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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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Heavenly Economy

Some Christmas reflections on what it means to receive bread from heaven over at www.firstthings.com this morning.

December 21, 2012

Trinity House: A Student Perspective

I don’t think I’ve ever known someone so humble and hungry to learn—even from his students, even from his undergrads—as Dr. Leithart. He loves the subjects he teaches in such an un-possessive way; he both cares for and respects his students enough to interact earnestly with their ideas. I’ve witnessed…

December 20, 2012
Theology

Tracing to God

In one of his Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Volume 5 (International Kierkegaard Commentary) Kierkegaard analyzes the respond of Job to his suffering: “Job traced everything back to God; he did not detain his soul and quench his spirit with deliberation or explanations that only feed and foster doubt, even though the…

December 19, 2012
History

Impersonal Gift

In her contribution to Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange (Veroffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts fur Geschichte) , Beate Wagner-Hasel offers this penetrating critique of Marcel Mauss’s The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies : “Mauss indirectly completed in theoretical terms the very process of depersonalizing and…

December 19, 2012

Trinity House Institute Website

For various reasons, we have decided to change the name of the Trinity Institute to “Trinity House Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, and Cultural studies,” “Trinity House Institute” for short and “Trinity House” for shortest. We are getting a web page set up. Currently, the page includes only our mission statement,…

December 19, 2012

Locke’s project, Locke’s self

In a superb essay on Locke’s “social imagination” in Rethinking Modern Political Theory: Essays 1979-1983 (Cambridge Paperback Library) (21-22), John Dunn traces Locke’s project to a “simple” central concern: “As a whole this thinking can be legitimately represented as the attempt to think through the political implications of a rather…

December 18, 2012

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