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Ascension

Ascension and Eucharist

It’s a simple point, obviously biblical and creedal: Jesus of Nazareth ascended into heaven as the God-man, and He remains the God-man in all his specific particularity from now to the end. He is Jesus the Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Duh! But Douglas Farrow shows in his…

by Peter LeithartMay 27, 2013
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Theopolis News

Register for Trinity Term Class

You can now register for the very first Trinity House intensive class, "How to Read the Bible," taught by James Jordan and Peter Leithart. There will be a kick-off welcome for students on the evening of Sunday, August 25, and the class will be held at Trinity Presbyterian Church ,…

by Peter LeithartMay 22, 2013
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Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy as Narrative-Law

This series of essays will address the food laws in Deuteronomy 14:1-21. To some, this may seem like a work of supererogation. After all, why should a Christian be interested in outdated “laws” from the book of Deuteronomy? I hope to show that meditation on this portion of Scripture is…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 20, 2013
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Isaiah

Apocalyptic Patience

This essay was first published in 2011 in Credenda/Agenda . Isaiah 24 begins the section of Isaiah known as the “little apocalypse.” It’s a good name for this chapter. It’s a text of terror. The world is coming apart at the seams. The earth is emptied; and not only that,…

by Peter LeithartMay 15, 2013
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Biblical Studies

Anti Anti-Supercessionism

This article was first published in 2010 in Credenda/Agenda . In recent years, mainstream theology has begun to recognize the disaster that followed from the Marcionism of classical liberalism. R. Kendall Soulen is a leading figure in efforts to restore the importance of the Old Testament to Christian theology. In…

by Peter LeithartMay 13, 2013
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Deuteronomy

Law and History: How to Read the Law of Moses

This is the last in a series of studies on Deuteronomy 22:30-23:8. In this series, I have offered an interpretation of Deuteronomy 22:30-23:8 which suggests that a simple surface reading of the text does not do justice to Moses’ or God’s intention, that the larger historical and legal context in…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 8, 2013

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Art

Aesthetic enjoyment

Adorno writes that enjoyment is not the be-all of art.  Certainly it isn’t for the producers of art: “If you ask a musician if he enjoys playing his instrument, he will probably reply: ‘I hate it’ . . . People who have a genuine relation to art would rather immerse…

September 24, 2009

Soteriology in time

Soteriology is eschatology, and that means soteriology  has to have an already/not yet structure.  Rejecting either justification by faith or judgment according to works breaks the bond of eschatology and soteriology.  Another way to say this is soteriology is about what happens in time . The alternatives are: 1) Antinomian:…

September 23, 2009

God acknowledging God

Commenting on the “seal” in Song of Songs 4:12, Luther writes, “In the same way we Christians are now sealed by the Word, Baptism, and the Sacramental of the Altar, by which we are distinguished from all other races, not just before the world, but rather in God’s own judgment.”…

September 23, 2009

Film, actors and audience

In his classic essay on the “work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” Walter Benjamin made some trenchant observations on the way film affects actors and audiences.   Importantly, he believes these effects are not the result of some perversion of the medium of film, but inherent in…

September 23, 2009

Adam and Elohim

Paul Niskanen has an insightful analysis of Genesis 1:27 in the latest JBL .  He starts with the question of whether Barth’s view that the image of God is found in relationality and specifically in sexual difference has any exegetical support.  He reviews the current discussion, and notes that there…

September 23, 2009

Heidegger’s hermeneutics

Ouch!  Schaeffer again, this time on Heidegger’s interpretive methods: “Paraphrase, translation, dismantling of the syntax, making the text autonomous with regard to the concrete subject who utters it, absolute silence regarding the poetic form: to these five characteristics we must add hermeneutic authoritarianism,” the last of which “postulates an opposition…

September 22, 2009

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