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

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Biblical Horizons

Pansexual to Mature Marriage

There is a young man (under 35) who sometimes stops and speaks to me at my “office” (the coffee bar at the Wild Oats Grocery Store). He is very articulate and highly intelligent, and I always enjoy my conversations with him. In our last few conversations it has become apparent…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 14, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

Jesus and Confusion

What began at the Tower of Babel has increasingly become a global affair. All of world history is a project to become a “tower to the heavens” as a self contained and self sufficient world, but this is increasingly judged everywhere, and more and more, crisis is introduced and interjected…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 13, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

Outside the Box

At the always marvellous Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference this past week the inimitable Douglas Wilson complained that he is tired of hearing of the need to get out of the box. He said that some people need to stay in the box. Indeed. Who can disagree? The so-called “Federal Vision”…

by James B. JordanJanuary 9, 2009
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Advent

Virgin-Born Son of God | Pagan Myth or New Creation?

It is popular in some circles to claim that the story of the virgin birth was a pagan insertion into the teaching of the early Church. In various books one can easily find by scanning the shelves of the “religion” section in any decent bookstore this claim functions as a…

by Mark HorneDecember 15, 2008
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Biblical Horizons

Ritual Versus Christianity

This article was originally published at the Biblical Horizons blog. Some of the comments and responses on the original article have been shared at the end. Peter Leithart in Against Christianity points out that “Christianity” tends to be an ideology, and that Jesus did not come to set up an…

by James B. JordanOctober 29, 2008
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Ecclesiology

10 Things a Church can do to Change the World

The principle to keep in mind is that we have to change ourselves first. 1. Participate In The Lord’s Supper Every Sunday In Worship The Kingdom is again and again a feast. The Church is the beachhead of the Kingdom. Does Jesus ever tell a parable comparing the Kingdom to…

by Mark HorneJune 5, 2008

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Sacraments and the Secular Age

Charles Taylor's account of our Secular Age has many virtues. (The following relies on Jamie Smith's summary of Taylor in How (Not) To Be Secular ; page numbers are from Taylor.) Taylor rejects “subtraction” theories of secularization, the notion that secular life was lurking beneath the sacred surface of ritual,…

May 11, 2016

Science, Disenchantment, Meaning

Max Weber begins his lecture on “Science as a Vocation” by noting the “meaningless” of science, a product of the notion of scientific progress that guides scientific pursuits in the modern world. “E ach of us knows,” Weber writes, “that what he has accomplished will be antiquated in ten, twenty,…

May 11, 2016

Youth Ministry in a Secular Age

James KA Smith's You Are What You Love is an accessible, penetrating treatment of the liturgical understanding of human existence, of discipleship, and culture that Smith has been developing in a number of his recent books. In this book, he focuses on the specifics of Christian liturgy as a “technology…

May 10, 2016

Urban Art

Revelation 21-22 gives a vision of an adorned city. Kings bring treasures into the city, but the city isn't just a container for art objects. The city is an art object. The entire civic order is an artistic creation. If the city is an art object, then all of the…

May 10, 2016

Apologetics in a Secular Age

In his summary of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age , James KA Smith observes how apologetics accommodates to the social imaginary of the secular age. Apologetic responses to secularism have too often “conceded the game; that is, the responses to this diminishment of transcendence already accede to it in important…

May 9, 2016

Future First

The vision of the heavenly city at the end of Revelation contains a major oddity: The city descends twice . There are structural reasons for this. The first vision concludes one sequence in Revelation, and the second introduces a final vision. It is the same city, but the vision gives…

May 9, 2016

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