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

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Biblical Studies

Exile or Ark?

In the Fall 2007 issue of JBL is an essay “Jonah Read Intertextually” by Hyun Chul Paul Kim of Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio. The first section of the essay points to numerous linguistic and conceptual parallels between Jonah (“Dove”) and the Noah narrative: Destruction of the earth, including…

by James B. JordanApril 10, 2008
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Biblical Studies

How Mark Came to be Written

The phone rang. “Hello, this is John Mark.” “Hi, JM. This is Simon Peter.” “Oh, hello, Mr. Rock,” said Mark. “What can I do for you?” “Well, JM” said Peter, “I’ve been very impressed by your recent essays in the New Jew Review , especially your series on David as…

by James B. JordanMarch 24, 2008
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Biblical Studies

How Matthew Came to be Written

The sun had set and finally the crowds had dispersed. The disciples gathered in the upper room, exhausted but joyful after preaching and teaching in many different languages all day, not to speak of seeing to the baptism of three thousand people. James bar Alphaeus put on a CD of…

by James B. JordanMarch 20, 2008
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Biblical Horizons

Church-Culture | Cause-Effect

There was a time, I think, when Evangelical Christianity in North America tended to be dominated by what might be (pejoratively) called a “retreatist” or even “defeatist” view of society. For various reasons, Christians believed that society was headed downhill and there was nothing the Church could do about it,…

by Mark HorneMarch 14, 2008
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Genesis

Is Genesis 15 an Attack on Forensic Justification?

Hebrews 11 makes it very clear that Abram (later, Abraham) exercised saving faith from the time he left his home to go wonder in Caanan. He was justified at least from the time of the call in Genesis 12.1-3 on. Yet I keep reading people who think that any appeal…

by Mark HorneMarch 6, 2008
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Biblical Horizons

On Renewing Theology

I spent the last few days at A Conversation on Denominational Renewal , which thankfully met in St. Louis. The conference was well attended, about 300 or more people. The audience was mostly PCA ministers and elders, but because it was held in St. Louis there were a good many…

by Jeff MeyersMarch 1, 2008

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Theology

Practical preaching

In his history of Protestant theology in the 19th century, Barth lists some of the sermon topics of one Traugott Gunther Roller of Schonfels in Kur-Saxony: Fourth Sunday after Epiphany: The Duties of a Christian Congregation saved from the Grave Risk of Fire. Easter: Reasonable Rules for the Christian Burial…

July 12, 2007
Theology

Whose questions?

Bediako neatly describes the dualism that results when the church attempts to apply the questions and answers of European or American Christianity to Africa without addressing the questions of Africans themselves. He quotes John Taylor’s pointed question: “if Christ were to appear as the answer to the questions that Africans…

July 11, 2007
Theology

Against Theology

Bediako criticizes other African theologians who claim that there is no African theological tradition. There is, he admits, not much if we’re looking for school theology. But focusing on that lack misses the real action - the “grassroots” theology expressed in songs, worship, sermons, personal evangelism, etc. And this is…

July 11, 2007

Christos kurios

One of Afua Kuma’s hymns to Jesus describes Him as an arriving hero: “Children rush to meet Him crowds of young people rush about to make Him welcome. Chief of young women: they have strung a necklace of gold nuggets and beads and hung it around Your neck so we…

July 11, 2007

Jesus of the Deep Forest

In the songs and praises of the illiterate Ghanian Christian, Christina Afua Gyan (or Afua Kuma), Jesus is described as a powerful Protector in a world teeming with dangers. “Should the devil himself become a lion and chase us as his prey, we shall have no fear Lamb of God!…

July 11, 2007
Theology

Good/evil or finite/infinite

What Milbank describes as “postmodern Kantianism” (in Zizek, Nancy, and others) wants to take evil seriously, which means “positively.” They do not think Augustine’s theory adequately accounts for modern evil, complaining that the Augustinian account’s weakness left Europe open to the possibility of radical evil. Milbank suggests on the contrary…

July 11, 2007

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