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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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Politics

Silver Linings, 3

Obama’s election shuffles up the politics of race not only in the obvious ways but in subtle ways. He got to the Presidency without moving through the post-civil rights black establishment - witness the tense relationship he had with Jesse Jackson. He got to the Presidency without playing the victimhood-and-entitlement…

January 22, 2009

Jewish War

Madden examines the Jewish War (66-70 AD) in some detail, using it as an illustration of the difficulty of controlling religiously motivated terrorism, and he interestingly points out that Diaspora Jews not only celebrated the exploits of Palestinian guerillas but also initiated conflicts in their own cities: “As news of…

January 22, 2009
Politics

Belgian military

Thomas Madden ( Empire of Trust ) notes “In 1939 Belgium had an army larger than that of the United States.” Today, there are 40,000 Belgians in uniform. Like many countries of Europe, it has a military that is “good for parades.” Britain has reduced its navy from 900 vessels…

January 21, 2009
Politics

Withdrawal

Sage advice for Obama from a 2007 report from the Brookings Institution: “the only things standing between Iraq and a descent into a Lebanon- or Bosnia-style maelstrom is 140,000 American troops.” And if the future of Iraq is not sufficient motivation, there’s the legacy: If America withdraws, “we should expect…

January 21, 2009
History

Useful Idiots revisited

William Weinrich, formerly patristics professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and currently serving as Rector of the Luther Academy, the seminary for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia in Riga, Latvia, offers some important correctives to my claims about the absence of debate about Christianizing the empire…

January 20, 2009

Protestantism and Criticism

From Neill and Wright again, summarizing the assumptions behind William Hietmuller’s early twentieth-century work on Paul’s views on sacraments. Hietmuller placed Paul within the history of religions, and arrived at conclusions that have guided many Pauline scholars ever since. As summarized by Neill and Wright, there are four principles at…

January 20, 2009

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