Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory...(John 1:14) Commentaries on John, discussing the Word or Logos in John 1, routinely turn to Greek philosophy and say that John is using a term and at least part of an idea familiar in the ancient…
Jeremiah Burroughs defines contentment as “that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition” Contentment is one Christian virtue that Americans have an incredibly hard time understanding and applying. We have such comfortable lives that we…
"The goal I have for myself, my family, and my church is total bible saturation. I expected the Exodus Intensive class to help me with that, but I am shocked just how much it did," said Mark Balthrop, a pastor in Oklahoma City who attended Theopolis' recent course on the…
In a characteristically pithy essay, Robert Jenson has decried the “two paired errors” of traditional atonement theory. On the one hand, the cross is separated “from its future, in the resurrection” and, on the other, from “its past in the canonical history of Israel.” For the apostles, crucifixion is “anything…
The Historical-Grammatical Nanny State Typological interpretation is either abused or frowned upon, a domain relegated to mystics and charlatans, where the angels of modern academia fear to tread. But what if the Bible itself contained safeguards against irresponsible flights of fancy? And if it did, what would they look like?…
It is harsh advice for a suffering soul to be told to be content, to be happy, to be delighting in the rough circumstances. Is Christian contentment something we should automatically have as a result of being in Christ? Is it something we do? Is it an action or is…
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Many writers of the English Enlightenment attempted to formulate an original monotheistic “natural religion” that could be contrasted with the “positive religion” of Christianity. Priests suppressed the true natural religion that was maintained in secret by philosophers until they could teach it openly. The form of this historical account is…
In 1517, Ulrich von Hutton published a German translation of Lorenzo Valla’s demonstration that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. Luther read it early and said in a 1520 letter, “Good heavens! what darkness and wickedness is at Rome. I am in such a fit that I scarcely doubt…
What makes the Spirit Holy? Holy in Scripture means “claimed by indwelling glory.” The tabernacle is consecrated as holy space by the indwelling glory of Yahweh. Saints are those claimed by the indwelling of the Spirit. The Spirit is Holy because the Spirit is claimed, by Father and Son. He…
The Donation of Constantine includes a reference to the legend that Constantine was cured of leprosy by Pope Sylvester sometime in the 310s, and then baptized. Constantine is recorded as saying “on the first day after receiving the mystery of the holy baptism, and after the cure of my body…
Emery says that for Aquinas the diversity of creation is founded in the personal plurality of the divine relations: “One cannot emphasize more forcefully the positive value of the multiplicity of creature; Saint Thomas does not conceive of plurality as a decline from unity, but to the contrary, as a…
Thomas’ Trinitarian account of creation has not only a Christological but a pneumatological dimension, Emery argues. Thomas’ Augustinian pneumatology is rooted in his recognition that within the “God who loves himself,” there is a God who is loved and a love that is God. Especially in his later work, he…
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