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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Horizons

Writing and Thinking

During one of my AAPC lectures I read a portion of Richard Mitchell’s provocative little book The Underground Grammarian . Here’s the portion I read: The mind is a rudderless wanderer blown here or there by any puff of breeze. If I mention watermelons, you must think of watermelons; if…

by Jeff MeyersJanuary 14, 2008
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Biblical Studies

Psalms 23-29: Analysis

This is the donation thank-you essay for January 2008. Our studies in the Psalms go out month by month in response to donations. I’m putting this one up here as an example, and also because the version I actually mailed out contained several egregious arithmetical errors! So, here is the…

by James B. JordanJanuary 6, 2008
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American Culture

The Case Against Western Civilization, Parts 1-7

Part 1: Introduction The collapse of the Western tradition in the United States, seen in the hostility to Christianity in government and education, and the elimination of “traditional” or “canon” learning from our institutions of middle and higher learning, provides a crisis and an opportunity for serious believers at the…

by James B. JordanDecember 5, 2007
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Theologia

On Forgiving Oneself: Nine Reasons Why It Can Be Appropriate

While “forgiving oneself” is widely accepted in the secular world as a legitimate and needful thing to do, Christians are rightly suspicious. After all, God is the one who forgives. When we sin against other people, we need to seek their forgiveness, not our own. Nevertheless after looking at Vine’s…

by Mark HorneJune 6, 2007
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Biblical Studies

Every Word Matters to the Story

This was originally published as HIStory in the column, “A Pastor’s Perspective” in Ligonier Ministrie’s Tabletalk Magazine . I am not sure of the date but it was probably published in 1999 or 2000. Quick! What’s the basic message of the Bible? Summarize it in as few words as possible…

by Mark HorneJune 6, 2007
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Church Government

The Pastorate and the Presbytery

A Brief Explanation of What a Presbytery Is & Why Pastors in Presbyterian Denominations are Members of Them A belief in the primacy of the local congregation of the Church, I think, reflects the gut feeling of most North American Evangelicals. As a result, the form of Church government universally…

by Mark HorneJune 5, 2007

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The Weapons of Our Warfare

In The Empty Men , his study of the heroic theme in the Bible, Gregory Mobley catalogs some of the odd weapons used by biblical warriors: “In Judges and 1 Samuel, the relative inferiority of the weapons of the biblical heroes is emphasized. Shamgar ben Anat is lauded for killing…

December 11, 2014

Individualist Collectivism

I have a great deal of sympathy with Jose Miranda’s claim (in Marx and the Bible ) that Paul is writing about justice in Romans, and that the apostles is concerned “with the problem of society . . . of human civilization. His anguish is over the injustice which reigns…

December 11, 2014

Baptized into the New Age

John Dunnill ( Body and Sacrifice , 128-9) argues that for Paul baptism is more than a “sign” of the new age: “For him, resurrection is the actual transformation of the mortal body of Jesus, the reversal of the deathward trend established by Adam: not merely the resuscitation of a…

December 10, 2014

Sacrificial death?

In some ways, Daniel Ullucci’s The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice helpfully complicates our picture of views on ancient sacrifice, both pre-Christian and Christian. He challenges the standard narrative that claims that Christians straightforwardly and pretty much immediately recognized Jesus’ death as a final sacrifice, and pretty much immediately abandoned…

December 10, 2014

The Universe is a Kitchen

In a recent article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion , Natalie Gummer lays out the sacrificial cosmology embodied in early Buddhist texts. The premise is that the world is a kitchen, in which things take the forms of ingredients in a cosmic stew - saps, juices,…

December 10, 2014

Horizontal Hierarchy

In his monograph on Israel’s Tabernacle as Social Space , Mark George makes the observation that tabernacle space is “configured horizontally”: “There is not a single step, platform, or dais in tabernacle space. No steps differentiate court space from common space, holy space from court space, or most holy space…

December 10, 2014

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