Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"The faithful use of sacraments, and indeed a fully sacramental view of creation, is vital to the life of the Church. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are rites that directly shape the community and the Body, because they were given by God for that express purpose. A deficient practice of…
Weightlessness is fun. At the beginning of Gravity (2013) , we can see one astronaut dancing the Macarena and another one playing with his jetpack. They like it out there in the space. Apart from zero-gravity they can enjoy beautiful views, and even the silence is likable, although Matt Kowalski…
I recently went to a lunch that is more or less quarterly. About a dozen of us go. It is a lunch held in honor of a retired professor of religion and philosophy. I have been one of his acquaintances for more than 40 years. In his tenure as professor,…
Why Theopolis? Don't we already have seminaries and Bible colleges and other institutions for theological education? Why do we need another one? I get this question now and again. I ask myself this question even more often. What follows is a partial answer. Back in the 1990s, seminaries seemed to…
I think the logic of the Lutheran Reformation can be summarized in one sentence, attributed to Luther himself: "God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does." The first half of that statement is justification by faith . God doesn't need our works to satisfy his justice or…
If you are looking to start a fight with Christians, there is hardly a better subject to do so than the arts. Music, movies, paintings, and literature have provided no small battlegrounds for Christians to war. We are emotionally invested in the arts. A song, a book, or a film…
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Carey Ellen Walsh ( Exquisite Desire ) points to the difference between classical responses to desire and the account of desire in the Song of Songs.  Using Odysseus and the Sirens as an illustration, she notes how this scene reveals the Greek instinct that desire “harbors danger by rendering its…
Love is as strong as death.  But no stronger.  It’s a standoff. No, Jenson says: “death does not allow of stalemates.  If love binds lovers even in death’s despite, death is overcome by love.  Nor does the grave allow of partial retrievals; if it yields its prey, then its jealousy…
Barthian that he is, Jenson gets the point of the Song’s “seal on my heart” just right: Jesus’ “death has made us the seal of his identity: he dies ‘for’ us, in identification with us.  Now he is not what he is without us; he did not go into death…
Robert Jenson ( Song Of Songs (Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) ) notes that Song of Songs 8:6-7 contains “pervading reference to the myths of Israel’s religious milieu: ” Mot can indeed be translated simply ‘death,’ but it is also a proper name, for the Canaanite god…
Jealousy refers to a relentless and exclusive passion and attachment.  For Solomon, it is as hard as the grave.  Once someone goes into the grave, the grave doesn’t let him back up; once it takes hold, it doesn’t let go.  Jealousy is like that.  It is “that aspect of love…
Given the “canon” that Scripture speaks “doubly” of Christ (sometimes divinely, sometimes humanly), it would seem easy for Athanasius to shuffle passages about the Father giving and the Son receiving to the “humanity” side of things.  He doesn’t, and He’s right.  The Son has all that the Father has, and…
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