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

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John

Engaging John, Engaging One Another

The Paradosis Center at John Brown University in Siloam Spring, Arkansas, put on its first conference last week, it was a remarkable event. It was an ecumenical conference including Orthodox (John Behr, Edith Humphrey, others), Catholic (Rusty Reno, Michael Root, others), and Evangelical (Timothy George, David Lyle Jeffrey). Unusually for…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 30, 2014
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Leviticus

Zoemics

Naphtali Meshel observes in his new The "Grammar" of Sacrifice that scholars have been talking for decades about the "grammatical" character of ritual and sacrifice in general, but have never actually analyzed a specific ritual or sacrificial system grammatically. Some even talk about a "universal grammar" of sacrifice "even though…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 29, 2014
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Isaiah

God in the Dock

Some Christians are rather breezy about the problem of evil. We shouldn't be. Do I need to remind you of the grisly beheadings that have taken place over the past few weeks? Do I need to remind you of the blood of innocents that’s been spilled in our own country?…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 24, 2014
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Baptism

Recreated in Four Dimensions

Have you ever been to a wedding where the heavens opened and a voice declared the couple “husband and wife”? Few of us have. Beautiful as they are, most marriages are quite mundane. Yet when Jesus talks about marriage, He describes it as something that God does: “What God has…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 22, 2014
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Matthew

The Least Of These

Jesus is the last and greatest of the Prophets. He is the Prophet that Moses predicted (Deuteronomy 18). That means He gives the final word, brings the blueprints for the final temple, speaks the final world into existence, and has complete and permanent access to the divine court, where He…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 17, 2014
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Galatians

Paul and the Troublers of Galatia

Paul stands against those who are “troubling” or “disturbing” the Galatians churches ( tarasso ; 1:7; also in 5:10). The reference seems to be two great troublers from the Old Testament. First, Achan is described as a “troubler” for the problems he causes in the aftermath of the battle at…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 15, 2014

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Shiloh Redux

In his temple sermon, Jeremiah warns the people of Jerusalem that Solomon's temple is going to share the same fate at Shiloh (Jeremiah 7:1-15). Shiloh is where the Mosaic tabernacle was pitched when Israel entered the land. It remained there until the Philistines destroyed it and captured the ark (1…

January 26, 2018

Pity the Avant-Garde

Chris Kraus reviews Richard Cabut and Andrew Gallix’s Punk is Dead in the TLS . It was a short-lived movement, with a golden age of "between four and eighteen months," and was over by 1978. That obsolescence was built-in, as philosopher Simon Critchley says in an interview in the book:…

January 26, 2018

Music and the Mind

Musicologist and philosopher Jenny Judge thinks that the mind is more than a machine . Music provides the evidence. According to some philosophers, "if you can’t consciously represent the finer details of a guitar solo, the way is surely barred to having any grasp of its nuances. Claiming that you…

January 26, 2018

Benjamin in the Book of Chronicles

Benjamin Giffone's "Sit At My Right Hand" is a study of the tribe of Benjamin in the book of Chronicles and "in the social context of Yehud" (as the subtitle indicates). After sections examining the Chronicler's setting in the Persian era and the role of Benjamin in the "Deuteronomistic History,"…

January 26, 2018

Bible and Tradition

Few people have had a front-row seat to the various controversies that have rocked the Reformed world since the 1970s. John Frame is one of those few. Irenic and gentle as he is, he has been a target of attack and a spark of controversy throughout his long career of…

January 26, 2018

Failure of Patience

Toward the end of his "Short Treatise on the Lord's Supper" (sections 57-60), Calvin summarizes the history of Protestant disputes concerning the Supper. He focuses attention on the debate between Luther and Zwingli that culminated at Marburg (1529), and points to the failures on both sides that led to the…

January 25, 2018

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