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Writing

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

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Tyranny of the Agreeable

Inspired by the “Moscow Mood” Debate In a shocking 1961 study, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram would don an official-looking white lab coat and tell a volunteer to administer increasing shocks to another “volunteer” in an adjacent room strapped into an “electric chair” just out of sight. The shocks were incrementally…

by John CarpenterJuly 22, 2024
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Apostle Paul

Why Doesn’t Paul Quote Jesus?

My title and the substance of the article are borrowed from a section of David Wenham’s excellent book, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? I am appropriating ideas from the pages in his book which address the question, “Why Does Paul refer to Jesus’ Life and Ministry so…

by Ralph Allan SmithJuly 9, 2024
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James

The Epistle of James: Shotgun or Sniper

Some of us may be familiar with the notion that the epistle of James is like a New Testament version of Proverbs or other wisdom literature. According to this line of thinking, the epistle of James (together with the other wisdom literature) is basically a collection of timeless sayings without…

by Chris JohnsonJuly 4, 2024
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Virtue

Doing What You Don’t Want to Do

This summer I started walking a long trail that ran north from our home. On my best days, I would walk a total of five miles at a brisk pace. This trail follows the power lines that serve a significant portion of North Dallas and stretches far past the two…

by Mandi GerthJune 25, 2024
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American Culture

Is Queer Theology Christian?

I am an Australian. I went to the American Academy of Religion mega-fest last year to meet up with some friends, to present a paper at a ‘science and religion’ panel, and to marvel at the sheer scale of how Americans do things. It was quite a ride. Looking at…

by Paul TysonJune 18, 2024
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Ecclesiology

Consumerism, Oikos, and the Role of Women in the Church (Part 4)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 We evangelicals do not often understand the roles of men and women in ministry. Because our consumerist culture has gutted the notion of family as it was historically understood, all Biblical passages about women in church ministry (a familial organism) are almost incomprehensible to…

by John CarpenterJune 11, 2024

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Or maybe not

Christianity Today had this about rumors that Gorbachev was a Christian: Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made clear this past weekend that he is an atheist after European news agencies last week claimed that he had confirmed his Christian faith during a visit to the tomb of St Francis of…

March 26, 2008

Critical allegory

In a JSOT lecture, published in a 1989 issue of JSOT, James Barr probes Brevard Childs’s claim that “a fundamental characteristic of the critical movement was its total commitment to the literal sense of the text.” Not so, Barr argues. On the contrary, the whole impetus behind biblical scholarship since…

March 26, 2008

Penitential Seasons, 3

A couple of thoughtful observations from members at Trinity Reformed Church on Lent and penitential seasons: Hannah Grieser suggests that there is an analogy between the Lord’s Day liturgy and the church year; the church year is the Lord’s Day writ large. Since we have a penitential moment in our…

March 25, 2008

Dual identity

Daniel and his three associates each had two names - a Jewish and a Babylonian. Jim Jordan points out in his recent commentary that the Jewish names are used when the men pray and the Babylonian names when they advise the king. They apparently have no moral qualms about this…

March 25, 2008
Theology

Sovereignty and freedom

Again, a Frame move, this time from Aquinas: If “the divine will is perfectly efficacious, it follows not only that things are done, which God wills to be done, but also that they are done in the way that He wills. Now God wills some things to be done necessarily,…

March 24, 2008

Framing time

Obvious enough, but here goes: God must be outside time, Lord of time, to be within all time. If he was within time as creatures are within time, He could not be present at all times. As John Frame likes to say, our theology should be done in “because of”…

March 24, 2008

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