Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Place names become fraught with meaning by association with people and events. The name “Wittenberg” calls to mind Luther and the Reformation for Protestants and Catholics alike. Geneva has a wider range of associations, but the Reformation Wall, with its four main statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza,…
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe,…
2 Samuel 11-12, which record David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath, is structured chiastically: This arrangement highlights several things about the episode. It reinforces what is obvious from even a casual reading, that the transition in the story occurs with Nathan’s confrontation of David’s sin and David’s confession. Up…
Medieval bestiaries are packed with quaintly inaccurate information about animals, birds, and other created things. Foxes and snakes are devilish critters; stags, pelicans and elephants are Christlike in their various ways. Of course, the medievals picked this up from the Bible, where bestiary observations are fairly common. “Go to the…
What do Reformational Catholicism and craft beer have in common? The question seems to beg for a punchline. Better yet, it would be pretty good clickbait for an article on Katharina von Bora’s “spirited” contribution that helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Well, this is no joke and I am certainly…
Suffering Defined Suffering happens. We witness it all around us and experience it in our lives. It often comes from forces beyond our control. Suffering is inscrutable; it strikes unexpectedly, on a bright summer day or a cold winter night. We lament and are bewildered by suffering. But we are…
Showing page 117 of 309
Showing page 2 of 43
Words are central to human relationships. We can see only the outside of other people, but words bring out things from within. But relationships are not just words, but an exchange of words, offering our words and getting words back, giving and receiving words. A one-sided conversation is no conversation.…
It was an ancient axiom that truth comes before error. “The real thing always exists before the representation of it,” Tertullian wrote, “the copy comes later.” This means “truth comes first and falsification afterwards.” The “always” in first statement is self-evidently false; the reality is frequently the opposite. In some…
And another thing: Who could believe that you could make a movie that is not just watchable but deeply engaging with basically two people, one of whom says nothing? What kind of artistic chutzpah does it take to try to wring drama out of a 2-hour monologue? What kind of…
Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 Persona is brilliant cinematic philosophy. Elisabet, an actress, becomes confused during a performance and falls silent. Her psychiatrist gives this diagnosis: She got tired of playing roles, putting on masks, and knew that every word she spoke involved some sort of performance. So she stopped speaking. But…
Is it fair to use the sequence of offerings in Leviticus 8 and Numbers 6 as models for Christian worship? After all, these two texts are specialized - the “filling” ceremony for the priests and the rededication of a Nazirite. When we find the same sequence in Chronicles, it’s also…
Carlin Barton closes a brilliant article comparing concepts of honor, sacrifice, and sacramentum found among martyrs and gladiators with some observations on the wider cultural import of her work. One of her main aims is to overcome the perception that Christians and Romans were working in completely separate symbolic universes,…
Showing page 1365 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
