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

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Romans

Robbing Temples

Paul writes to Jews, “You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” (Romans 2:22b) The English translation “rob temples” makes readers think of pagan temples. There was only one Temple for Israel, so robbing more than one would indicate other temples are in view. And if the Jews wanted to…

by Mark HorneOctober 15, 2024
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Genesis

Regarding Abel’s Offering

Two offerings Humanity’s first vocation involves guarding and serving the trees that emerge from the ground (Genesis 2:15). God provides these trees to humanity for food. A serpent appears and tempts the couple to eat from a special forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Humanity…

by Scott FairbanksOctober 3, 2024
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Hermeneutics

The Trinity and Cross in Creation

At the outset of the Torah (as Christians understand it), a triune God creates the heavens and earth over the course of a seven-day week. Why? What’s the connection between the three and the seven? Could a triune God have created the world over any period of time he chose?…

by James BejonOctober 1, 2024
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Deuteronomy

Axe Heads and Parapets: Legal Edge Cases?

How relevant to the modern reader are the flying axe head of Deuteronomy 19:5 and the roof parapet of Deuteronomy 22:8? Indeed, how relevant were they to the daily lives of Israelites thirty-five hundred years ago? Suppose that accidental falls from rooftops were exceedingly uncommon in ancient Israel, or that…

by Josh JensenSeptember 24, 2024
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Political Theology

The Church Builds the World

1 For most of my life, the standing of the American church as a source of national social and political order was measured by reports from the front of the so-called “culture wars.” 2 Memory brings to mind battles over feminism and the ERA, so-called gay rights, the breakdown of…

by Gary YoungSeptember 17, 2024
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Matthew

That He would be called a Nazarene

But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel…’ And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the…

by Lyndon JostSeptember 10, 2024

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Philosophy

Hyper-Cartesians

Walter Truett Anderson suggests that postmoderns may be distinguished from others by the fact that they not only have a culture, but know that they have it. Or, put differently: “You do not choose to be premodern. If you choose, you are at least modern. If you know you are…

November 9, 2006
Politics

Therapeutic politics

Christopher Lasch pointed to the therapeutic dimensions of 1960s radicalism: “Acting out fantasies does not end repressions . . . it merely dramatizes the permissible limits of antisocial behavior. In the sixties and early seventies, radicals who transgressed these limits, under the illusion they were fomenting insurrection or ‘doing gestalt…

November 9, 2006
Politics

PR Politics

Clem Whittaker, a pioneer in the political use of media during the 1930s and 40s, candidly explained his theory of campaigning in a speech to the PUblic Relations Society of America: “There are thousands of experts bidding for every man’s attention - and every man has a limited amount of…

November 9, 2006
History

Pseudo-war

Walter Truett Anderson points to the US invasion of Grenada (1983) as an example of a postmodern public-relations war: “its primary purpose was to give the American public a ‘win,’ to flex the muscles of the Reagan administration, to allow Americans to (in the phrase current at the time) ‘feel…

November 9, 2006

Poet or poem revisited

A reader, Dan Glover, sent the following response to my hints about the Christian as “poem.” “Christ, the eternal Word, indwells his people and his people corporate. He is the Word which controls us with his words (‘go, make disciples . . . baptizing them in the name of the…

November 9, 2006
History

Social Construction

Walter Truett Anderson suggests that postmodernism takes is rise from the recognition of the social construction of reality. This means: The institutions, practices, and habits that make up the contents of social life are made by human beings; and even natural reality is known and experienced through a linguistic and…

November 9, 2006

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