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

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Apostle Paul

Jonah’s Pauline Move: Finding Mercy for Gentiles in Texts about Mercy for Israel

Jonah is Paul’s typological opposite. Indeed, in the whole Old Testament, it would be difficult to find a more perfect foil to Paul than Jonah. Whereas Paul crosses the sea to enact God’s saving purposes for the Gentiles, Jonah crosses the sea to avoid bringing Gentiles God’s mercy. For that…

by Josh JensenJanuary 11, 2024
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Family

A House for Me

Years ago, I realized that if my children wanted to feel like their house was a home, I needed to be intentional about making our physical shelter a place of spiritual refuge. I began to see the Holy Spirit as the indwelling person of the Trinity—the one who makes His…

by Mandi GerthJanuary 9, 2024
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Charity

On Parrhesia and Gospel Witness

When the crowds encircle Christ in Solomon’s Porch during the Festival of Dedication, they charge him: “tell us boldly who you are!” 1 They do not draw-up to him to with excited anticipation as they did earlier in the Gospel, 2 instead they flank him like a gang of wolves.…

by Mark BriansJanuary 4, 2024
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Deuteronomy

Misunderstanding Moses

1 In Deuteronomy 7:1-5, Moses wrote: When Yahweh your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 3, 2024
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Advent

40 Theses on Christmas

Every Advent witnesses the gruesome reanimation of the voice that whispers “you know , Christmas is just a pagan holiday…” with that sort of conversational ellipsis that does not so much invite further reflection but halts and forecloses it. The claims are several and equally spurious: Jesus wasn’t born on…

by Mark BriansDecember 26, 2023
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Genesis

The Twelve Trials of Abraham

Abraham's life in Genesis is a series of trials. He travels hundreds of miles from his family into a new land, flees from a famine into the hands of a king who takes his wife, and after returning, has to rescue his brother from a war. He's involved with two…

by Donald LinnemeyerDecember 26, 2023

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Doing Ahab

Micah condemns the people of Judah for following the ways of Omri and Ahab. We know from Kings that this is precisely what Judah has been doing. Within Micah 6, though, there is a sharp pun. Verse 16 condemns Judah for doing the works of the house of Ahab, while…

January 9, 2008

Good for Adam

Faced with the indictment from the prophet Micah, Israel asks what it can do to pacify a scarily angry Yahweh. No number of ascensions will do the trick: What Yahweh requires is justice, covenant loyalty, humility (Micah 6:6-8). The famous “Micah Mandate” is addressed to “man,” which translates adam .…

January 9, 2008

Sermon Outline, First After Epiphany

INTRODUCTION Micah continues his indictment of Israel and Israel’s leaders. But in chapter 6, he gives positive instruction. What God demands is what is good - justice, lovingkindness, and humility (v. 8). THE TEXT “Hear now what the LORD says: ‘Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the…

January 9, 2008
History

Modernism’s challenge

Gabriel Josipovici has a stimulating piece in the November 30 TLS arguing that the modernists pose an enduring challenge to contemporary culture, particularly the contemporary novel. Modernism, he suggests, began with the French Revolution, when it was declared that “everyone was equal now and everyone, in principle, had equal opportunities.…

January 4, 2008

Wedding Sermon

1 John 4:7-8: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Let us Pray Heavenly Father, You have eternally loved Your Son…

January 2, 2008
Art

Aesthetic Autonomy

Taruskin also gives a new summary of the artistic theory behind many of the lamentations of classical music’s collapse, which he traces from Mendelssohn through Kant to Schopenhaur and Adorno: “The main tenet of the creed is the defense of the autonomy of the human subject as manifested in art…

January 1, 2008

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