Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Job appears in the Bible as a true story and it is regarded as such in other Scripture: As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the…
Thanksgiving is warfare. Gratitude is a weapon. Wield it well. Give thanks for the preparation. The hustle and bustle, the messy kitchen, the endless cleaning, the extra chairs, and stained tablecloths sing the song of hospitality. God desires that we prepare a place for friends and strangers, feasting and laughing,…
We often hear that, along with Leviticus, Ecclesiastes is the “most peculiar book,” lurking in the Bible’s back alley. 1 But it is high time that we retire this old dirge. God has concealed much gold here, therefore much glory is ours if we are careful to read Solomon’s wisdom…
1 Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the does? 2 Can you number the months that they fulfill, and do you know the time when they give birth? Job 39 We have and we do, Lord God. Spring is calving season.…
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a Sabbath of complete rest to Yahweh. - Exodus 35:2 The instructions for building the tabernacle end with a Sabbath command and the narrative about building begins with a Sabbath command, before…
High in the list of now forgotten sins is simony. It was not always so: the medieval schoolmen believed simony to be the worst of ecclesiastical crimes and waged a centuries long campaign to purge the Church of this financial and spiritual corruption. As the schoolmen robustly defined it, “simony…
Showing page 26 of 309
Showing page 30 of 43
One of the most impressive feats of Reformation ecumenism was the Wittenberg Concord of 1536, signed by Capito, Bucer, and Musculus on the Reformed side and Luther and Melanchthon, among others, on the Lutheran side. Luther admitted that the two groups diverged on various details, but declared, in a deeply…
In his Revelation of St. John the Divine (171), GB Caird offers this bit of history to illuminate the significance of the beast from the land (Revelation 13:11-18): “In the province of Asia the imperial cult was in the hands of a body known in Greek as the koinon and…
Scott Manetsch’s Calvin’s Company of Pastors is a rich contribution to the history of pastoral theology and care in the Reformation era. If you want a detailed, vivid portrait of the training and selection of Geneva’s pastors, their weekly schedules, the liturgies they performed and the resources they had available…
America is abandoning the last remnants of our historic Christian foundations. This is most obvious in law, where specifically Christian claims are ruled unConstitutional precisely because they are Christian claims. It’s evident in the universities and among intellectual elites, who cannot make sense of a theological argument that claims to…
It was a well-nigh universal trope of Reformation rhetoric that the Reformers were the catholics who had to defend orthodoxy and catholicity against the sectarianism of the Roman church. Luther disputed the Catholic claim that obedience to Rome was the definition of catholicity, and disputed it on the basis of…
William Perkins is known mainly among Reformed Christians with an affinity for the Puritans. It’s refreshing to have now W.B. Patterson’s substantial monograph on Perkins’s life and theology, published last year by Oxford. After setting the stage with a chapter on the Elizabethan religious settlement, Patterson examines Perkins as “apologist…
Showing page 458 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
