Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Stalker is a Soviet-era film by Andrei Tarkovsky in which an enigmatic location comes into existence either through an alien crash or a nuclear disaster; the film never makes it clear, but knowing Tarkovsky’s criticism of the spectacle nature of the alien motif after his own filming of Solaris and…
I was scrolling through Instagram on the night of Thanksgiving, the only one awake (as usual), coming down from my extrovert-high after all the conversation and merriment of the day, when I came across a post that stopped me in my tracks. The post contained a picture-perfect image of some…
The Theopolis Institute is pleased to announce the fourth round of the James B. Jordan Prize to honor outstanding doctoral dissertations in biblical theology. James Jordan is one of the most insightful biblical scholars of our time. The Jordan Prize exists to encourage more of the deep Scriptural investigation of…
Suppose I were to write three versions of a story. In every version, the first half of the book looks forward to the coming of the king. There are promises about him and about how glorious his kingdom will be, about how his kingdom will fill the earth with peace…
Introduction Doug Wilson’s American Milk and Honey is now available. There’s a great deal in the book worth commenting on, and I anticipate engaging with that material more broadly in the near future. In the lead up to its release, however, Moscow has not been silent concerning Israel, the Jews,…
Our telling of the Prodigal Son parable usually (and rightly) focuses on the runaway younger brother: the lost son returns, and his father joyfully and graciously receives him. But the full story has an additional element: an angry older brother. Jesus uses the older brother to rebuke the religious leaders…
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Revelation 21:1 concludes the last section of chapter 20, but also inaugurates a new section of the text. It's a Janus passage, looking both back and forward. 21:1-8 concludes the large section begun in 17:1-2, the fourth “in Spirit” vision of the book. The section is divided into smaller bits…
A city descends from heaven (Revelation 21:9ff). It's laid out as a cube, like the Most Holy Place. It's measured, like other holy environments in the Bible. It is adorned with jewels - precious stones like the stones of the temple or on the high priest's breastpiece. It's a golden…
Will Herberg ( Protestant Catholic Jew ) summarizes the American response to the growth of the Irish Catholic population of the US. Tension simmered throughout the middle antebellum decades of the nineteenth century, as nearly 2 million Irish, mostly Catholic, immigrated: “The Irish, precisely because in language, manners, and culture,…
At the end of his story of Texas Christianity ( Rough Country ), Robert Wuthnow assesses the strengths and weaknesses of two major theoretical perspectives on modern religion - secularization theory and rational choice theory. Secularization theory misses a lot: “It underplays the continuing importance of agriculture and the rural…
The sequence of events in Revelation 20 has some puzzles. Jesus has defeated the beast and the false prophet and thrown them into the lake of fire (19:1-21). The devil is well in hand, chained in the abyss that is shut and locked. He can't deceive the nations anymore, which…
After the dragon is bound in the abyss, John next sees thrones (Revelation 20:4). His description of the thrones and those who sit on them is arranged chiastically: A. Thrones - they sat on them B. Judgment was given to them C. Souls of the beheaded C'. Those who did…
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