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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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Theology

Barth on God’s Omnipotence

Barth has a wonderful discussion of the omnipotence of God in Dogmatics in Outline (pp 48-49). He disputes the notion of absolute power, power in itself, as a description of God’s almightiness, and concludes (in line with the tradition of God’s simplicity) that God’s power is His holiness, righteousness, mercy,…

January 12, 2004

Barth’s Trinitarianism

From Barth, Dogmatics in Outline : “For Christian faith is faith in God, and when the Christian Confession names God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, it is pointing to the fact that in His inner life and nature God is not dead, not passive, not inactive, but…

January 12, 2004

Barth’s Trinitarianism

From Barth, Dogmatics in Outline : “For Christian faith is faith in God, and when the Christian Confession names God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, it is pointing to the fact that in His inner life and nature God is not dead, not passive, not inactive, but…

January 12, 2004

Bailey on Jacob and Rebekah

Unfortunately, Bailey’s discussion of the links between the prodigal son story and the narratives of Jacob and Esau is vitiated (great word I learned from Calvin) by his misinterpretation of both Jacob and Rebekah. Jacob breaks faith with his father, as the prodigal did (according to Bailey), and Rebekah is…

January 12, 2004

“Safe and Sound”

Based on LXX evidence, Bailey argues that the word translated as “safe and sound” should be translated as “in peace” (the word translates SHALOM in 10 of 11 uses in the LXX, and translates SHALAM in the 11th use). The feast is a festival of reconciliation and peace, covenant renewal.…

January 12, 2004

“Safe and Sound”

Based on LXX evidence, Bailey argues that the word translated as “safe and sound” should be translated as “in peace” (the word translates SHALOM in 10 of 11 uses in the LXX, and translates SHALAM in the 11th use). The feast is a festival of reconciliation and peace, covenant renewal.…

January 12, 2004

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