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Theopolis News

Meet Brian Moats

Theopolis is delighted to announce that we have hired Brian Moats as Assistant to President Peter Leithart. An Alabama native and graduate of Boyce College in Louisville, Brian is a professional photographer who has also worked as a salesman and dispatcher for Charter Communications and Wayne's Environmental Services. Brian and…

by TheopolisJune 10, 2015
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History

Christians, Liturgy, and the Past, (Part 1)

Over the last few years, I have had frequent cause to return to the question of the ways in which the past and its forms of liturgy should be handled within the Church today. Keeping faith with the past is seldom as straightforward an endeavour as it might initially appear,…

by Alastair RobertsJune 9, 2015
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Hermeneutics

The Dramatic Structure of Proverbs

The book of Proverbs appears as a largely random collection of aphorisms drawn from experience saturated in law. Despite its random arrangement, however, the book does have an over-arching structure that reinforces its main themes. One way to gather clues regarding the structure of a biblical book (or any book)…

by Peter LeithartJune 4, 2015
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Charity

Mission to Milwaukee

Prior to attending the week-long intensive course on Holistic Mission, my wife and I were living two counties away from Milwaukee, in the comfortably quiet and rural village of Slinger, Wisconsin. In God’s providence, after nearly ten years of living in Slinger, we realized some changes to our comfortable and…

by Jonathan SedlakJune 2, 2015
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Bonaventure

One Body and One Loaf: Eucharistic Unity Through the Theology of St. Bonaventure

I have many Roman Catholic friends. Leading from my time at Saint Louis University and continuing through various scholarly engagements I often get an opportunity to discuss history and theology with Roman Catholics who are very well educated in their tradition and practice, some of whom are leading scholars in…

by Timothy LeCroyMay 28, 2015
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Theopolis News

Music in Life and Liturgy

Theopolis ended its second year of operation with its Pentecost Term course on Music in Life and Liturgy last week. Co-taught by Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio and scholar-in-residence James Jordan, the Music course was the largest Theopolis course yet. Sixteen pastors, seminary students, and music ministers from nine…

by TheopolisMay 26, 2015

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De-Priesting, Re-Priesting

When Aaron and his sons were ordained, they were washed, vested, and anointed (Leviticus 8:6-9). When Aaron approached the Most Holy Place on the Day of Atonement, he puts on linen clothes and washes (16:4). There is no anointing, he removes the garments of glory. The ordination rite goes in…

February 19, 2014

Faith, Not Sight

Faith is the discernment of things unseen. Faith looks for a city yet to come, not made with hands. To any visible arrangement of things, faith stands with Faust in his refusal of “Stay, you are so fair.” Faith says to every human construction, “Good, but not it .” Faith’s…

February 19, 2014

Incinerating enemies

In a contribution to Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice , David Frankfurter analyzes several contexts of Egyptian religion on the way to a critique of the whole category of “sacrifice.” In some of these contexts, no animals were slaughtered; no violence done. In some contexts, though, animals were killed. He elaborates on…

February 18, 2014

Symbolic rites

Jonathan Klawans asserts in an essay in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice that “symbolic action was an undeniably central feature of ancient Israelite culture” (114). As evidence, he points to passages in the Hebrew Bible that highlight the memorial function of rituals. Passover, Sukkot, Sabbath, circumcision, phylacteries are all presents as communicative…

February 18, 2014

Sacrifice or Silence

In his treatise On Abstinence from Killing Animals , Porphyry states a principle of philosophical sacrifice: Different strokes for different deities. For “intelligible gods,” the best worship is “hymn-singing in words,” since “sacrifice is an offering to each god from what he has given, with which he sustains us and…

February 18, 2014

Backfire

John Steven explains at Slate why the ceasefire in South Sudan, like many ceasefires, could well backfire” “The cease-fire is making it worse. Indeed, this uncomfortable truth isn’t even unique to South Sudan. Cease-fires almost always make a conflict worse, delaying political deals, prolonging the killing, and ensuring that the…

February 18, 2014

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