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Matthew

Reading Matthew, Identifying Discourses: A Closer Look at the “Six-Discourse” Proposal

In a February blog post for the Theopolis Institute, Benoît Engel offers a thought-provoking challenge to the widely accepted five-discourse structure of Matthew’s Gospel, proposing a sixth discourse in Matthew 21:28–22:14 to reframe the Gospel’s chiastic center. As someone deeply invested in Matthew’s literary design—explored in my book Reading Matthew,…

by Jonathan SedlakJune 26, 2025
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2 Timothy

Avoid Foolish Disputes

Avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and useless. Titus 3:9 Out of a deep love and care for the church, Paul tells Titus and those in the church to avoid four specific things: foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law.…

by Grant Van BrimmerJune 24, 2025
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Baptism

The Indispensable Mark of Worship: Infant Baptism

Theopolis publishes many polemics, especially on the Sacraments. This piece does not necessarily reflect the views of Theopolis, her board, or her editors. -JW Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days.He shall cleanse himself with the water on the third day and on the…

by Tommy ThompsonJune 19, 2025
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American Culture

Ecclesiocentric Life is Back

There is in the United States and the Western World some sort of religious revival occurring. Gen Z men—males born between ca 1997 and 2012—are flooding back in to churches. USA Today noted that Gen Z men—and to a lesser degree women—attending churches more than their millennial predecessors and they…

by Miles SmithJune 17, 2025
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Biblical Studies

Sceptical Text-Critical Hypotheses

The primary task of many Biblical scholars (as they see it) is to explain how and why the Biblical text acquired its final form—i.e., what source material it used, how that material was expanded/redacted, who expanded/redacted it, why they did so, what the weather was like at the time, etc.…

by James BejonJune 12, 2025
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Galatians

Flesh & Spirit in Galatia

Galatians 5:5-15 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from…

by Jeff MeyersJune 10, 2025

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What Made Trump

Andrew Sullivan's Trumpacalyptic essay in New York doesn't persuade. The Constitutional system that Sullivan describes so well is more resilient than he thinks, and Trump more moderate, pragmatic, and changeable than he credits. But Sullivan's explanation of Trump's rise is spot on. On the one hand, there are the ongoing…

May 5, 2016

Theories of Modernity

In an essay on “Two Theories of Modernity,” Charles Taylor distinguishes between cultural and a-cultural theories of modernization. The former type of theory is “one that characterizes the transformations that have issued in the modern West mainly in terms of the rise of a new culture. The contemporary Atlantic world…

May 4, 2016

Beyond Monogamy

First gays were oppressed by being excluded from marriage. Now they are oppressed for being confined to it. In her forthcoming Beyond Monogamy , Tulane's Mimi Schippers argues that we won't reach real sexual freedom until monogamy is cast into the dustbin. Gays and bisexuals and polysexuals of various sorts…

May 4, 2016

Scotus's Sacramental Occasionalism

Richard Cross's 1999 Duns Scotus in the Great Medieval Thinkers series is an excellent, concise introduction to this most controverted of medieval theologians. It's dense, so is its subject. Cross spends a late chapter dealing with some central themes in Scotus's sacramental theology - his theory of sacramental causality, his…

May 4, 2016

Light to the Nations

The city that descends from heaven in Revelation 21:9-22:5 shines with the glory of God. She is a light to the nations: “nations shall walk by its light, and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it” (v. 24). That image provides a neat model of mission.…

May 3, 2016

Rhetorical Timing

In the introduction to Rhetoric and Kairos , editor Phillip Sipiora notes that “ kairos first appeared in the Iliad , where it denotes a vital or lethal place in the body, one that is particularly susceptible to injury and therefore necessitates special protection; kairos thus, initially, carries a spatial…

May 3, 2016

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