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

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evangelists
Matthew

Dating Matthew, (Part 1)

When might the Gospel according to Matthew have been written? Of course, any answer can only be speculation, but that does not mean we are reduced to groundless opinion. In this series of articles I point the way to an approach different from the general consensus among scholars today which…

by Ralph Allan SmithNovember 22, 2016
hebrew-manuscript-3
Hermeneutics

Synopticity, (Part 2)

In my first essay on “synopticity” I offered a rather rough definition of the phenomenon and important, though not exhaustive examples. In this essay, I want to introduce broader aspects of the phenomenon of “synopticity.” The first example that I have in mind is conventional stories, stories of different historical…

by Ralph Allan SmithNovember 17, 2016
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Ascension

Brexit and the Binding of Satan, Part 4

Since the judgment of Babel was followed by the initiation of the circumcision, the impending end of the circumcision in AD70 explains the significance of the first century miracle of foreign tongues. Except for a few Aramaic “teasers” in the book of Daniel, the Word of God was monolingual and…

by Mike BullNovember 15, 2016
four-evangelists
Hermeneutics

Synopticity, (Part 1)

To the best of my knowledge “synopticity” is not a word used in theology or Biblical studies, but it seems an appropriate word to describe the kind of phenomena associated with the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These three Gospels tell essentially the same story with significant — sometimes…

by Ralph Allan SmithNovember 10, 2016
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Humor

Learning to Laugh

Humor is a funny thing. It is altogether familiar yet also mysterious. What makes us laugh? Why do we find things funny? There are academic fields of study dedicated to discovering what makes things humorous. These academicians even have a journal entitled International Journal of Humor Research . No joke.…

by Bill SmithNovember 8, 2016
chaucer
Literature

Flawed Means of Grace: Liturgy in The Pardoner's Tale

Out of all the characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales , the Pardoner has been called the “one lost soul.” The pious Parson, who closes out the collection of tales with a sermon on the seven deadly sins and how a sinner can absolve himself of them, connects the…

by Christian LeithartNovember 3, 2016

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Feuerbach on the Trinity

Feuerbach wrote that the Trinity “is the secret of the necessity of the ‘thou’ for an ‘I’; it is the truth that no being - be it man, God, mind or ego - is for itself alone a true, perfect, and absolute being, that truth and perfection are only the…

July 12, 2008

Googled?

Nicholas Carr asks in the July/August issue of the Atlantic whether Google is making us stupid. He points out that the web tends to scatter attention and diffuse concentration by bringing information from various sources at us all at once. As the web comes to dominate our access to news…

July 12, 2008
Theology

Postmodern imagination

Garrett Green ( Theology, Hermeneutics, and Imagination ) thinks that Feuerbach serves up raw what the masters of suspicion - Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud - cooked and covered with sauces. The fundamental objection to religion in Feuerbach, and in his successors, is the notion that “religion is the produce of…

July 9, 2008
Philosophy

A-Time, B-Time

In his introduction, Ganssle provides a lucid description of McTaggert’s A and B series (or theories) of time: “The B-theory holds that the most important thing about locating events in time is their relation to other events. So something happens before, after or at the same time as something else.…

July 9, 2008
Theology

God and Time

I’ve just begun to look at Gregory Ganssle’s God and Time , but the index worries. In a book about time, there are no entries for “calendar” or “clock.” More worrying, there are only four dispersed references to the Trinity.

July 9, 2008

Direct, Indirect, and Trinity

Richard Swinburne describes God’s omnipresence in these terms: “God is supposed to be able to move any part of the universe directly; he does not need to use one part of the universe to make another part move. He can make any part move as a basic action . .…

July 9, 2008

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