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

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Isaiah

The Desert of the Sea

Introduction Isaiah 21 can only be understood in the light of its placement in the architecture of the second “volume” of the prophecy (chapters 13–27). The contents are arranged in twin sevenfold “columns” that represent the great bronze pillars of Solomon’s Temple: Jachin and Boaz, priest and king. The priestly…

by Mike BullFebruary 20, 2025
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Isaiah

Jesus Enthroned on the Zodiac

A Biblical Reflection on the Purpose of the Constellations The starry heavens hold a place of wonder in the hearts of men. Since man’s creation we have looked up into the heavens and have beheld its glory. This is particularly true of the night sky. The stars, in their shinning…

by Matthew DarbyFebruary 19, 2025
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Matthew

An Overall Chiasm around Six Discourses in the Gospel According to Matthew  

The case for there being five discourses within the Gospel according to Matthew is a hard one to challenge: surely the closing formula “when Jesus finished these sayings” as found in 8:1, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, and 26:1 settles it once and for all. And by the five instances of the…

by Benoit EngelFebruary 13, 2025
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Matthew

Exegesis of the Great Commission

The Long Commission The Great Commission of Matthew 28 has long been a cornerstone of American Evangelicalism. It has formed and fashioned the American church’s missional impulse. Yet when viewed from the wide lens of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, the Great Commission is revealed as one of the pillars…

by Ralph Allan SmithFebruary 11, 2025
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Lord's Supper

Genuine Paedocommunion

I am delighted to see that more and more churches in the Reformed tradition are now recognizing that all baptized children are members of the body of Christ and therefore ought to be communing with the rest of the body at the Lord’s Table. This has been decades in the…

by Jeff MeyersFebruary 6, 2025
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Twitter and Emotional Sabotage

Good leaders have always been rare. In today’s world, they seem extinct. Joe Rigney’s recent book Leadership and Emotional Sabotage digs into the spiritual reasons for the leadership epidemic and recommends cures. Rigney starts with a summary of a book by Edwin Friedman called A Failure of Nerve . Friedman’s…

by Christian LeithartFebruary 4, 2025

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Divine Feminine

V irginia Ramey Mollenkott is mistaken in her general conclusion to The Divine Feminine , recently reprinted by Wipf & Stock. She writes, “it is perfectly natural for the Bible to contain a vast predominance of masculine God-language, springing as it does out of a deeply patriarchal culture. . .…

January 30, 2015

Up and Down

John ascends to heaven at the bidding of a trumpet-voice (4:1); an angel ascends from the east with the seal of God in his hand (7:2); since and the prayers of the saints ascend to heaven from the censor (8:4); the two witnesses ascend to heaven (11:12, 2x). There are…

January 29, 2015

Practical Thomism

P eter Kreeft’s Practical Theology isn’t quite an introduction to Thomas’s Summa . It’s too repetitive, too selective, to be that. It functions better as an introduction to Thomas— a mystical, jolly Thomas not unlike Chesterton’s. Most of all, it’s just what Kreeft says it is, a tour through the…

January 29, 2015

Love Melts

One of the most profound passages from the Summa quoted in Peter Kreeft’s Practical Theology is this (p. 97), from ST I-II, 289, 5: “Four proximate effects may be ascribed to love, viz. melting, enjoyment, languor, and fervor. Of these, the first is melting , which is opposed to freezing.…

January 29, 2015
Ecclesiology

Visibility by the Spirit

In one of the essays in Word and Church , John Webster acknowledges that there is a danger of “spiritualizing” the church when the “asymmetry of divine and human action” is emphasized. He thinks the claim that Protestantism is pure subjectivism is a “caricature,” but the charge “identifies a potentially…

January 28, 2015

Catholics and Evangelicals

Gregg Allison is well-positioned to offer an “evangelical assessment” of Roman Catholic Theology & Practice . Now a professor of theology at South Baptist Theological Seminary, he spent a number of years as a Campus Crusade minister at Notre Dame, has interacted with clergy and lay Catholics over many years…

January 28, 2015

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