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

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John

Jesus, David, Adam: A Reading of John 18:1-11

John 18:1-11 appears on the surface to be a straightforward, if somewhat unusual, narrative of Jesus’ arrest by officers of the chief priests and Pharisees accompanied by an apparently large group of Roman soldiers, all of them led by the betrayer, Judas. But there is much more here than what…

by Ralph Allan SmithJuly 3, 2013
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American Politics

Not So Special

Why is the US embroiled in the Middle East? There are two primary answers: Oil and Israel. Both are fairly intractable problems, the latter in significant part because of the unique convergence of theology and politics that has forged American policy in the region. Dispensationalists insist that we must bless…

by Peter LeithartJuly 1, 2013
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Hermeneutics

Raven of the Gospel

There’s a common theme that arises in the study of theologians James B. Jordan and Peter Leithart. It is this: Context matters. Details matter. This is God’s Word. The details are not arbitrary “filler” hiding the kernel of truth in the husk of the text. The husk and the kernel…

by Troy GreeneJune 26, 2013
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Anxiety

Marriage and Betrayal

Perhaps the most fearful of all possibilities in the world is the possibility of betrayal on the part of someone who is in a “position of trust.” This, unfortunately, is the first block in what ought to be the foundation of every marriage in the world. Every woman has a…

by Richard BledsoeJune 24, 2013
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Theopolis News

One More Week

Only one more week to register to the Trinity Term class on "How to Read the Bible," taught by James Jordan and Peter Leithart. Sign up today!

by Peter LeithartJune 24, 2013
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Homosexuality

Reorienting our Sex Talk

The way we talk about the world matters. Our doctrine of creation tells us that words do not simply reflect reality. They also shape it and the way we inhabit it. Among the world’s many language groups, the Church is distinct. She is called to name things with Scriptural language,…

by Matthew MasonJune 19, 2013

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Global Republic

Frank Ninkovich’s The Global Republic minimizes the role of “Manifest Destiny” and the belief in American exceptionalism in the global rise of the United States. Instead, “the stimulus for the nation’s ascent to dizzying heights of power, far from emanating from within, was . . . of external origin, an…

October 13, 2014

Green: A History

A young Jane Fonda stares at you from the cover of Michel Pastoureau’s latest, Green: The History of a Color . She wears a dull brown-and-green tartan dress and leans back against the arm of a green sofa, large green-covered books discarded to one side. She’s smoking, but she’s taken…

October 13, 2014
Trinity

Inseparable Operations

In his contribution to Advancing Trinitarian Theology , Stephen Holmes defends the classic notion of divine simplicity, that God’s operations ad extra are undivided. Divine actions, he argues, arise from the eternal relations of origin within the Trinity: “Son and Spirit have a movement from an origin in their eternal…

October 13, 2014

Knowing in the Biblical Sense

An alert former student, Stephen Long, corrects my claim that the OT uses “X knew his wife” in only two places. In addition to Genesis 4 and 1 Samuel 1, there’s Genesis 38:26, where Judah “did not know” his daughter-in-law Tamar again. Long writes, “On the one hand, its existence…

October 13, 2014

Not Fearing the Devil

I summarize and discuss Adam Kotsko’s socio-cultural version of Christus Victor atonement theology at the Trinity House site .

October 13, 2014
Atonement

God’s Love, God’s Hate

Calvin quotes Augustine’s Tractates on John ( Institutes 2.16.4) in summarizing God’s motive in sending the Son: “God’s love is incomprehensible and unchangeable. For it was not after we were reconciled to him through the blood of his Son that he began to love us. Rather, he has loved us…

October 10, 2014

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