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Writing

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

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Ascension

The Son of Man in the Clouds | Part 1

References to the Son of Man coming on the clouds occur five times in the Synoptic Gospels. Three times such expressions appear in the parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:36; Luke 21:27). Then, in parallel accounts of Jesus’ trial before the leaders of Israel, such expressions…

by Ralph Allan SmithMarch 3, 2020
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Biblical Studies

The New Torahs

Just what the difference is in the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the New Testament is a question not so easily answered. The distinction is often said to be that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is on the believer, but in the New…

by Richard BledsoeFebruary 25, 2020
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Movies

1917: A Visible Word

1. Introduction You should think of 1917 at church on Sunday. Why? Let me explain. There's one film every Oscar season which everyone seems to have watched—your parents, your colleagues, even your pastor. This year, it's 1917— Sam Mendes' WW1 epic following two British Tommies on a seemingly impossible quest…

by Rhys LavertyFebruary 18, 2020
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Immigration

Greater Israel

This piece was originally part of the Bowyer response to the Theopolis series surrounding Professor McDermott’s essay, “Rethinking Israel.” For the sake of brevity, it was removed from the initial response, to be published as a standalone piece. As we’ve argued previously , we are strongly supportive of the right…

by Jerry and Charles BowyerFebruary 11, 2020
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Matthew

Matthew the Tax Collector

Richard Bauckham’s groundbreaking work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony , is profoundly insightful, but the message of the book is hampered by the presupposition of Marcan priority. Ironically the place where this assumption perhaps does its most damage is in Bauckham’s discussion of the apostle Matthew…

by Ralph Allan SmithFebruary 4, 2020
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Good Works

Faith as the Highest Work

The Protestant Reformation was defined by certain clarifying disagreements between the medieval Church and those who came to be known as Protestant Reformers. Chief among these was the nature of justification: whether one was justified by works, or by faith and works, or—as Martin Luther contended—by faith alone. Now over…

by Alexander WhitakerJanuary 28, 2020

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LA Theology Conference

I am honored to be a speaker at the first annual Los Angeles Theology Conference at Biola University, January 17-18, 2013. The topic is Christology, and additional information is found here: http://latheology.com/

September 7, 2012
Philosophy

Meaning

I’ve been leading students through John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (A Theology of Lordship) for the past 15 years, and every year I’m impressed all over again. Frame is solidly biblical, creative, careful. His multiperspectival approach allows him to incorporate the best insights of nearly everyone,…

September 7, 2012

Shame Interrupted

Edward Welch’s Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection is a remarkable book. It offers a penetrating, discomfiting analysis of the experience of shame, which Welch summarizes under the headings of nakedness and exposure, isolation and being an outcast, contamination and self-disgust. He sees it everywhere…

September 7, 2012
Uncategorized

Reproduction

John Paul II, waxing Frankfurtian and Benjaminist, reflects on the effects of technologies that enable us to reproduce images of the human body - film and photography ( Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body , 366-7 ): “Artistic reproduction, when it becomes the content of…

September 7, 2012
History

Infant Christendom

In an interview in The Legend of the Middle Ages: Philosophical Explorations of Medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (p. 22 ), Remi Brague argues that the early Christians transformed everything because they were obsessed with Christ not “Christianity itself.” They tracked “the reverberations of his coming in the whole of…

September 7, 2012

Three Loves

Dan Glover offers these expansions on an earlier post where I quoted Edward Vacek’s analysis of the threefold love of God ( agape , philia , eros ). The rest of this post is from Dan. Adding to your comments, perhaps each person of the Godhead serves particularly, though not…

September 7, 2012

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