Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Showing page 7 of 309
Showing page 30 of 43
W illiam Johnstone points out in the first volume of his commentary on 1 & 2 Chronicles that the Chronicler's (C) list of the kings of Edom oddly repeats the phrase “then king so-and-so died and there reigned in his place” seven times. In part, this places greater stress on…
I f not unique, Robert Banks's Reenvisioning Theological Education is a rarity among studies of theological education in the amount of attention he devotes to biblical models of education and training. In reviewing recent literature on efforts to rethink seminary education, he notes again and again that little attention is…
R obert Pogue Harrison ( The Dominion of the Dead ) spends several pages on Walter Pater's novel, Marius the Epicurean . A deathbed convert to Christianity, Marius is struck in his first encounter with the church by the continuities between Christianity and the oldest of Roman religions, the religion…
R emember the poor,” Paul told the Galatians. But what did that mean? Peter Brown ( The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity , 39-40) explains that “For early Christians, as for many other ancient persons, memory was far more than a passive storage space.…
A ccording to Lily Gurton-Wachter's Watchwords: Romanticism and the Poetics of Attention , “the first documentation of the disorder we now call Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” is found in “a medical text published in London in 1798.” Scottish physician Alexander Crichton described the “morbid alterations to which attention is subject”…
R obert Pogue Harrison calls the twentieth century “the fitful and prolonged continuation of a process that began in earnest a century earlier: the end of the Neolithic era” ( Dominion of the Dead , 31). One might think that we left the Neolithic a long time ago, but Harrison…
Showing page 276 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
