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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C J Labuschagne ( Numerical Secrets of the Bible ) discovers repeated numero-literary uses of the numbers 17 and 26 in the Old Testament. Texts are comprised of multiples of one or the other of these numbers. Why? 26 is relatively easy: It's the gematria of Yahweh, the sum of…
D uring Wittgenstein's hiatus from philosophy in the 1920s, he worked for an architect to build a home for his sister Margarete. His task was to design the door and window handles. As Christopher Benfey points out in a splendid essay on handles at the NYRB , this was no…
J ohn Williamson Nevin is remembered, when he is remembered at all, for his anti-revivalist and pro-sacramental writings. Those more familiar with his work know of his catholicity and his emphasis on the centrality of the Incarnation to the Christian vision of reality. On of the great virtues of Richard…
I n his contribution to Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice in the Bible , Christian Eberhart points out that the term qorban is Leviticus's generic term for the variety of offerings used in tabernacle worship. The terminology “captures the dynamic movement of sacrificial material toward the sanctuary and ultimately toward God…
H uman beings,” asserts Andy Clark at the beginning of his Natural-Born Cyborgs , “are natural- born cyborgs” (3). By that, he means that “the human mind, if it is to be the physical organ of human reason, simply cannot be seen as bound and restricted by the biological skinbag.…
O f late, many within the evangelical Protestant world have been calling for some form of ressourcement , renewed attention to the early church's creeds, theologians, liturgies, and practices. Michael Bird's What Christians Ought To Believe is one of the best of the lot. Bird, a New Testament scholar at…
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