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American Politics

Voting, Praying, and Purity: Two Different Versions of Civil Religion

Pastor John Piper has written on why he (probably) won’t be voting in this month’s presidential election. Reading his argument, I couldn’t help wondering if voting has a cultic significance to Piper. As much as self-admitted Christian Trump-voters are characterized as cult followers, Never Trump Christians often strike me as…

by Mark HorneOctober 30, 2020
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Literature

Pastor Frankenstein

Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself… –– Victor Frankenstein In Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Victor Frankenstein is a young intellectual with an excessive thirst for glory and worldwide acclaim. Having lost his beloved mother, Frankenstein works to…

by Drew KnowlesOctober 27, 2020
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How to Worship

Against Practical Preaching

“Our daughter is just like a baby hippo,” my wife says to me as I hang my coat up. “After we watched a video of hippos munching whole watermelons, she sat down to her own watermelon lunch. She gobbled them up with those same puffy cheeks and big eyes.” My…

by John HigginsOctober 22, 2020
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Abortion

Evangelicals for Adolf: Christians in Hitler’s Germany

Christian compromise with Nazi Germany’s political leadership is well documented in painful detail. There was resistance, but it was the exception rather than the rule. German Christianity was terribly timid. Leadership lacked spiritual strength because of serious Biblical ignorance and unbelief. But it was not just the leaders. Christians in…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 20, 2020
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Abortion

For Whom Should a Christian Vote: Moral Reasoning and the 2020 Election

Can a Christian vote for Donald Trump? That might seem like a surprising question given the widespread evangelical support for the President. Yet for a growing number of evangelicals, to vote for Trump is to endorse his moral repugnancy and further discredit gospel-believing Christians who have sold their birthright for…

by Blake JohnsonOctober 13, 2020
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Hermeneutics

Two Yeshuas and a Fish

Thirty-eight years is a long time to take getting somewhere (Deut. 2:14). You could just ask anyone in the unfaithful generation of people whom God brought to the edge of the Promised Land the first time under Moses—if they were still alive, that is (Num. 14:22-23, 32-35). But there are…

by Eric RobinsonOctober 6, 2020

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Jeroboam and Saul

In 1 Kings 14, Jeroboam’s wife goes disguised to visit a prophet from Shiloh, who announces the death of her son and the eventual destruction of his dynasty. Ahijah tells Jeroboam’s wife that another king will take the kingdom. In 1 Samuel 28, Saul goes disguised to visit a medium…

January 23, 2005

Eucharistic Meditation, January 23

1 Corinthians 5:7: Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. Jeroboam?s dynasty, and the entire northern kingdom with it, was condemned from the beginning. No sooner had he led Israel out of the ?Egypt?Eof the house of David than he led them into an wilderness of idolatry. As we…

January 23, 2005
Politics

Exhortation, January 23

It looked like such a good idea. Jeroboam has been given ten tribes of Israel to rule, and he wants to keep them together. If the people of Israel continue to worship in the Jerusalem, their loyalties of his people will be divided and they might even plot to assassinate…

January 23, 2005
Literature

Notes on Timon of Athens

A few notes from JE Phillips, The State in Shakespeare’s Greek and Roman Plays . 1) Phillips repeatedly points out that the play depicts corruption flowing from the highest reaches of society downward. The Senators and nobility of Athens are deeply corrupted, unable to recognize and honor true nobility because…

January 23, 2005

NT Wright, Prophet

Speaking of Wright, there is a remarkably prophetic passage early in Jesus and the Victory of God where Wright seems to predict the response of some conservatives to his work. Enlightenment thought deployed history as a weapon to critique and dissolve theology (genealogically). Playing off the parable of the prodigal…

January 23, 2005

Embodied Torah

Basil Studer ( Trinity and Incarnation , pp 36-37) points to the use of biblical titles for Jesus among early Christians influenced by Judaism. Among these is the designation of Jesus as “law” or “covenant”: “the Shepherd of Hermas, the Kerygma Petrou and Justin name Christ as law or covenant”…

January 23, 2005

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