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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Counseling

Two Solutions for the Problem of Pain

C. S. Lewis tackled what is perhaps the most difficult and oft-heard objection to the Christian God in his classic, The Problem of Pain. 1 “If God were good,” Lewis restates the problem, “He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, He would be…

by Alexander WhitakerNovember 19, 2019
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Luke

Jesus’ Lamentations

There is nothing incongruous about assuming that Jesus lamented over His people on three separate occasions and that on two of those occasions, He expressed Himself in almost identical language. Two lamentations are recorded in the Gospel of Luke and are clearly marked as distinct. They are also expressed in…

by Ralph Allan SmithNovember 14, 2019
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Biblical Theology

Sacramental Representation and the Created Order

In the Anglican Church in North America, the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood continues to be discussed with each diocese left to decide its own practice. A recurring point of debate is how we are to understand the priest’s representative role in the liturgy. Emily McGowin, in a…

by Blake JohnsonNovember 12, 2019
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Theopolis News

Press Release: New Board Members!

The Theopolis Institute recently added two new members to its Board of Directors, Josh Rollins and Sarah Moore. Josh has recently served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development for MeTEOR Education, and was previously Chief Financial Officer at MeTEOR. He brings a wealth of finance experience, and will take…

by TheopolisNovember 12, 2019
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Pastoral Ministry

Seven Theses on Practical Unity

Since moving to Englewood, Colorado, I have been blessed to be involved in the nuts-and-bolts practice of Church unity. The pastors here talk about the One Church in Englewood, and mean it. They love each other, pray fervently for each other, and long for the unity they enjoy to spread…

by Tim NicholsNovember 5, 2019
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Language

How to Use Bad Words

One day, the author Samuel Clemens cut himself shaving. He was an inveterate foul-mouth and on this occasion recited the entirety of his iniquitous vocabulary. When he was finished, his wife, hoping to shock him, repeated every word he said. Clemens responded, "You have the words, dear, but you don't…

by Remy WilkinsOctober 29, 2019

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Stand-up Anthropology

At the 1993 conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth, Marshall Sahlins was invited to provide “after-dinner entertainment.” His anthropological stand-up routine has been published as Waiting for Foucault, Still , most recently in 2002 by Sahlins’s own Prickly Paradigm Press. Sahlins thinks that atheism is the…

March 28, 2014

Theopoetic

Amos Wilder’s Theopoetic , recently reprinted in Wipf & Stock’s Amos Wilder LIbrary, is a plea for a renewal of imagination, written with the taut elegance of a poet. Writing in 1976, Wilder saw himself fighting on two fronts - against the utilitarian spirit of American Protestantism on the one…

March 28, 2014

Fruitful Cut

Howard Eilberg-Schwartz ( The Savage in Judaism ) traces most every form of impurity in ancient Israel back to issues of fertility. I don’t buy that overall, and he recognizes that it can’t cover everything (see his discussion of menstruation. 177-94, where he uncovers several overlapping schemas). The argument works…

March 28, 2014

Open and Shut

Jesus has the key of David (Revelation 3:7), which allows him to open and shut. The statement is chiastic: A. who opens B. and no one shuts B’. and shuts A’. and no one opens. The sentence’s structure mimics the sentence’s content: It speaks of “opening” at the “open ends,”…

March 27, 2014

Materialism in Defense of Faith

In a dense paragraph, Milbank (“Theology Without Substance, Part 1,” Journal of Literature and Theology , 1988) draws on Paolo Rossi’s Dark Abyss of Time describes how English and Neopolitan writers put Spinoza, Hobbes, and de Lapeyrere to work in defense of orthodoxy - even in defense of Scripture and…

March 27, 2014

Animals in Israel

Drawing from Robertson Smith, Howard Eilberg-Schwartz lists numerous biblical characters with animal names ( The Savage in Judaism , 116): Eglon means calf, Nahash is a serpent, Oreb is Raven and Ze’eb is a wolf. Seir the Horite has Shobal (young lion), Zibeon (hyena), Anah (wild ass), Dishon (antelope). Leah…

March 27, 2014

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