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Theology is a "Victorian" enterprise, neoclassically bright and neat and clean, nothing out of place.

Whereas the Bible talks about hair, blood, sweat, entrails, menstruation and genital emissions.

Here's an experiment you can do at any theological library. You even have my permission to try this at home.

...

Step 1: Check the indexes of any theologian you choose for any of the words mentioned in the section 9 above. (Augustine does not count. Augustine's theology is as big as reality, or bigger.)
Step 2: Check the Bible concordance for the same words.
Step 3: Ponder these questions: Do theologians talk about the world the same way the Bible does? Do theologians talk about the same WORLD the Bible does?

- Peter Leithart, "Against Christianity"

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The kingdom of priests has become a nation of kings. No wonder they are called “Jews” – that is, “Judahites,” all elevated to become honorary members of the royal tribe.

http://www.patheos.com/…/leithart/2018/01/nation-of-kings-2/

Ezra begins where 2 Chronicles ends, with the decree of Cyrus. Some scholars have argued that the repetition indicates that the books were once united. It’s said that the doubling is an ancient literary device to knot together two sections of a text. Whether that is the case or not, the links betw...
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In a TLS review of Kontantin Barsht’s Drawings and Calligraphy of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Robert Bird reminds us that Dostoevsky was a “trained draughtsman” who “thought in images no less than in words: “He wrote frequently about painting, and many of his key terms suggest visual, rather than v...
patheos.com

The God of Israel is not the God of the dead but of the living.
His city now is not a preserve of the city of yesterday but an anticipation of the city of tomorrow.

- Peter Leithart

Few people have had a front-row seat to the various controversies that have rocked the Reformed world since the 1970s. John Frame is one of those few. Irenic and gentle as he is, he has been a target of attack and a spark of controversy throughout his long career of teaching and writing.

By his account (in Theology of My Life), he may have inadvertently ignited the Shepherd controversy with a question at an ordination exam. He’s been involved in various tussles with tradition...alist TRs in the Reformed world, over the legacy of Cornelius Van Til, about Biblicism and confessionalism, and on and on.

He didn’t start the Federal Vision controversy, but nearly all the “FV” leaders were direct or indirect students of Frame.
Frame ends his memoir with a list of the top ten things God has taught him during his life. Several are particularly useful reminders in a time when traditionalism seems to be taking over swathes of the Reformed world

6. The best thing about the Reformed tradition is that it directs us to Scripture. What is merely traditional is dispensable.

7. Total alignment with a historical tradition leads to spiritual shipwreck.

8. One tradition worth keeping, that we need to emphasize more, is that of “creativity within the bounds of orthodoxy.”

Read more at http://www.patheos.com/…/leit…/2018/01/bible-and-tradition/…

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Few people have had a front-row seat to the various controversies that have rocked the Reformed world since the 1970s. John Frame is one of those few. Irenic and gentle as he is, he has been a target of attack and a spark of controversy throughout his long career of teaching and writing. By his …
patheos.com

Toward the end of his “Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper” (sections 57-60), Calvin summarizes the history of Protestant disputes concerning the Supper. He focuses attention on the debate between Luther and Zwingli that culminated at Marburg (1529), and points to the failures on both sides that led to the impasse.

Calvin had the advantage of looking back to these dispute, which enabled him to assess the pluses and minuses calmly. He provides an illuminating near-participant ...

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Toward the end of his “Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper” (sections 57-60), Calvin summarizes the history of Protestant disputes concerning the Supper. He focuses attention on the debate between Luther and Zwingli that culminated at Marburg (1529), and points to the failures on both sides th...
patheos.com
As it turns out, Jonah is not very successful at flight. He goes down, down, down, but as he descends he continues to witness as a prophet. When the Lord throws a storm on the sea, the sailors wake Jonah to ask him to call on his god for help. When the lots indicate that Jonah …
patheos.com
Theopolis Institute

Rituals are as essential to the New Covenant order as to the Old; they are simply different rituals.
- Peter Leithart

The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Ammitai, and instructed him to go to Nineveh to cry out against it. Nineveh is a great city, the capital of the Assyrian empire. Assyria is the rising power in Jonah’s day, and it is a cruel empire, known for the brutal treatment of conquered peoples.

Its wickedness is so great that it rises all the way to heaven. Sacrificial smoke rises to heaven from the temple in Jerusalem, but wickedness also ascends to heaven. Sacrificial smo...

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The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Ammitai, and instructed him to go to Nineveh to cry out against it. Nineveh is a great city, the capital of the Assyrian empire. Assyria is the rising power in Jonah’s day, and it is a cruel empire, known for the brutal treatment of conquered peoples. ...
patheos.com

The Bible never mentions Christianity. it does not preach Christianity, nor does it encourage us to preach Christianity. Paul did not preach Christianity, nor did any of the other apostles. During centuries when the Church was strong and vibrant, she did not preach Christianity either. Christianity, like Judaism and "Yahwism," is an invention of biblical scholars, theologians, and politicians, and one of its chief effects is to keep Christians and the Church in their proper marginal place. The Bible speaks of Christians and of the Church, but Christianity is gnostic, and the Church firmly rejected gnosticism from her earliest days.

- Peter Leithart, "Against Christianity"

Chronicles moves backward through Israel's liturgical calendar.

http://www.patheos.com/…/01/calendrical-patterns-2-chronic…/

At various points, 2 Chronicles indicates the month during which some event occurred. The dates tie the events to moments in Israel’s liturgical calendar. 2 Chronicles 5:3 is explicit. Solomon assembles “all the men of Israel” to Jerusalem “at the feast, that is the seventh month.” At the ...
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In a long and stimulating piece in the New Atlantis, Samuel Matlack explores the role of metaphor in contemporary physics, especially with regard to the challenges of translating the mathematical formulae of theory into popular writing. Have we, he asks, transcended the need for poetry in our explan...
patheos.com
The following summarizes the structural analysis of Isaiah found in David Dorsey’s Literary Structyre of the Old Testament. Like most of the books of the Old Testament, Dorsey finds that Isaiah is organized in a sevenfold pattern: A.Condemnation, pleading, promise of future restoration, 1:1-12: B....
patheos.com

Sign up today for the 5th Annual Nevin Lectures, Feb 16-17.
Pentecostal Theologian Amos Yong will speak.

"What are the challenges and possibilities for a Pentecost catholicity for the 21st century world Christian movement?"

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Receiving a Pentecostal Witness: Toward an Ecumenism of the Spirit for the Third Millennium When: February 16-17, 2018 Where: The Avon Theater Amos Yon
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New Podcast is up!

Peter Leithart discusses the texts for the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany.

Jonah 3:1-5, 10...
1 Corintians 7:29-35
Mark 1:14-20

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Peter Leithart discusses the texts for the 3rd Sunday in the Epiphany season. Enjoy! Learn More! Website: www.theopolisinstitute.com Say "hi" on Twitter: twitter.com/_Theopolis "Like" and Follow
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Faith is confidence in the midst of crisis, but confidence pointed in a particular direction. Faith means trusting King Yahweh when it looks as if King Yahweh has checked out. Faith is a political virtue. Faith means renouncing political alliances and entrusting the fate of the nation to Yahweh and His promise.

Faith is the opposite of fear.

Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2018/01/immanuel-2/…

The king of Judah is panicked, and all Jerusalem with him (Isaiah 7). Judah has been invaded by the combined armies of Pekiah, King of Israel, and Rezin, King of Aram. They have come against Jerusalem and are besieging it, but they cannot conquer it. But they’ve spooked the whole city. Everyone is...
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