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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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What Anselm Didn't Do

Harnack didn't much like Anselm's Cur Deus Homo . Toward the end of his summary and critique in History of Dogma, vol. 6 , he pays Anselm a back-handed compliment: “perhaps no one can frame a better, who isolates the death of Christ from His life, and wishes to see…

February 17, 2016

Blood of the Son

At Theopolis this week, we spent a long time poring over the strange episode in Exodus 4:24-26. Moses is returning from Midian to Egypt, and stops at a lodging place, where “Yahweh met him and sought to put him to death.” Zipporah saved the day by circumcising Gershom, spreading the…

February 17, 2016

Milton as Propagandist and Poet

In his classic study of Psychological Warfare , Paul Linebarger offers historical examples of successful and unsuccessful psychological warfare. Milton's support for the Cromwellian regime calls into the latter category: “Milton fell into the common booby-trap of refuting his opponents item by item, thus leaving them the strong affirmative position,…

February 17, 2016

The Dogmatic Necessity of AD 70

Raymund Schwager ( Jesus in the Drama of Salvation ) that human beings are “simultaneously involved in two situations. As responsible for sins, all belong to the great band of those who form an alliance against God's anointed, judge him, drive him out, and reject him. As victims of their…

February 16, 2016

Orthodox “Invasion”

When Pope Francis met with the Russian Patriarch Kirill met last Friday, it was an ecumenical moment of the highest order, the first meeting in history between a bishop of Rome and a Russian Patriarch. The meeting highlights two of the most important events of the 20 th century –…

February 16, 2016

Unutterable Groans

Israel's suffering in Egypt was intense. Israel's growth spooked Pharaoh. Multiplying and spreading and growing, Israel looked like a threat to Egypt. To protect the system, Pharaoh took stern action. He subjected Israel to hard labor, then had their sons killed, then instructed his people to throw the sons of…

February 16, 2016

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