Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I was still a high school student the first time I read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but I will never forget the powerful impact the book had on me. Of course, as a second year student, I did not fully digest the book. In spite of subsequent readings, I…
Crises force questions of identity. Identities may remain assumed until some event, or series of events, challenge what may have been taken for granted. The search for identity is an anxious one precisely because it tends to happen in times of upheaval and uncertainty. In his recent book, Orthoxox Anglican…
Peter Leithart recently wrote a fascinating short piece about the Half Shekel Temple Tax as an atonement. Leithart argues three main points. First that the Sanctuary Shekel was heavier, i.e., more valuable than the everyday shekel. Second, he offers some analysis about the order of magnitude of the purchasing power…
There is no denial from the careful reader that 1 Samuel 24 and 26 are telling the same story. Perhaps we should say, virtually the same story. But that the stories are cut from the same cloth is undeniable. What we have over these three chapters—1 Samuel 24-26—is a very…
In his novel That Hideous Strength , C.S. Lewis is able to masterfully illustrate in narrative form so many of his insights about the subversive dangers of Leftist political dogma to Christian civilization. Perceptive essays from Lewis like “The Abolition of Man” and “The Inner Ring” are fleshed out in…
At a very practical level, the Evangelical Church has been injected with counterfeit spiritualities. We are a people looking for a city, whose builder may only be in office for four years. Our temptation to veer to the side of the temporal is striking in our day, especially as the…
Showing page 59 of 309
Showing page 2 of 43
Yahweh summons the nations to bring their witnesses to vindicate themselves (Isaiah 43:9), but Israel is the chief witness in His defense (43:9, 10, 12; 44:8, 9). How? Isaiah 44:8 appears to give the answer: Yahweh long ago announced what He would do and declared it. He promised, for instance,…
When Yahweh pours out the refreshing water of the Spirit on the dry land of Israel, it will transform the land. And it will give everyone a new identity, a new belonging. One will say, I am Yahweh’s, another will identify himself by the name of Jacob, and another will…
The Servant of Yahweh comes quietly and gently, no breaking off a bent stick or snuffing out a smoldering wick (42:2; Heb. upishtah kechah lo yekabenah ). Ain’t he nice? But Yahweh does what the Servant does not do - He quenches and extinguishes wicks (43:17; Heb. kapishtah kavu ).…
Yahweh is the Holy One. Many interpreters suggest that this means that He is transcendent, other, separated from creation and all that is unholy and unclean. Holy things and persons and places are separated to Yahweh: To call them holy is to say that Yahweh claims exclusive rights to them.…
Pages 157-9 of Patrick Coleman’s Anger, Gratitude, and the Enlightenment Writer provide the best summary I’ve come across of what happens to gratitude in the early modern period and Enlightenment. There’s a political dimension: Because of the rise of nation-states and new definitions of sovereignty, and because of religious division…
In his Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II (v. 2) (p. 43-4), Michael Moriarty observes that Descartes limited the scope of mechanistic philosophy. For Descartes, mechanical explanations offer “a new theory of how the passions work” but in contrast to Hobbes “he does not attempt to rethink…
Showing page 870 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
