Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I am making a new rule in our house! We are actually kind of skimpy on the house rules. I try very hard to keep things simple: love God, love others, be joyful. It’s not complicated to avoid discipline here. But I have found myself repeating this new rule over…
Click HERE for Part 2 The voice of Jesus transforms and changes Mary when she hears him speak her name. This is her last “turning.” So also the woman in the Song of Songs longs to hear the voice of her beloved. Let me see your face, let me hear…
Click HERE for Part 1. The details of this story call the attentive reader back to the drama of Solomon’s Song of Songs. And the Song of Song’s alludes to, ties us into the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden and the promise of a coming Messiah that…
“The course was a paradigm shift for me,” said Jonathan Sedlak, a Milwaukee electrical contractor who attended Theopolis’s course on Revelation. “I am left with a book that is far more practical than it has ever seemed before.” Jonathan Anderson of Louisville, Kentucky found the course “refreshing.” “I finished with…
“It is only by participation in a rational, practice-based community that one becomes rational.” – Alasdair MacIntyre It may be perfectly clear to a chef why adding unsifted powdered sugar to a hot frosting is a bad idea. But for an amateur cook, this may be the kind of rule…
On a fresco in a chapel in Padua, Italy, there is a famous painting depicting the dramatic post-resurrection scene in John 20 with Mary and Jesus outside of the garden tomb. Giotto di Bondone painted it in the early 14th century. Jesus is striding from the tomb with a victor’s…
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Jesus silences the Sadducees with his question from Exodus 3, but then the Pharisees hear about it and “gather” together to ask Him further questions. The verb is doubly significant: On the one hand, it’s the verbal form of the word for synagogue; the Pharisees form a synagogue in opposition…
STRUCTURE There is a fairly clear chiasm in verses 11-17: A. Dog returning to vomit, v 11 B. Man wise in his own eyes, v 12 C. Sluggard, vv 13-15 B’. Sluggard wise in his own eyes, v 16 A’. Taking dog by the ears, v 17 Perhaps the chiasm…
The arch of Constantine in Rome depicts a bear and boar hunt that ends with a sacrifice to Hercules. Architectural historians suggest that the hunt represents Constantine’s taming of the forces of civil disorder and chaos. One (Mark Wilson Jones) suggests that the sacrifice represents pre-Constantinian pagan religion, while Constantine’s…
A. N. Wilson has recently returned to Christianity. He’s asked in an interview, “What’s the worst thing about being faithless?” “The worst thing about being faithless? When I thought I was an atheist I would listen to the music of Bach and realize that his perception of life was deeper,…
In the Reformed tradition, election is a secret decree. Interestingly, though, the first time Yahweh calls Abraham his “chosen” He goes on to reveal secrets to him: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? . . . For I have chosen him” (Genesis 18:17, 19). God…
Abraham’s story moves from a priestly phase (setting up altars in the land) through a kingly phase (conquering the kings) to a prophetic phase (arguing with Yahweh and interceding for Abimelech). His life previews the history of Israel. At each transition, there is an exodus, a thwarted threat to the…
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