Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This essay is adapted from my articles in Theopolis’s In Medias Res as a series of Holy Week meditations. Like many celebrities such as Kanye or Beyoncé or Adele, Josquin des Prez (d. 1521) was often known only by his first name, in his own time as now. “Josquin” is…
Sight is a major theme in the scriptures. The church has long identified sight’s relationship to the future fulfillment of the eschaton. As Paul says, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (1 Cor 13.12). Sight is associated with…
What is the chief end of man? —yes, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But how ought man–and all creation–so glorify him? I propose a Theopolitan addition to the catechism, question and answer number 1.5, begun in the last question and answered as follows: Earth’s inhabitants were created to…
Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words. Genesis 49:21 Frederick Buechner once said, “We move into the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” In poetry, this happens by way of a compressed code of analogs; often, two or more very ordinary things begin to reveal something that…
The evangelical milieu of America has often lost a vision of the fruit of repentance. We tend to simplify repentance by asking for forgiveness. After all, Jesus tells Peter to forgive 70 times 7. This verse must be paired with Paul’s scoffing at the question: why not sin more so…
I. The hemorrhaging woman. En route to Jairus’ house, Jesus is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage of blood (Matt 9:18–26; Mk 5:21–34; Lk 8:40–48). The story is one that many of us know very well. She has been yoked to her illness for twelve years, all of her…
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Here’s my best effort to summarize Robert Jenson’s take on God-and-time, written with faux-Jensonesque pithiness. Is God eternally and infinitely the eternal and infinite God that He is?  Of course.  He’s God. Is God dependent on creation for His fulfillment?  Of course not.  He’s God. The biblical God uniquely does…
Ask anyone who recognizes the name Anselm, and they will tell you that he was the formulator of a theory of the atonement in which God is an exacting accountant of honor.  Damaged honor has to be restored; and, tallied up, the damaged honor proves infinite, and so demands infinite…
Jenseon writes: “The Crucifixion puts it up to the Father: Would he stand to this alleged Son?  To this candidate to be his own self-identifying Word?  Would he be a God who, for example, hosts publicans and sinners, who justifies the ungodly?  The Resurrection was the Father’s Yes.  We may…
Graced nature, yes.  We are always already encountering God, of course. But not this: “Insofar as this subjective, nonobjective luminosity of the subject in its transcendence is always oriented toward the holy mystery, the knowledge of God is always present unthematically and without name and not just when we begin…
INTRODUCTION Modern atheists try to test God by their own moral and logical standards, and they think they are very, very clever.  They are more evangelical than they know: Humanity’s trial of God is one of the central episodes of the Passion Narrative. THE TEXT “And those who had laid…
The writer of Hebrews writes: “In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.  Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.…
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