Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his…
When it comes to the interpretation of Shakespeare, Harold Bloom is my favorite enemy. His writing is brilliant, his knowledge of things Shakespearean encyclopedic, and the insights he offers may puzzle, startle, or amaze, but they always educate. How then can he be an enemy? Because his anti-Christian bias is…
Theopolis President Peter Leithart spent the last week of March lecturing on worship and sacraments in England. He delivered four lectures on liturgy in Bolton, a town north of Manchester, arguing that Christian worship must be worship fit for the king and fit for the kingdom that has come in…
When we think about eschatology, we think immediately of Daniel, of Matthew 24-25, of 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Thessalonians 2, and of course of Revelation. We don’t, I suspect, think about Genesis. Perhaps Genesis 3:15, with its promise of the woman’s seed, would come to mind. So might the…
Alexander Schmemann in his book, Of Water and the Spirit, expounds the question that appears in nearly all the older baptismal liturgies, “Do you renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world and all sinful lusts of the flesh.” This renunciation, according to…
Franklin Graham recently posted the following statement on his Facebook page: “Listen up—Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else. Most police shootings can be avoided. It comes down to respect for authority and obedience. If a police officer tells you to stop, you stop. If a police officer tells you to…
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Philip Esler draws on the anthropological work of Anthony Cohen to suggest that Paul’s reference to “biting” and “devouring” may describe the actual internal life of Paul’s churches: “Anthony Cohen’s argument about the persistence of liminality among persons once they have crossed a boundary to join a new group raises…
Paul contrasts fulfilling the law of loving neighbor with biting, devouring, and consuming. Love for neighbor is human behavior; anything else is feral. The verb “bite” ( dakno ) is used only in Galatians 5:15 in the NT, and only twice in the LXX (Genesis 49:17; Deuteronomy 8:15), both references…
Galatians 5-6 turns a number of Pauline terms inside out. After spending most of the letter polemicizing against seeking justification form the “works of the law,” Paul rehabilitates both “work” (5:6) and “law” (5:14; 6:2). After announcing that in Christ we have been freed from the Egypt of Judaic managers…
Galatians 5-6 is organized as a chiasm, with the exhortation to bear one another’s burdens, and fulfill the law of Christ, at the center. The structure suggests that that the freedom that the Spirit grants is precisely freedom to bear the burdens of others as Christ as done for us.…
Freeman again: He claims that Constantine employed the image of the sun, used in both Christianity and paganism, to maintain “his neutral position between opposing faiths.” In part, his interpretation is based on HA Drake. But the neutrality that Drake talks about is a neutrality in “public space” that enabled…
Freeman says that Constantine’s “conversion” was a shrewd political act, basing this conclusion, he claims, on “recent research.” (Burckhardt is recent??) One sign of his shrewdness was his ability to satisfy both Christian and pagan: “Some very careful political manoeuvring was necessary if Constantine was to avoid offending either Christian…
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