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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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Ordination exhortation

1 Timothy 4:13: Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed upon you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. Prior to the Reformation, the Western church treated ordination as a sacrament. Protestants have never done that. For the seven sacraments of…

January 28, 2007

Exhortation, Fourth Sunday After Epiphany

Many of you received an email this week encouraging you to be at church on time and rebuking those who are habitually tardy. Some got the impression that the elders don’t want you to show up at all if you’re running late. That’s not the point. If you’re unavoidably tardy…

January 28, 2007

Spouse and Kingdom, revisited

In response to my earlier post on “Spouse and Kingdom,” Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio writes, “it strikes me that the WCF’s dualism in describing the Church reflects the typical Western dualism that was congealing during the 17th century. Invisible and spiritual matters can be described in poetic, imaginative,…

January 26, 2007
Philosophy

Typology and postmodernism

Zizioulas locates the central difference between patristic and postmodern views of “otherness” in the way each conceives the relation of old and new. For postmodernism, “alterity involves negation, rupture, ‘leaving behind’, for patristic thought the ‘new’ relates to the ‘old’ in a positive way.” He demonstrates this by appealing to…

January 26, 2007
Philosophy

Fallen Philosophy

In his 2006 volume, Communion and Otherness , John Zizioulas pretty directly connects Western philosophy with the fall of Adam. Adam claimed to be God and thus “rejected the Other as constitutive of his being.” As a result, Self took “ontological priority over the Other,” with the result that “otherness…

January 26, 2007
Theology

Jews and Gentiles

The extension of rights to the Jews was one of the great achievements of the French Revolution, and Rosenstock-Huessy moves from a discussion of the resulting Jewish enthusiasm for liberalism to a digression dealing with the relation of Jews and Gentiles in history. It is titled “Alpha and Omega,” and…

January 25, 2007

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