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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Culture

True Humanism: Jesus, Marx, or Jenner?

Many contemporary thought leaders have spoken intriguingly about a future without Jesus or, to be more precise, a future in which the transcendent truths of the Christian faith hold little or no sway over society. More to the point, these thought leaders often pose as anthropologists who find Christianity dehumanizing…

by Bruce AshfordMarch 15, 2022
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Biblical Theology

Jesus Wept: A Prologomena to a Biblical Theology of Healing

Jeffery Bishop’s magisterial The Anticipatory Corpse concludes with a question: “Might it not be that only theology can save medicine?” 1 To that question I want to give not merely a general affirmation, but a particular affirmation. Not only can “only theology save medicine” but, in fact, only a biblical…

by Mark BriansMarch 8, 2022
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How to Worship

Songs of Mature Reflection: Toward a Theopolitan Hymnody

John Ahern recently made the case on this site for having shorter hymnals. “ I believe hymnals should be shorter than they are ”, he says. “ Much shorter. 100 hymns at most. ” Swap hymnal for “repertoire”, or “hymns” for “worship songs” and it all still applies. A big…

by Rhys LavertyMarch 1, 2022
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Course Announcement

Regional Course: How to Sing the Psalms

The Psalter is the hymnbook of the church. For too long, the psalter has taken a far-secondary place in the worship of God's people. And when psalms are sung, they are often changed drastically from what the Spirit gave us. In this course, Paul Buckley and Brian Moats will explore…

by Brian MoatsFebruary 28, 2022
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Theopolis News

Jordan Prize Winner

The Theopolis Institute is pleased to announce that Dr. Trevor Laurence is the winner of the 2021 James B. Jordan Prize for outstanding work in biblical theology. Dr. Laurence receives this award for his 2020 Exeter dissertation, “Cursing With God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer.” Laurence…

by Peter LeithartFebruary 25, 2022
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Culture

Mark Driscoll, Ergun Caner and the Factions and Fictions of Evangelicalism

In late 2013 two nearly simultaneous events happened in evangelicaldom: Mark Driscoll was publicly accused of “plagiarism” and Ergun Caner was hired as the president of a Christian college. The first appears to be the first domino that would lead eventually to Driscoll resigning as the pastor of Mars Hill…

by John CarpenterFebruary 22, 2022

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Philosophy

Idiocy

Desmond offers an intriguing argument for a unified self, for an “idiotic” self in the original sense of idiotes , what is one’s own. There is an irreducible “mineness” to all our actions and experience, a mineness that cannot be reduced to categories or analyzed in terms of outside forces:…

May 14, 2008
Philosophy

Ontological Metaphor

Desmond takes another enthralling step. If “seeing is” may be “seeing is,” then metaphor might reveal being. “Metaphor may be a revelation of reality. Metapherein - the thing carries itself across to revelation, metaphorizes itself; this is its spread beyond univocal identity. In its self-metaphorizing, it reaches out to more,…

May 14, 2008
Philosophy

Definiteness and dynamism

It might seem that saying things have determinate qualities undermines their dynamism, while emphasizing things dynamism of things fuzzies all the boundaries to the point where there are no things at all. Desmond, again, demurs. We cannot have a pure flux without any determinacy, because then “there would be no…

May 14, 2008
Philosophy

Diminished things

Modern thought is often materialist. Whatever happens to spirit in such an outlook, at least we’ve got things left. Right? Not so, argues William Desmond ( Being and the Between ) . The doctrine of primary and secondary qualities, he says, is a “classic bifurcation of thinghood into two extremes…

May 14, 2008
Philosophy

More on Identities

As I noted a few weeks ago, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen points out that everyone has multiple identities, and that these identities slip into the foreground and background in different settings. At a family reunion, our family identity is prominent. At a political rally, family identity recedes as we join…

May 14, 2008

Limited historicism

In separating philosophy and theology, Spinoza mounts a kind of historicist critique of the Bible; its authors are bound by the assumptions of their time and culture. Besides that, the Bible and philosophy are completely different in method and style; the Bible is narrative, and its truth depends on the…

May 13, 2008

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