Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The “second Reformation” introduced Reformed liturgy and teaching into Lutheran Germany. This was seen by some as a continuation of the Reformation and a purgation of Catholic remnants. The effort to carry on “further reformation” led to disputes with Lutherans. As Bodo Nischan has put it, the hottest debate in…
In J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century , Tom Shippey observes that Bilbo is a member of the middle class, a bourgeois. Bilbo does not have any servants, but his hole is “the home of a member of the Victorian upper-middle class of Tolkien’s nineteenth-century youth, full of…
Idolatry has deprived Israel of her senses. This was one of the early messages to Isaiah (Isaiah 6). Yahweh sent him out to a people who had been deprived of their senses because of their commitment to idols. They become like the idols they serve. They still have eyes, but…
In the current climate of Trinitarian discussion concerning personhood, it's good to reach back to David Bentley Hart's treatment of the subject in his wonderful Beauty of the Infinite . Hart addresses the dangers of misreading Rahner’s rule, namely, the danger of dissolving the ontological Trinity into the economic. In…
Chris Kou is the oldest son of Chinese immigrants. Chris and his brothers run a branding and marketing business, Imagineering, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. In his spare time, he takes online courses from Reformed Theological Seminary, and aspires to be a pastor. Chris is also one of our…
The following was delivered as the Solemn Charge and Exhortation to Theopolis students beginning the Easter term course on Architecture and Liturgical Space . As we will be reminded repeatedly throughout the week, the Bible has a lot to say about building and buildings. Long stretches of Exodus, Kings, Chronicles,…
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Allen Kerkeslager argues in a 1993 JBL article that the bowman riding on the white horse is a false Messiah (Revelation 6:2). He looks Messianic, what with his white horse. But the bow is the clue. Kerkeslager connects the bow to Psalm 11:2, 78:57 and other Old Testament texts where…
Our English translations give the impression that Jesus misquotes Isaiah. Isaiah 29:13 is translated “they remove their hearts far from me,” but Jesus is quoted as saying “Well did Isaiah prophesy . . . their heart ( kardia auton ) is far from me” (Mark 7:6). Jesus seems to change…
NT Wright often complains that traditional Christology works only with the two poles of the gospel story—incarnation and atonement—and ignores the middle. A number of recent writers have complained that atonement theology has been detached from ecclesiology. The two complaints are linked, and they have a common solution. If we…
By most accounts, J.D. Salinger was an unpleasant piece of work. The NYTBR reviewer of Thomas Beller’s new biography, subtitled The Escape Artist , observes that “Salinger’s disturbing icon-sullying behavior has appeared in memoirs by his daughter (describing a selfish urine-drinking monomaniac) and by Joyce Maynard (revealing an unsavory penchant…
Todd Decker’s Who Should Sing “Ol’ Man River “ isn’t the story of the song’s origins so much as its afterlife. It’s a performance history, but one designed to see how the performances shaped the song and reflect the changing landscape of race in American culture. Decker writes, “‘Ol’ Man…
David Crystal has plundered the Oxford Thesaurus to come up with a compilation of oddities and forgotten words in Words in Time and Place . Crystal chose words based on several criteria: They choice of fields had to reflect the thesaurus as a whole; he wanted to reflect the global…
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