Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For Part 1, click HERE . How did Paul’s earliest commentators view his juxtaposition of music and drunkenness, and did they connect it to the ancient Greek ideas of musical ethos described in Part I? Origen, one of the earliest commentators on Paul, writes about Ephesians 5:18-19: One, however, who…
Perhaps it is because I am a musician that I have always found Ephesians 5:18-19 so arbitrary. But isn’t it a little odd to contrast music and drunkenness? Perhaps it is not obvious that that is what Paul is doing; I know, for myself, that it is remarkably easy to…
In 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 Paul deals with how the Corinthian Christians are supposed to be relating to unbelieving spouses. He essentially tells them, “Look, if your unbelieving spouse is willing to stay with you as a faithful Christian, don’t initiate a divorce. If he/she wants to leave you, let him/her…
For Part 1, click HERE . Those who focus on the supposed “pacifism” of Jesus and condemn the violence of God’s judgments throughout the Old Testament overlook the ministry of sacrificial bloodshed as an alternative to human bloodshed. The sword bearing of the sacrificial system was introduced to avoid the…
How should a Christian respond to the objection that the Bible, like the Koran, is a book of violence and bloodshed? Numerous answers have been offered by well-meaning exegetes, but none of them gets to the heart of the matter: God desires to place a sword in the hands of…
Beginning this summer, Dr. Alastair Roberts will join the Theopolis Institute as an adjunct Senior Fellow, the Institute has announced. Dr. Roberts will be a regular on the Theopolis podcast, teach intensive courses and in the Fellows Program, and help develop new programs and outlets. Roberts earned his PhD from…
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First I post a quotation, then I add a post raising questions about its genuineness. Now I find that it was genuine in the first place. Tertullian, On Idolatry , 19 asks “whether a believer may turn himself unto military service, and whether the military may be admitted unto the…
O’Donovan again: “By what right is the term ‘political’ claimed exclusively for the defense of social structures which refuse the deeper spiritual and cosmic aspirations of mankind? The price to be paid by classical republicanism is that of pitting political order against human fulfillment, of making the polis constitutionally hostile…
“It is a Western conceit,” O’Donovan writes, “to imagine that all political problems arise from the abuse or over-concentration of power; and that is why we are so bad at understanding political difficulties which have arisen from a lack of power, or from its excessive diffusion.” He cites the example…
A helpful Christological response to my “blood and soil” post from Jack Kilcrease of Marquette University: “I’m currently working on an article about Gerhard Forde and the Radical Lutherans concept of discontinuity. They want between the law and gospel for there to be total discontinuity. Granted, this is to overcome…
De Lubac traced the development of the terminology and concept of “supernatural” in the theologians, and Bartlett finds confirmation of de Lubac’s thesis by looking at hagiographic writings (collected in the 68 volumes of the Acta Sanctorum, published from 1643 to 1925!). He found no use of the word before…
One of the virtues of Robert Bartlett’s The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (aside from a chapter on dogs and dogheads) is his discussion of the medieval puzzle concerning land and sea. By the four-elements theory, earth was the densest element, and thus should gravitate to the…
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