Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Every advent of new media creates the justifiable reaction from some that the necessarily accompanied amputation may not be worth the extension made possible by the new tools. This is not unique to the Digital Age. Lamoignon Malesherbes, the French politician who was counsel for the defense of Louis XVI,…
A response to Gage Crowder's " The Hole in our Hope ?" Already, the first pages of the Bible promise a bright future. The story starts with the creation of heaven and earth, where heaven is perfect, but the earth is in a state of formless emptiness. Yet, God takes…
A rejoinder to Bubu Jarmulak's essay, " Embrace Pessimism ." Whereas calumnious critiques are reflections of more on the critic than the work criticized, good critiques are always opportunities for reassessment and improvement if they are received as such . Since its renaissance, the biblical doctrine of postmillennialism—or “optimistic eschatology,”…
Several decades ago, a pastor (and friend) mentioned in passing at one of our regular breakfasts together that he wasn’t satisfied with the usual reading of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane, the usual reading being that Jesus asked the Father to avoid the Cross at Gethsemane. We turned to the passage,…
On May 21, 1604, the cathedral of Toledo in Spain held job interviews for the post of choirmaster, the head of music at the church. The position had been vacated when the previous occupant, Alonso Lobo, was poached by the nearby cathedral of Seville, and Toledo needed a replacement who…
Imagine — counterfactually: on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus held up an empty hand and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant poured out for you. Drink of it.’ But there was no cup, no wine, nothing. If there’s no sign of the covenant, is there…
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In an article published in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism , Tuomas Tepora “analyzed flag speeches given in Helsinki and published in newspapers alongside with other writings related to the subject in different media” during the years 1917-1945. Drawing on Durkheim's work on aboriginal totems, he drew a number of…
Baptism is God's promise to and claim on the baptized. It demands response, a response of faith. Anything else is an insult to God. God tells the baptized, “You belong to me,” but some will say, “No, we don’t want to belong to you. We want to be our own…
At the Theopolis site , A.K. Shauku examines Franklin Graham's response to recent racial conflicts in the US. Shauku writes in part: “Christians are called to be the peacekeepers and a redeeming influence upon society. We cannot do that so long as we allow ourselves to become partisans in a…
A fair bit of scholarship has been devoted recently to exploring the uses of Scripture in Revelation. This can have different focal points and effects on the reading. I am relying on Steve Moyise’s contribution to Hays and Alkier’s Revelation and the Politics of Apocalyptic Interpretation . In his commentary,…
“Entrainment,” writes Joshua Leeds, “concerns changing the rate of brain waves, breaths, or heard-beats from one speed to another” (40). Our bodies beat to certain rhythms, and these rhythms fall into sync with one another. When an external vibration hits our bodies, it affects our internal rhythms: “individually, we entrain…
The Supper is bread, food for life. The Supper is also wine, a sign of rest and completion, a sign of our inclusion in a new covenant, when priests can drink wine in the presence of God. Why wine? Because Jesus is the true Dionysus, the true God of the…
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