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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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Missing Cross?

Revelation 12 is an allegory of Jesus and the church. A laboring woman clothed with the sun is stalked by a dragon. The woman gives birth, and the child is snatched away to heaven. This is Christ, but He seems a crossless Christ: A theology of glory if there ever…

May 26, 2014

Priest, King, Reader

Uche Anizor’s Kings and Priests is a useful contribution to the burgeoning library of theological interpretation. Anizor uses the biblical categories of king and priest to harmonize a stress the theological dimension of Scripture interpretation (God’s initiative in revelation) with the ethical dimension (what kinds of people make good Scripture…

May 26, 2014

Tale of Two Readings

Uche Anizor’s Kings and Priests includes a neat description of a “tale of two readings” - that of Josiah (2 Kings 22-23) and that of Jehoikim (Jeremiah 36). In both cases, a text is presented to a king, and Jeremiah wrote his account of Jehoiakim to evoke the memory of…

May 26, 2014

Eights on Eights

Uche Anizor writes ( Kings and Priests , 78-9) analyzes Psalm 119 as a “developed expression of devotion to God’s Word” and a complex literary structure: “The first is its acrostic form: each stanza is headed by a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet and each line begins with that…

May 26, 2014
Reformational Catholicism

Bible Belt Catholicity

Pastor Rich Lusk reflects on the difficulties of pursuing Reformational Catholicism in the Bible Belt at the Trinity House site .

May 26, 2014

Tears of Heaven

When John learns that there is no worthy one to open the Father’s book, he weeps greatly (Revelation 5:4). It seems a melodramatic touch, more at home in the Shepherd of Hermas or Pilgrim’s Progress than the Bible. It is an essential moment in the scene, though. For starters, John…

May 24, 2014

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