Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
One reason readers assume Paul is trying to prove that all human beings are sinful is that they understand him to be arguing that no one can keep the law. That means, they think, his opponents must believe that human nature is potentially sinless. Taking Paul’s statement that, if you…
[Note: This post was written prior to our name changing to Theopolis Institute.] What is Trinity House for? Three things: We aim to advance the reformation of the church and, through the church, to promote the renewal of culture; in furthering reformation, we aspire to be a site of fraternal,…
This is the third in a series of studies of the Third Word, and especially of Deuteronomy 14. In 1979 Stephen Kaufman penned a groundbreaking essay on Deuteronomy, arguing that it was a meticulously structured and carefully composed book. In his view, chapters 12 to 26 in particular follow the…
A large mistake is made in understanding Romans if one assumes that Paul is concerned with proving the fact that no one can ever live without sin—or that all attempts at obeying God’s commands are at least tainted with human sinfulness. The first problem with such an assumption is that…
This is the second in a series of studies on the Third Word, and especially on the food laws of Deuteronomy 14. In the second part of this series, I argue that Moses’ reworking of the Ten Words in Deuteronomy 5 includes adding nuance to the Third Word. This prepares…
Recent months have brought a lively discussion of Christian participation in the culture war. On the one hand, the pro-life movement appears to be making some slow progress on the abortion issue. The trial of abortionist and serial murderer Kermit Gosnell has the potential to awaken those who are nominally…
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Lindberg points out that “Calvin’s Protestant contemporaries did not view Geneva as a vengeful theocracy. Thousands of religious refugees flocked to Geneva from nearly every province in France, as well as from England, Scotland, Holland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, and Bohemia. When they returned hom, they took Calvinism with them.”…
Lindberg summarizes the important, if sometimes inadvertent, cultural contributions of monasticism: “Monastic culture was not limited to copying texts from the past, but also engaged in a variety of intellectual pursuits related to monastic life. These included maintaining a liturgical calendar; mathematics for managing estates; calculations for determining times of…
In his recent Brief History of Christianity , Carter Lindberg suggests that “orthodoxy is the language that preserves the promise character of the gospel, that salvation is received from God, not achieved by humans.” By contrast, “heresy is the language that in one way or another vitiates the promise of…
In his book on the work of Christ, Robert Letham has this neat summary of the relation of present to future justification: “faith has an eschatological side to it. Paul can say we are justified by faith (Rom. 5:1) but he can equally talk of our being saved in hope…
Philip Hardie argues that the shield of Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid makes significant use not only of the Homeric description of the shield of Achilles but of ancient allegorizations of Homer’s description: “The central feature of ancient exegesis is its insistence that the great circle of the Shield of Achilles,…
Andrew Bowie’s *Aesthetics and subjectivity from Kant to Nietzsche* emphasizes the role of aesthetic theory in the development of post-Kantian notions of the subject. He points out that some philosophers challenged Cartesian and Kantian views by direct appeal to aesthetic experience: “these theories . . . regard the experience of…
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