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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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Ecclesial “denotation”

In his books, Ephraim Radner offers numerous profound insights into the complications and implications of a divided Christianity. Near the beginning of Hope Among the Fragments , he points to some of the dangers of post-Reformation efforts to “denote” the church -that is, to describe the church as “something that…

July 4, 2005

Translation, 2 Kings 13

In the twenty-third year to Yo’ash son of ‘Achazyahu king of Yehudah Reigned-as-king Yeho’achaz son of Yehu’ over Yisrael in Shomron seventeen years. And he did the evil in the eyes of Yahweh And the walked after the sins of Yarav’am son of Nevat who caused-Israel-to-sin. He did not turned…

July 4, 2005

The exodus of Jehoahaz

During the reign of Jehoahaz of Israel, the northern kingdom experienced an exodus (2 Kings 13:1-6): 1) Israel had sinned and therefore the Lord became angry and gave them into the hand of Aram, as often happened during the times of the Judges. 2) Jehoahaz “became ill.” The word is…

July 4, 2005
Theology

Salvation and Semiosis in Augustine’s de Doctrina Christiana

Augustine’s de doctrina Christiana is most relevant to contemporary theological and philosophical concerns. It anticipates Wittgenstein, Peirce, and Eco, as well as the cultural anthropologists; it has an almost postmodern feel at certain points; it is a text in theological hermeneutics. Augustine’s answers are sometimes (in my view) deeply wrong;…

July 4, 2005
Theology

Salvation and Semiosis in Augustine’s de Doctrina Christiana

Augustine’s de doctrina Christiana is most relevant to contemporary theological and philosophical concerns. It anticipates Wittgenstein, Peirce, and Eco, as well as the cultural anthropologists; it has an almost postmodern feel at certain points; it is a text in theological hermeneutics. Augustine’s answers are sometimes (in my view) deeply wrong;…

July 4, 2005

Eucharistic meditation, July 3

Luke 14:21: Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame.” Pastor Wilson has reminded us this morning that the older members…

July 3, 2005

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