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

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Apostle Paul

Jonah’s Pauline Move: Finding Mercy for Gentiles in Texts about Mercy for Israel

Jonah is Paul’s typological opposite. Indeed, in the whole Old Testament, it would be difficult to find a more perfect foil to Paul than Jonah. Whereas Paul crosses the sea to enact God’s saving purposes for the Gentiles, Jonah crosses the sea to avoid bringing Gentiles God’s mercy. For that…

by Josh JensenJanuary 11, 2024
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Family

A House for Me

Years ago, I realized that if my children wanted to feel like their house was a home, I needed to be intentional about making our physical shelter a place of spiritual refuge. I began to see the Holy Spirit as the indwelling person of the Trinity—the one who makes His…

by Mandi GerthJanuary 9, 2024
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Charity

On Parrhesia and Gospel Witness

When the crowds encircle Christ in Solomon’s Porch during the Festival of Dedication, they charge him: “tell us boldly who you are!” 1 They do not draw-up to him to with excited anticipation as they did earlier in the Gospel, 2 instead they flank him like a gang of wolves.…

by Mark BriansJanuary 4, 2024
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Deuteronomy

Misunderstanding Moses

1 In Deuteronomy 7:1-5, Moses wrote: When Yahweh your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 3, 2024
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Advent

40 Theses on Christmas

Every Advent witnesses the gruesome reanimation of the voice that whispers “you know , Christmas is just a pagan holiday…” with that sort of conversational ellipsis that does not so much invite further reflection but halts and forecloses it. The claims are several and equally spurious: Jesus wasn’t born on…

by Mark BriansDecember 26, 2023
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Genesis

The Twelve Trials of Abraham

Abraham's life in Genesis is a series of trials. He travels hundreds of miles from his family into a new land, flees from a famine into the hands of a king who takes his wife, and after returning, has to rescue his brother from a war. He's involved with two…

by Donald LinnemeyerDecember 26, 2023

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Vestigia trinitatis

In an article on vestigia trinitatis in early modern thought, Dennis Klinck notes that the early 17th century saw a flowering of Trinitarian theology in England. Theologians, poets, and others saw the Trinity reflected in political life, human psychology, every sphere of knowledge. They agreed fully with the Augustinian doctrine…

August 21, 2007

Donne on the Trinity

In stanza 4 of Donne’s “Litanie,” he addresses the Trinity: O Blessed glorious Trinity, Bones to Philosophy, but milke to faith, Which, as wise serpents, diversly Most slipperinesse, yet most entanglings hath, As you distinguish’d undistinct By power, love, knowledge bee, Give mee a such selfe different instinct Of these;…

August 21, 2007
Philosophy

Intention and action

In his summary of “identity description,” which he ultimately applies to Jesus, Hans Frei speaks of “the irreversible passage or movement from . . . intention to action. The enactment of intention always differs from the intention to enact; and each person has inside knowledge of how he passes from…

August 21, 2007
Literature

Jane’s tough world

In early August, Lev Grossman wrote a piece for Time on the continuing apotheosis of Jane Austen: “It was a cliché 10 years ago to say that the Austen phenomenon was big. It has now burst completely out of its bodice. Jane Austen, who recorded the last gorgeous gasp of…

August 21, 2007
Literature

Jane’s tough world

In early August, Lev Grossman wrote a piece for Time on the continuing apotheosis of Jane Austen: “It was a cliché 10 years ago to say that the Austen phenomenon was big. It has now burst completely out of its bodice. Jane Austen, who recorded the last gorgeous gasp of…

August 21, 2007
History

Slavery and self-interest

During his 1842 tour of the US, Charles Dickens met a southerner who tried to convince him that harsh treatment of slaves was against the self-interest of Southern slaveholders. Dickens’s response was devastating: “I told him quietly that it was not a man’s interest to get drunk, or to steal,…

August 21, 2007

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