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Colossians

Tychicus and Onesimus

In Colossians 4:7-9, Paul tells the Colossian church that he is sending Tychicus and Onesimus to them. It is clear that they are to deliver the letter Paul has written to the church and that they are also to report to the church the details of Paul’s ministry in chains…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 26, 2023
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Mission

Sustainable Development

On the 11 th of April, 1985, the communist dictator Enver Hoxha breathed his last. It was the beginning of the end of communist Albania. After 40 years of being isolated from almost the entire world, the Albanian people started to see what life really looked like outside their borders.…

by James LeithartJanuary 24, 2023
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Biblical Studies

Sex Drives Building

Karl Ove Knausgaard once reminisced about an author he referred to as “the man with his sweater tucked into his trousers” who, upon entering the room, would declare as if it was his creed, “I write because I am dying.” Knausgaard acknowledges this to be one reason among many why…

by Garrett SoucyJanuary 19, 2023
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Biblical Studies

The World is Charged with the Threeness of God

The Missing “It Was Good” The patterns and repetitions of Genesis 1 are well known: God speaks, it happens, and God sees that it’s good; names are given, and there’s evening and there’s morning: a day. But the patterns of creation, like the patterns throughout Scripture, are marked by variation…

by Josh JensenJanuary 17, 2023
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Biblical Studies

The Day of Christ: Philippians 1:10

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 12, 2023
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Biblical Studies

Arboreal theology: Trees in Colossians

The Bible is a book about trees. We start in Eden with two trees, we end in the New Jerusalem with a single double-trunked tree, and the story hinges around the tree they nailed our Lord to. Seeing the Forest We find trees singled out on day three of creation.…

by Tim SuffieldJanuary 10, 2023

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Trinity

Contracting the Trinity

Trinitarian theology blossomed in English theology in the post-Reformation period, evidenced by the creative development of the vestigia trinitatis . During the seventeenth century, though, Trinitarian theology began to contract and wither. According to Philip Dixon ( Nice and Hot Disputes ), there were two dynamics at work. First, Trinitarian…

February 25, 2016

Structure in 1 Chronicles

1 Chronicles begins with a list of 13 names, from Adam to Japheth. From Genesis 10, we know that the list is broken into two lists, 10 + 3. The first ten names mark generations from Adam to Noah; the list of three names are all from the same generation,…

February 25, 2016

Economy of Force

Patricia Owens summarizes her recent Economy of Force in a symposium at The Disorder of Things . Her book is a history of modern counterinsurgency, but that history has much broader implications for the history of political thought and scholarship on international relations. As Owens puts it, “The book is…

February 24, 2016

Liturgical Orientalism

Robert Taft ( “Eastern Presuppositions” and Western Liturgical Reform ) credits the Melkite patriarch and bishops with exercising a disproportionate influence on the direction of reform at Vatican II, due to their “remarkable imaginative and universal vision.” They were the first to state that the council should avoid definitions and…

February 24, 2016

Separability and Situatedness

Marcia Pally's Commonwealth and Covenant is a study of the “economics, politics, and theologies of relationality.” She works through these topics using the categories of “separability” and “situatedness.” Separability is “the ability to leave one's place and develop oneself differently from past and neighbors” (3). She thinks that the contemporary…

February 24, 2016

Debtor Nation

“In 2010, Americans had total debt outstanding of $52.4 trillion, more than three-and-a-half times the country's gross domestic product,” writes Rowena Olegario in The Engine of Enterprise (1). Over $13 trillion is household debt, $24.5 is business debt, and 24% or $12.4 trillion is government debt, mostly federal debt. Each…

February 23, 2016

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