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Epistemology

Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World: Covenant Epistemology: The Integrative Regard of the Other

Fragmentation characterizes our era. Bits, bytes, chips, data points. Ourselves as reducible to the meaningless. We can feel dehumanized and lost. We seek wholeness, integration. We rightly believe that integration brings meaningfulness, somehow doing better credit to ourselves as humans and to the world. More than that, integration somehow aligns…

by Esther Lightcap MeekJune 5, 2018
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Proverbs

The Dramatic Structure of Proverbs

The book of Proverbs appears as a largely random collection of aphorisms drawn from experience saturated in law. Despite its random arrangement, however, the book does have an over-arching structure that reinforces its main themes. One way to gather clues regarding the structure of a biblical book (or any book)…

by Peter LeithartMay 31, 2018
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Baptism

Infant Baptism in the History of the Church

Ancient practice in the Church sets an important precedent for present day practice. This certainly doesn’t mean that Christians are bound to only do things as they have always been done, but the principles of catholicity and unity move us not to break from historic church practice on a particular…

by Timothy LeCroyMay 29, 2018
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Biblical Studies

Babel Academy, Part 2

For Part 1, click HERE . Genesis 1 describes the creation of the physical order. Genesis 2 recapitulates the pattern of Genesis 1 as it describes the creation of the social order. Genesis 3 describes the intended founding of an ethical order. It was here that sin entered into the…

by Mike BullMay 24, 2018
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Biblical Studies

Babel Academy, Part 1

The Business of Keeping the Saints in the Dark Let there be light! The first recorded “spoken” words of God. Curiously, even this creative decree was a deed whose fruit required an appraisal. God judged the light and separated it from the darkness. As the cardinal act within a newborn…

by Mike BullMay 22, 2018
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Course Announcement

A Week with Esther Meek - An Introduction to Covenant Epistemology

We are very pleased to announce that Esther Lightcap Meek will be the instructor for our 2018 Trinity Course in August. The course is titled "Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology" and will be held August 13-17 at Beeson Divinity School. Esther Meek, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Geneva…

by TheopolisMay 21, 2018

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Losing Face

In his 2013 book, Saving Face , Stephen Pattison observes that infants very quickly begin to notice and recognize faces, and to imitate the expressions they see. “To be and to become human socially and emotionally,” he writes, “is to engage in real, nuanced, face-to-face visual relations.” When a child…

April 1, 2016

De-Aristotelianizing Plato

Between 1900 and 1960, scholars believed that Plato held to a “cosmological” view of the divine, the notion that gods are “personified forces responsible for bringing order to the sensible world.” Since then, scholars have adopted a “metaphysical” interpretation, arguing that Plato's god is finally a metaphysical principle. So argues…

April 1, 2016

Breaking the Contract

Ryan Leif Hansen ( Silence and Praise ) describes Roman imperial religion as a social contract that bound the gods, the emperor, and the Roman people in a stable, peaceful order: “ Cultic ritual, sacrifice, and the related economic exchange were integral for sustaining the order of the cosmos ,…

March 31, 2016

Son of Pain

Sara Japhet ( I and II Chronicles ) notes the “unusual” structure of the etiological story behind the name “Jabez” in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. Typically, “an aetiology offers an explanation for a given datum (commonly, but not always, a name) by recounting the causes from which it arose and demonstrating…

March 31, 2016
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Sterilizing Marriage

In his powerful manifesto, Nation of Bastards , Douglas Farrow argues that the Kulturkampf in which we find ourselves began in the early part of the 20th century with “the promotion of sterilization, eugenics, and the contraceptive mentality.” In short, it started “as an attack on children,” more horrifically in…

March 31, 2016

Art of Politics

In his reflections on Carl Schmitt, Paul W. Kahn ( Political Theology ) contrasts Enlightenment political rationalism to Schmitt's political voluntarism. Kant stands as the representative of the rationalist tradition: “For Kant, the question of freedom was that of how a subject could determine his own action in a causally…

March 30, 2016

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