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Writing

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

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Anxiety

Viral Anxiety Requires Infectious Wisdom

At the time I write this, many in the United States are under some kind of “lock-down” order. But, thanks to the internet, people are still able to communicate with each other. And people have differing opinions on which medical or scientific projection about our current pandemic is most likely…

by Mark HorneApril 21, 2020
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Gospels

Shall We Receive Good From God, But Not Calamity?

So Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal…

by Jeff MeyersApril 14, 2020
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Family

A Family Liturgy

Throughout the world, pastors and leaders are making sometimes excruciating decisions about whether or not to hold public worship services during the coronavirus pandemic and, if so, how. We at Theopolis encourage you to find creative, safe, reasonable, and submissive ways to meet in person with other believers. For many,…

by Peter LeithartApril 8, 2020
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Covenant

Zion as an Ascension

An excerpt from The End of Israel: Jesus, Paul & AD70 by Michael Bull The Hebrew word olah, translated “whole burnt offering” literally means “go up.” The explanatory “translation” is helpful in its description of the offering but unfortunately for English readers it veils the symbolic meaning. As far as…

by Mike BullApril 7, 2020
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Coronavirus

Worship in Exile

The # Coronavirus is trending more frequently than your favorite five celebrities put together. Our culture has exchanged TMZ stories for the primacy of the geeks who once made their living in the privacy of their laboratory. These are now our modern-day celebrities. It’s safe to say the experts surrounding…

by Uri BritoMarch 31, 2020
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Baptism

A Baptism Letter

In the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, Lord, and Friend. Dear sister in Christ, Your baptism is firm and certain not because of anything you have done or the pastor who administered your baptism in Christ’s stead and command. Your baptism is firm and certain because of God and…

by Todd HainsMarch 26, 2020

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Who Will Leave Us Alone?

S usan Hanssen describes Trump as an old-fashioned Whig. It's an intriguing history lesson, but I was especially taken by her conclusion. “If America is going to be rebuilt it will be rebuilt at the grassroots level, and that grassroots effort is actually going remarkably well,” Hanssen writes. What the…

June 7, 2016

Bavinck on Catholicity

I t depends on our concept of this universalism of the Christian religion whether we become narrow or broad in our ecclesiology,” wrote the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck in an essay translated by John Bolt in the Calvin Theological Journal . How we relate grace to nature, re-creation ( herschepping…

June 6, 2016

On Classical Metaphor

M etaphor has had a good run for the past several decades. Philosophers, linguists, and literary theorists have renounced the reductive “classical” understanding of metaphor that treated it as an expendable adornment of the literal. Instead, we have discovered that metaphor is inherent in language itself, and even sets the…

June 6, 2016

Music and Risk

Culture, writes David Goldman , is “inherently hostile to innovation. T.S. Eliot famously defined English culture as the regatta, the Glorious Twelfth, Wensleydale cheese, beetroot in vinegar, vestments, bishops, the music of Elgar — the minutiae of daily life accreted over generations. Culture is what does not change.” Yet there…

June 6, 2016

Prophets and Ritual

I srael's prophets excoriate the worship of Israel, in such terms that some commentators have concluded that they are attacking ritual as such. That cannot be, argues Dru Johnson ( Knowledge by Ritual ). Micah's answer to the question, “How shall I approach YHWH?” is not to counsel his hearers…

June 3, 2016

Magical Realism, Russian Style

B oris Fishman celebrates the 50th anniversary of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita at the NYTBR , a 50th anniversary that should be a 75th: “the author completed it in 1940, just as his own brief life was ending. But in the Soviet Union of the time—then concluding…

June 3, 2016

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