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

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Apostle Paul

Paul in Prison: Ephesus or Rome?

In the books of 1 and 2 Corinthians, Paul refers to hardships in his ministry in Asia, specifically Ephesus (1 Corinthians 4:9-13; 15:32; 2 Corinthians 1:8; 4:8-12; 6:4-5; 11:23-25). However, the multiple imprisonments Paul mentions are not fully reflected in Luke’s account of Paul’s ministry — Luke only records a…

by Ralph Allan SmithFebruary 15, 2022
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Epistemology

Vertical Living

After all these months pondering integration, I have come to the point of believing that the dynamic of integration just is the real at its heart. Everything that is real or comes to be real is a dynamo of integrative coherence. I also believe it is true that the real…

by Esther Lightcap MeekFebruary 1, 2022
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Books

Tom Holland and the Liberating Power of Christianity

Have you heard of Tom Holland? Not the young Tom Holland of Spiderman fame. No doubt you’ve heard of him. I’m referring to the middle age Oxford-trained historian who recently wrote Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind . (Both Hollands are British, so you’ll be forgiven for confusing them.)…

by Gerald HiestandJanuary 25, 2022
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Biblical Horizons

"Do This!"

This article was originally published in 1990. (The essay that follows concerns a rather touchy subject: how the Lord’s Supper is to be done. I am not writing to insult or offend, but to challenge. To that end I have not "held back" but have "gone ahead" and said what…

by James B. JordanJanuary 19, 2022
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American Culture

The Dominion Trap

This article was originally published in 1990. In Genesis One, God told Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on…

by James B. JordanJanuary 13, 2022
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Biblical Studies

Will Few Be Saved?

On several occasions the gospels record Jesus teaching that only a few will be saved (Matthew 7:14, Matthew 22:14, and Luke 13:23). Careful readers of Scripture should begin to wrestle with how these passages found in the gospels fit together with other passages that teach that many will be saved…

by Manny LucasJanuary 11, 2022

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New Hearts

Ezekiel is the only OT writer to promise a “new heart” to Israel (18:31; 36:26).  He promises hearts of flesh in place of hearts of stone.  What has given the people of Judah hearts of flesh in the first place? Ezekiel 14:1-7 gives an answer: They have set (stone -…

November 14, 2009
American Religion

Mainline’s revenge

Near the end of his recent Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults , Christian Smith summarizes the argument of a 1995 article by N. Jay Demerath of the University of Massachusetts.  Demerath writes, that the widely reported decline of liberal Protestantism may in fact signal…

November 14, 2009

“Dependent” God

Athanasius appeals to the baptismal formula to show that the Son must be Creator: If he re-creates in baptism along with the Father, He must have created from the beginning.  But this raises the question, Is the Father insufficient in Himself?  Athanasius, strikingly, does not answer by appealing to the…

November 13, 2009

Sword or Cross?

Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow Me,” which is to say, “Be willing to die with me.”  Instead the disciples flee. But it gets worse.  The word “sword” is used six times in Matthew 26:47-56, three times in verse 52 alone.  (Otherwise, Matthew uses the word only once,…

November 13, 2009
Theology

Hegel, Catholicity, or Death

John Milbank throws down a challenging gauntlet to Protestants in the Afterword to The Radical Orthodoxy Reader .  He explains Radical Orthodoxy as a continuation of the attack on extrinicism launched by the nouvelle theologie .  Barth, he argues following the critiques of Przywara and Erik Peterson, “ignored both the…

November 12, 2009

Love of God, Love of World

Bonhoeffer shows how love of God and love for His creation can be reconciled by using a musical analogy: “God wants us to love him eternally with our whole hearts - not in such a way as to injure or weaken our earthly love, but to provide a kind of…

November 12, 2009

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