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Writing

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

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Culture

An Introduction to the Sacred Music of Josquin

This essay is adapted from my articles in Theopolis’s In Medias Res as a series of Holy Week meditations. Like many celebrities such as Kanye or Beyoncé or Adele, Josquin des Prez (d. 1521) was often known only by his first name, in his own time as now. “Josquin” is…

by John AhernJuly 29, 2025
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Numbers

Sight and Memory: Examining the Monuments of Numbers

Sight is a major theme in the scriptures. The church has long identified sight’s relationship to the future fulfillment of the eschaton. As Paul says, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (1 Cor 13.12). Sight is associated with…

by Matthew DarbyJuly 22, 2025
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Biblical Theology

Yahweh’s Flame: the Gospel through Symbolism

What is the chief end of man? —yes, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But how ought man–and all creation–so glorify him? I propose a Theopolitan addition to the catechism, question and answer number 1.5, begun in the last question and answered as follows: Earth’s inhabitants were created to…

by Ben LoveladyJuly 16, 2025
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Culture

Morality and the Practice of Poetry

Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words. Genesis 49:21 Frederick Buechner once said, “We move into the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” In poetry, this happens by way of a compressed code of analogs; often, two or more very ordinary things begin to reveal something that…

by Garrett SoucyJuly 8, 2025
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Ephesians

The Trinitarian Structure of Obedience

The evangelical milieu of America has often lost a vision of the fruit of repentance. We tend to simplify repentance by asking for forgiveness. After all, Jesus tells Peter to forgive 70 times 7. This verse must be paired with Paul’s scoffing at the question: why not sin more so…

by Matthew CoreyJuly 3, 2025
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Luke

The Hemorrhaging Woman, the Eucharist, and the Sermon

I. The hemorrhaging woman. En route to Jairus’ house, Jesus is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage of blood (Matt 9:18–26; Mk 5:21–34; Lk 8:40–48). The story is one that many of us know very well. She has been yoked to her illness for twelve years, all of her…

by Mark BriansJuly 1, 2025

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Sermon Outline, March 20

Destroy this Temple, Mark 13:1-37 THE KING RETURNS Palm Sunday celebrates the king?s coming to His city. On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem, hailed as a king. -He requisitions a donkey, claiming it as Lord: ?The Lord has need of it.?E -The donkey has been tied and needs to be…

February 19, 2005
History

Renaissance Machinery

Another interesting review in the TLS , of Jessica Wolfe’s Humanism, Machinery, and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge), an exploration of the literary uses of machinery and machine imagery in Renaissance literature. According to Wolfe, Renaissance writers saw “the profound applicability of mechanical practices and principles to extra-scientific questions.” In political theory,…

February 19, 2005
Literature

Greenblatt on Will

Alastair Fowler has an eviserating review of Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World in the February 4 issue of the TLS . He finds that Greenblatt, despite his new historicist interest in the historical embeddedness of literature, is rather sloppy with historical facts and contexts. Like other reviewers of the…

February 19, 2005
Theology

Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite

This is the first of what may turn out to be (but also may not turn out to be) a series of outlines or summaries of David Bentley Hart?s Beauty of the Infinite . My goal in this outline (or, these outlines) is not to critique Hart so much as…

February 17, 2005
Literature

Garber on Julius Caesar

More from Marjorie Garber?s book, this time on Julius Caesar . 1) Though the play is often assigned to high school students, Garber says that the play is ?one of Shakespeare?s most subtle and sophisticated,?Eexploring such issues as ?the nature of kingship, the relationship of the public to the private…

February 17, 2005

Translation, 1 Kings 18

And it was many days. Now the word of Yahweh was to ?Eliyyahu in the third year, saying, ?Walk, cause-yourself-to-be-seen to ?Achav And I will give rain on the face of the earth.?E And walked ?Eliyyahu to cause-himself-to-be-seen to ?Achav Now the famine was strong in Shomron. And called ?Achav…

February 17, 2005

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