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Theopolis News

Meet Brian Moats

Theopolis is delighted to announce that we have hired Brian Moats as Assistant to President Peter Leithart. An Alabama native and graduate of Boyce College in Louisville, Brian is a professional photographer who has also worked as a salesman and dispatcher for Charter Communications and Wayne's Environmental Services. Brian and…

by TheopolisJune 10, 2015
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History

Christians, Liturgy, and the Past, (Part 1)

Over the last few years, I have had frequent cause to return to the question of the ways in which the past and its forms of liturgy should be handled within the Church today. Keeping faith with the past is seldom as straightforward an endeavour as it might initially appear,…

by Alastair RobertsJune 9, 2015
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Hermeneutics

The Dramatic Structure of Proverbs

The book of Proverbs appears as a largely random collection of aphorisms drawn from experience saturated in law. Despite its random arrangement, however, the book does have an over-arching structure that reinforces its main themes. One way to gather clues regarding the structure of a biblical book (or any book)…

by Peter LeithartJune 4, 2015
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Charity

Mission to Milwaukee

Prior to attending the week-long intensive course on Holistic Mission, my wife and I were living two counties away from Milwaukee, in the comfortably quiet and rural village of Slinger, Wisconsin. In God’s providence, after nearly ten years of living in Slinger, we realized some changes to our comfortable and…

by Jonathan SedlakJune 2, 2015
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Bonaventure

One Body and One Loaf: Eucharistic Unity Through the Theology of St. Bonaventure

I have many Roman Catholic friends. Leading from my time at Saint Louis University and continuing through various scholarly engagements I often get an opportunity to discuss history and theology with Roman Catholics who are very well educated in their tradition and practice, some of whom are leading scholars in…

by Timothy LeCroyMay 28, 2015
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Theopolis News

Music in Life and Liturgy

Theopolis ended its second year of operation with its Pentecost Term course on Music in Life and Liturgy last week. Co-taught by Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio and scholar-in-residence James Jordan, the Music course was the largest Theopolis course yet. Sixteen pastors, seminary students, and music ministers from nine…

by TheopolisMay 26, 2015

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Figuring History

Timothy Furry’s Allegorizing History is a careful, engaging study of the Venerable Bede’s understanding of history, and of biblical hermeneutics. But perhaps the book’s greatest interest comes at the end, in a more theoretical conclusion, where Furry draws on the work of Frank Ankersmit to argue that history-writing is invariably…

August 13, 2014

Triune Chord

Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s contribution to Trinity and Salvation is on the Trinity and music. Fitzgerald overstates when she called about “musical refutation” of heresy, but her analogies are illuminating. She points to chords as vestigiae Trinitatis : “Each note of the major triad has its own specific relationship with the other…

August 12, 2014

Serious Puns

According to Frederick Ahl ( Metaformations , 18), we have an irrefutable syllogism to demonstrate that puns aren’t found in serious poetry like the Aeneid: “Vergil is a great poet. Puns are not the stuff of great poetry. Therefore Vergil cannot be using puns.” Except that Vergil seems to do…

August 12, 2014
Biblical Studies

Winged

Typically, wings in the Bible are appendages of birds (Genesis 1:21), so much so that “winged-thing” (substantive of kanaph ) becomes a synonym for bird (cf. Genesis 7:14; bird is ‘oph ). Bird wings are mentioned in the rite for the ascension offering from birds (Leviticus 1:17). The earth’s four…

August 12, 2014

Etymologizing the Gods

Encyclopedic Isidore of Seville was one of the most widely-read early Christian writers. His analysis of ancient mythology in Etymologies summarized and extended a tradition that combined several components: Etymologies of the names of gods; euhemerist interpretation of myths as enhanced accounts of historical events; and moral indignation at the…

August 12, 2014

Onan in History

According Thomas Laqueur’s 2004 Solitary Sex , masturbation wasn’t a major concern in sexual ethics until fairly recently. Stephen Greenblatt summarized the argument in a 2004 review in the NYRB : “Medieval Christian theologians . . . did have a clear concept of masturbation as a sin, but it was…

August 12, 2014

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