that calling: “I have presented my atonement theory as a general anthopological theory. I have developed a Christology that serves as a general anthropology. I am not setting out first…

June 25, 2008

Worshiping Jesus

In making a structural point about Matthew’s references to “worship” of Jesus last week, I skimmed a bit too lightly over the details. Reader Ronald Man caught me, and offered these comments: There is no indication that the Magi (or Herod) recognized Jesus’ deity; rather it is clearly stated that…

June 25, 2008

Bio-Theology

One of the intriguing threads in Knight is his rehabilitation of biology within theology - or, more specifically, the inclusion of “blood and seed, of sonship and messiah, of holiness and purity” within pneumatology. Contesting the common opposition of fictive and biological kinship, he says that “we should understand ‘fictive’…

June 24, 2008

Political hermeneutics

Knight again: “autonomous exegesis that does not stay in conversation with doctrine and philosophy cannot read Israel’s Scriptures as a political-cosmological world-claim. Without learning from doctrine and political philosophy, would-be exegetes of the Bible are unlikely to understand Israel’s cosmology as a public claim to commandeer, transform, and reemploy the…

June 24, 2008
Biblical Studies

Israel and the nations

Knight has a lot of intriguing things to say about Israel and the nations, among them: “As Israel suffers the gentile onslaughts, Israel is half-persuaded that it has to compete with the Gentiles as an equal rather than as their lord; Israel has to fight them as thought it were…

June 24, 2008

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