Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The “second Reformation” introduced Reformed liturgy and teaching into Lutheran Germany. This was seen by some as a continuation of the Reformation and a purgation of Catholic remnants. The effort to carry on “further reformation” led to disputes with Lutherans. As Bodo Nischan has put it, the hottest debate in…
In J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century , Tom Shippey observes that Bilbo is a member of the middle class, a bourgeois. Bilbo does not have any servants, but his hole is “the home of a member of the Victorian upper-middle class of Tolkien’s nineteenth-century youth, full of…
Idolatry has deprived Israel of her senses. This was one of the early messages to Isaiah (Isaiah 6). Yahweh sent him out to a people who had been deprived of their senses because of their commitment to idols. They become like the idols they serve. They still have eyes, but…
In the current climate of Trinitarian discussion concerning personhood, it's good to reach back to David Bentley Hart's treatment of the subject in his wonderful Beauty of the Infinite . Hart addresses the dangers of misreading Rahner’s rule, namely, the danger of dissolving the ontological Trinity into the economic. In…
Chris Kou is the oldest son of Chinese immigrants. Chris and his brothers run a branding and marketing business, Imagineering, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. In his spare time, he takes online courses from Reformed Theological Seminary, and aspires to be a pastor. Chris is also one of our…
The following was delivered as the Solemn Charge and Exhortation to Theopolis students beginning the Easter term course on Architecture and Liturgical Space . As we will be reminded repeatedly throughout the week, the Bible has a lot to say about building and buildings. Long stretches of Exodus, Kings, Chronicles,…
Showing page 115 of 309
Showing page 3 of 43
W hen Jesus condemns hypocrisy, argues Oliver O'Donovan ( Desire of Nations , 109–10), He is speaking of conformity to “public expectation.” O'Donovan suggests that the sense is captured by the word “performance.” Jesus is not speaking of motives in the modern sense of the word: “A motive, as we…
W hy didn't the apostles move more quickly to protest and attempt to abolish slavery? There are various answers to that, but Oliver O'Donovan's gets to the heart of the issue: The church “believed that Christ had abolished it” ( Desire of Nations , 185). Of course, the church had…
P hilip Rieff notes, “That word [ Kulturkampf ] first appeared in common German use in the early 1870s during the struggle of the National Liberal political party to disarm by law the moral/educational authority, and political punditry, of a triumphalist Roman Catholic hierarchy, revitalized as it then was by…
K. Luria examines the Sacred Boundaries (xxvii–xxxxi) of early modern France, in an effort to correct extremes of historiography. Some have argued that sacred boundaries between religious groups led to violence; other historians have pointed to continuous interaction between Catholics and Protestants. Both are right. Symbolic boundaries separated Catholic and…
A 1989 article by Wolfgang Reinhard on the relationships among the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and early modern state-building is an excellent brief summary of the relationship between Reformation and post-Reformation “confessionalization” and the formation of modern states and national identities. The Reformers' turn to the state was in the first instance…
O verall, the Chronicler's account of Solomon's temple construction (2 Chronicles 3:1-5:1) is arranged chiastically: A. Solomon begins to build, 3:1-2 B. What Solomon made, 3:3-4:10 C. What Huram-abi made, 4:11-17 B’. What Solomon made, 4:18-22 A’. Solomon completes ( shalam ) work, 5:1 The long section in B is…
Showing page 189 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
