Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For Part 1, click HERE . How did Paul’s earliest commentators view his juxtaposition of music and drunkenness, and did they connect it to the ancient Greek ideas of musical ethos described in Part I? Origen, one of the earliest commentators on Paul, writes about Ephesians 5:18-19: One, however, who…
Perhaps it is because I am a musician that I have always found Ephesians 5:18-19 so arbitrary. But isn’t it a little odd to contrast music and drunkenness? Perhaps it is not obvious that that is what Paul is doing; I know, for myself, that it is remarkably easy to…
In 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 Paul deals with how the Corinthian Christians are supposed to be relating to unbelieving spouses. He essentially tells them, “Look, if your unbelieving spouse is willing to stay with you as a faithful Christian, don’t initiate a divorce. If he/she wants to leave you, let him/her…
For Part 1, click HERE . Those who focus on the supposed “pacifism” of Jesus and condemn the violence of God’s judgments throughout the Old Testament overlook the ministry of sacrificial bloodshed as an alternative to human bloodshed. The sword bearing of the sacrificial system was introduced to avoid the…
How should a Christian respond to the objection that the Bible, like the Koran, is a book of violence and bloodshed? Numerous answers have been offered by well-meaning exegetes, but none of them gets to the heart of the matter: God desires to place a sword in the hands of…
Beginning this summer, Dr. Alastair Roberts will join the Theopolis Institute as an adjunct Senior Fellow, the Institute has announced. Dr. Roberts will be a regular on the Theopolis podcast, teach intensive courses and in the Fellows Program, and help develop new programs and outlets. Roberts earned his PhD from…
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I made revisions to this essay on July 9, to correct my misleading summary of Hazony's position on the origins of nations . During World War I, writes Samuel Goldman ( After Nationalism ), German communities in the U.S. “were subjected to both official and unofficial harassment and violence.” Towns…
Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya, Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta, and Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff are heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last October, they teamed up to write the Great Barrington Declaration that advocated “focused protection” of the vulnerable as an alternative to generalized lockdowns. They’ve faced relentless scorn, slander, and censorship ever since, yet…
Today’s battles over sex present, Douglas Farrow observes , “a curious sight.” Since Descartes and Rousseau, moderns have split body and soul, but that dualism has often underwritten a politics of mechanistic materialism. Now, though, the body has lost public relevance. Instead, “the body is private and the soul, or…
A few highlights from the readings for Kimbell Kornu’s Pentecost Term course on "The Christian Art of Dying," which we hosted at Theopolis in May. 1. Christians agree that sin is the ultimate cause of illness. But George Khushf suggests another dimension of the sin-sickness relation: Illness as “general revelation.”…
My WordPress dashboard tells me I've published 13,203 posts since I started blogging in 2004. If my posts average a mere 200 words, that's 2.6 million words. It could be twice that. I don't blog much anymore, but for the past several years, I've been writing a weekly newsletter, The…
Pentecost is the climax of our redemption, the fulfillment of our human destiny. Jesus isn’t done when He dies on the cross, and His work isn’t finished when He takes up His life again. He isn’t finished when He ascends to heaven. Jesus’ founding work of redemption isn’t done until…
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