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Creation

Maker of Heaven and Earth, (Part 4)

In my previous two posts, I looked at aspects of Psalms 93, 95, 96 and 98 that declare Yahweh, the divine King, to be the world’s own Creator. In my next post, I plan to argue that the creation theology of the sub-section constituted by Psalms 93-100 contributes to the…

by Stephen LongApril 23, 2015
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Otherness

Sexual Difference, Liberal and Christian

Ethika Politika has published a fascinating interview within which the French Catholic philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj discusses his recent work on the subject of sexuality. While there are many points where our lines of reasoning as Protestants will sharply diverge from Hadjadj’s, there is also much that is deeply perceptive in…

by Alastair RobertsApril 21, 2015
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Literature

Macbeth and the Fall of Adam

For anyone in Shakespeare’s audience who knew the real story of Macbeth, his play must have been surprising. Shakespeare changed so many important details of the historical Macbeth’s life that had Raphael Holinshed, the main author of the most popular history of the British Isles in Shakespeare’s day — Holinshed…

by Ralph Allan SmithApril 16, 2015
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Creation

Maker of Heaven and Earth, (Part 3)

I started looking at a sequence of psalms on divine Kingship (Psalms 93-100) in my last post, part of a series looking at the Old Testament’s witness to Yahweh’s exercise of absolute mastery over his cosmos. I am not trying to “prove” a doctrine of creation ex nihilo directly from…

by Stephen LongApril 14, 2015
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Anxiety

(Un)Holy Fear

Most of the time I believe that dread is wise, anxiety righteous, fear a holy thing. It sounds ridiculous, but bear with me. There are days when fear seems to be not only a rational response to my circumstances, but a moral duty. After all, being a grown-up means responsibility.…

by Leta SundetApril 11, 2015
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Psalms

Psalm 36 Commentary

Get the Psalm 36 Translation here Psalm 36 begins with several translation problems. First, the first word in the actual psalm, as it is found in the English text, is the word "oracle." This word also begins the second verse in the medieval Massoretic Hebrew text, which is our basic…

by James B. JordanApril 10, 2015

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Glad Wilderness

Isaiah 35:1 says that the wilderness will be glad. This could be a simple personification of a wilderness blossoming and coming to fertility. But in context, the passage is talking about the return from exile. Perhaps the wilderness is the desolated land of Israel, which rejoices at Yahweh’s return and…

October 5, 2005
Philosophy

Signs

Augustine distinguishes natural and given signs. The first signify with no intention of signifying, while the latter signify because a person has an intention to signify. The distinction, at least in part, is a distinction of will. Peirce’s typology of icon, sign, and symbol depends on a different criterion. Peirce…

October 5, 2005

Making Judah sin

Why did Yahweh determine that Judah had to be punished after the reign of Manasseh? Other kings of Judah, beginning with Solomon, had promoted idolatries of various sorts. Manasseh was uniquely evil, but there is another factor. Throughout 1-2 Kings, the narrator reports that the Kings of Israel followed the…

October 5, 2005

Structure of Kings

There is a recurring pattern in Kings, one that matches the structure of embedded narratives I’ve discussed in a forthcoming article in the Tyndale Bulletin: Solomon builds and dedicates the temple, 1 Ki 6-9 Lord appears to Solomon, warning about proper use of temple, 1 Ki 9 Son’s kingdom divided,…

October 5, 2005

Hidden Messages of Water

Masaru Emoto. The Hidden Messages of Water. Hillsboro, Oregon: Beyond Worlds Publishing, 2004. 157 p. Convinced that Hamlet was entirely correct that there is more in heaven and earth than philosophy (or theology) dreams, I am, out of principle, more credulous than most, but even I am a skeptic about…

October 4, 2005

Communion meditation, October 2

Psalm 120:7: “I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.” We have seen in the sermon today that the church is an army, and our service to God and His kingdom is militant, as we deploy the weapons of righteousness, faith, salvation, the Word of God…

October 2, 2005

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