Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
[This essay was originally published in 1988. Given the situation that our new national socialists are getting the world into, I thought it might be useful to reprint it here. – JBJordan] The Bible has quite a bit to say about gold, silver, and precious stones, and the Bible always…
I wrote this elsewhere and was encouraged to put it here. It is a comment on what a pastor is. Today, this is not very well understood, and God’s people suffer because of it. There are four professions: medicine, education, law, and religion. Each of these, when done at a…
James Jordan recently pointed out in private conversation how appropriate it is, in John’s Gospel, that Nicodemus is present both to ask Jesus about being born again, and to see Jesus re-enter the womb of the mother. Nicodemus rhetorically asks, “How can a man be born when he is old?…
This is a problematic and much discussed passage. I’ve been discussing it in another forum, and have decided to move it here and present some very preliminary observations about it. One large question is this: Who is the speaker here and what is his situation? Traditionally, the speaker is seen…
1. The current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction includes a good fantasy novella by John C. Wright, who since his conversion has been writing Christianly. This is a fine fantasy with nods to C. S. Lewis and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and probably Gene Wolfe as well.…
“It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it cost to speak this name is perhaps connected to some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent within it. Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is…
Showing page 209 of 309
Showing page 2 of 43
“Do not leg the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.” It sounds spooky and bizarre: Are we in danger of being haunted by some anger-demon? Once we remember that “diabolos” means “slanderer,” it’s no longer the stuff of horror movies. It’s a…
Bruce Holsinger’s book, The Premodern Condition , is reviewed in the April 14 issue of TLS. Holsinger is tracing the rise of theory in France of the 1960s, and shows that the avant garde was “surprisingly heavily indebted to medievalism.” He describes their relationship to the medieval past as “sacramental”…
2 Kings 17:23: So Israel was carried away into exile. In this morning’s sermon, I suggested that we should read the conclusion of the history of the North as part of the gospel story. This passage highlights the fact that Israel’s failure was a failure to believe God, a failure…
Easter is about faith, because by His resurrection Jesus has been installed as the mediator, the firmament boundary between God and man. In the Old Testament, priests served as mediators, who stood in the middle between God and man. Organized in a ring around Yahweh’s tent, the priests served as…
Baptism, Luther says in his Small Catechism, is not water only, but water “comprehended in God’s word and connected with God’s command.” The following question asks what word constitutes the water as baptism, and cites Matthew 28: “Go ye therefore . . . ” That is, the word that constitutes…
Baillie quotes the opening lines of Rousseau’s Confessions , and notes that it, like Descartes’s cogito, is an “effort to avert attention from what Girard calls mimetic desire, the elimination of which is tantamount to the rejection of Christian anthropology. Rousseau begins his Confessions not with a prayer, but with…
Showing page 1848 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
