Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We are too used to reading the Gospels’ stories of Jesus’ arrest, trial, condemnation, and death from a devotional perspective and so we miss a lot of what’s going on. We actually have a difficult time trying to figure out the meaning of the details of the story. Of course,…
This is the first in a series of essays on "Continuing the Reformation." Many different churches descend from the original Protestant Reformation, and those that are the most conservative are often insistent that they are largely if not completely true to the Reformation, or to the branch from which they…
Trinity House fellow James B. Jordan will be teaching a one-day seminar on "How to Read the Bible for the First Time . . . Again" next Friday, February 22, in North London. The event is sponsored by Emmanuel Evangelical Church, Southgate, costs 20 pounds (10 for theology students) and…
Audio Reading of this Post https://theopolis-blogcast.simplecast.com/episodes/a-primer-on-ash-wednesday What is Ash Wednesday? Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a season focused on the sufferings and cross of Jesus. But Jesus’ death on the cross cannot be separated from the cross we are called to bear in union with him, so…
Welcome to the Trinity House web site. It’s unfinished, as you’ll soon discover, but it’s more finished than it was, and for that we are very grateful. Thanks to David Dalbey for the design, and to my son Sheffield for the execution. Trinity House exists to advance the reformation of…
In our I hope brief blog-versation, Doug Wilson has posted a couple more things to think about. In one he asks who our father/Father is. We either have God or the devil as our father. Well, yes and no. I’m with Doug in what he’s getting at, I think, but…
Showing page 199 of 309
Showing page 22 of 43
James Smith’s conclusions regarding Derrida express more clearly than I’ve been able to do my own sense of Derrida. These are scattered quotations from The Fall of Interpretation , pp. 127-129: “Derrida is honest about not challenging for a moment Rousseau’s and Levi-Strauss’s reading of violence; his own analysis is…
James K. A. Smith has a neat scheme for summarizing different view of interpretation in terms of the categories of creation and fall. For some thinkers, interpretation and the possibility of misinterpretation are results of the Fall; for others, interpretation and misinterpretation is inherent in created life, though there is…
Another benefit of Derrida: Because he puts philosophical issues in mythological and metaphorical terms, he moves philosophy into the field of theology. As I’ve pointed out in a number of posts, Derrida (following Plato) speaks of the relationship between speaker and speech (or sometimes between speech and writing) as a…
JP Vernant points out the connection between writing and democratization: “In the kingdoms of the New East, writing was a privilege and specialty of scribes. Writing enabled the royal administration to control the economic and social life of the State by keeping records of it. Its purpose was to constitute…
Well, here’s an interesting coincidence (pointed to by Derrida, still in “Plato’s Pharmacy”): Derrida is discussing the ritual of the pharmakos , which he is connecting to Plato’s various uses of pharmak - words in discussions of knowledge, language, and other issues. The pharmakos rite was a scapegoat ritual, annually…
What is it that makes Derrida so stimulating and fun to read? At least for his treatment of standard philosophical works (I’m reading “Plato’s Pharmacy” in Disseminations ), I think it’s mainly that he shows that philosophy is not about what undergraduate courses in philosophy teach you it is about.…
Showing page 2183 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
