Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Can it be that it has been two whole years since I contributed a Theopolis Post! I had been pursuing the topic of integration: “Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World.” I had defined “integration,” simply, as creative putting together. I had posed that seeking it calls for a fundamentally integrative…
What is known as the miracle of the “Feeding of the Five Thousand” occurs in Mark’s Gospel in chapter 6. As with other gospel writers, Mark has a few different points to make as he moves through this story (included in all four gospel accounts) and its surrounding material. Three…
To begin with the source of this narrative: Since no human being was present to observe these events, we must assume that this narrative was revealed directly by God to a human author. There are three ways this might have happened. First, we might read, "God said to Abraham (or…
The serious Bible student cannot help but be struck by the deviousness of Jacob in Genesis 27. If one already expected some underhanded dealings from this twin-born-second whose name means “supplanter” and whose bargaining with his brother for the birthright in Genesis 25 seemed incredibly weighted in his own favor,…
From Barna stats to mainstream headlines, it seems as though the discordant nature of this last year has taken such a toll on churches in the United States that, for many, the injuries have been fatal. It has become a regular occurrence to hear about a congregation that continues to…
In The Bad News Bears (1976), a city councilman hires a washed-up minor league baseball player with a drinking problem to coach a little league team of leftover misfits. Underdog sports movies are usually full of sentimentalism and dramatic victories, but this film is a commentary on the failing dream…
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Paul Helm argues in a 1975 articles that “merely Cambridge events” are not actually events. He is picking up on Peter Geach’s claim that only intrinsic changes, and not relational changes, are real changes. More specifically, he is responding to Jaegwon Kim’s argument that Cambridge events (Xanthippe becoming a widow…
JME McTaggart argued in the 1920s that everything changes when anything changes: “If anything changes, then all other things change with it. For its change must change some of their relations to it, and so their relational qualities.” David Weberman finds this “perfectly consistent,” but concludes that “it offends our…
PG Lake writes that Whitgift “used a Calvinist view of the doctrine of predestination to shift much of Cartwright’s rhetoric about the glory and purity of the church from the visible to the invisible church. By doing so, he was able to clear the way for that erastian dominance of…
Luke 7:48: Jesus said to her, Your sins have been forgiven. As Pastor Sumpter has pointed out, there is a liturgical structure to this episode in Luke 7. Jesus is in a house at a table. The woman comes in and offers her oil to Jesus and mourns her sins.…
Isaiah 52:13-15: Behold, My servant will prosper, He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Just as many were astonished at you, My people, so His appearance was marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men. Thus He will sprinkle many nations,…
I’m drawing on Jim Jordan’s Biblical Horizons lectures from this summer. “Be filled with the Spirit,” Paul writes, “speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” The Spirit is the music of the Trinity, the breath that gives…
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