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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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Apostasy and Assurance

Pastor Steve Wilkins clarifies the question of apostasy and assurance at the Trinity House site .

July 16, 2014

In Defense of Spain

Hugh Thomas’s World Without End is the final installment of his trilogy on imperialism in the century after Columbus. It focuses on what Thomas calls the “age of administration,” the age (in the words of the Economist reviewer) “in which professional officials, many of them clerics, gradually took over from…

July 15, 2014

Egyptomania: TLS Review

The TLS reviewer of David Gange’s Dialogues with the Dead and Bob Brier’s Egyptomania catalogues some of the Egyptian trinkets that amused Victorians: “Victorian ladies wore sarcophagi charms and brooches of winged scarabs; men’s coat buttons were embossed with pharaohs’ heads. ‘Egyptian’ cigarettes were all the rage along with smoking…

July 15, 2014

Medieval Modernist

Anthony Flint’s forthcoming biography of Le Corbusier, Modern Man , recounts the architect’s famous exploits, sexual, artistic, intellectual. It’s a lively story, breezily written. What surprises is the impact that what Flint characterizes as a “side trip” to the Carthusian Monastery of Val D’ema had on the architect. The honeycomb…

July 15, 2014

Hagar as Israel

Paul tells the story of Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac as an allegory (Galatians 4). He’s not reading into the text. He’s reading an allegory out of the text, an allegory that would have been evident to Israelite readers of the exodus generation. Hagar is the first human being…

July 15, 2014

Land-Sanctuary

At the 2014 Biblical Horizons summer conference last week, James Jordan argued that, unlike the tabernacle that is a reconstituted garden, the temple draws its imagery from the land. The architectural symbolism of the temple includes trees, pomegranates, lilies, lions, palm trees, and other flora and fauna that were not…

July 15, 2014

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