Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, all the world is a stage, but like the Tabernacle, that stage moves around a lot. David’s defeat of Goliath can only be fully understood as liturgy fulfilled in history. Liturgy, as a sacrifice of praise, is the step-by-step process of resolving a conflict. It relinquishes all…
Aristotle isn’t fundamentally wrong about friendship, nor is the long tradition that follows him. But you might not gather that by reading some of the more pointed critics of the classical conception of friendship. I think, however, that the classical view is not only viable but taken up and fulfilled…
#13 in Theopolis Papers, Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World It is time for me to “cast off” integration, the way a knitter removes a completed scarf from the needles. I want to bring my quest concerning integration to a decent closure, though my happy quest for reality continues. With…
Below are some notes on a particular sub-theme of Daniel 3, namely the downfall of Babylon’s liturgy. First up, a few words on our text’s literary construction. One of the most conspicuous features of Dan. 3 is its author’s love of lists . Personnel are listed (vs. 2, 3, 27),…
Few things in Scripture, few things in the Christian life, are more familiar than the Lord’s Prayer. Sunday after Sunday, we pray these words together with our brothers and sisters. At home, alone or with our families, we pray this prayer daily, as Jesus taught us (Luke 11:2: “When you…
At the 2019 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, the denominational delegates considered a number of official overtures (requests for action from the regional parts of the denomination) relating to issues of gender and sexuality. The PCA is conservative. As evidence of this, the assembly passed a resolution…
Showing page 76 of 309
Showing page 2 of 43
L ike many Renaissance writers, Shakespeare is obsessed with mutability, with the vaporous quality of human life. Nothing remains forever. Kingdoms rise and fall. Monuments erode and decay. People grow old and die. This is one of the regular themes of Shakespeare's sonnets, focused in part on the beauty of…
I n Ecclesiastes 9, Solomon urges, “Go, eat your bread in happiness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for God has already approved your works.” Joy comes from knowing that God accepts and approves what we do, and, implicitly, accepts and approves us . God finds something in…
F or years, I've highlighted the triple structure of Merchant of Venice : Three romances, three plots (casket, bond, ring), three caskets. But then I've forced that triple structure into a dual setting—Belmont and Venice. But the geography of the play is triple too: Shylock's home is a third space.…
B uzzfeed has posted a transcript of a 2014 talk that Trump strategist Steve Bannon gave to a meeting of the Human Dignity Institute, an effort to promote Christian faith in European politics. Bannon's main target is “crony capitalism,” which was most obviously manifest in the bailout of the banks…
C arl Trueman’s review of The End of Protestantism was published in the December 2016 issue of First Things . It’s a fair but critical review, and gives much fuel for further discussion. Here I respond to two main points. First and most extensively: Carl says that I am “unpersuasive”…
I n his history of American lighthouses ( Brilliant Beacons ), Eric Jay Dolin describes mid-19th century conflicts over the American lighthouse system. It sounds familiar—conflicts between those who wanted to rationalize and those who preferred the ramshackle system already in place; conflicts between technological innovation and traditional methods; conflicts…
Showing page 229 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
