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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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Is Architecture about Space?

I t seems a given, a truism, that architecture is about space. Ali Madanipour indicates otherwise. In his Design of Urban Space, he notes that the word rarely appears in architecture texts books, and observes that “the term is relatively new, in the context of the long history of architecture,…

June 3, 2016

Surviving Apocalypse

R obert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson want to help readers learn How to Survive the Apocalypse that seems to be looming. They see signs of apocalyptic agitation everywhere in popular culture—in Battlestar Galactica , a technological apocalypse in the film Her , a zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead ,…

June 2, 2016

Holy Cities for Holy People

F irst Chronicles begins with nine long chapters of genealogy. Little is said about where these multitudes live. There are scattered hints of territory, but no elaborate description of the borders and boundaries of the tribes, as we find in the latter chapters of Joshua. The Chronicler attends only to…

June 2, 2016

Avant Garde and the Profit Motive

N icholas Vazsonyi's Richard Wagner is subtitled “Self-Promotion and the Making of a Brand.” It's a study of the methods Wagner used to establish himself and his music as a brand: “creation of a persona, public relations, development of a niche and brand, marketing embedded in the theatrical works themselves,…

June 2, 2016

Hodge-Nevin

I n the mid-19th century, Princeton's Charles Hodge engaged in a public debate with the Mercersburg theologian John Williamson Nevin about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It was sparked by Nevin's book on The Mystical Presence , published in 1846, which Hodge reviewed in the Princeton Theological…

June 1, 2016

Biblical Truth

D ru Johnson's Knowledge By Ritual defends the thesis that we come to know—to recognize and to discern, to see rightly—through ritualized action. In the course of defending this thesis, Johnson devotes a few pages to explaining the biblical notion of truth. He points out that truth can apply to…

June 1, 2016

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