Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Can it be that it has been two whole years since I contributed a Theopolis Post! I had been pursuing the topic of integration: “Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World.” I had defined “integration,” simply, as creative putting together. I had posed that seeking it calls for a fundamentally integrative…
What is known as the miracle of the “Feeding of the Five Thousand” occurs in Mark’s Gospel in chapter 6. As with other gospel writers, Mark has a few different points to make as he moves through this story (included in all four gospel accounts) and its surrounding material. Three…
To begin with the source of this narrative: Since no human being was present to observe these events, we must assume that this narrative was revealed directly by God to a human author. There are three ways this might have happened. First, we might read, "God said to Abraham (or…
The serious Bible student cannot help but be struck by the deviousness of Jacob in Genesis 27. If one already expected some underhanded dealings from this twin-born-second whose name means “supplanter” and whose bargaining with his brother for the birthright in Genesis 25 seemed incredibly weighted in his own favor,…
From Barna stats to mainstream headlines, it seems as though the discordant nature of this last year has taken such a toll on churches in the United States that, for many, the injuries have been fatal. It has become a regular occurrence to hear about a congregation that continues to…
In The Bad News Bears (1976), a city councilman hires a washed-up minor league baseball player with a drinking problem to coach a little league team of leftover misfits. Underdog sports movies are usually full of sentimentalism and dramatic victories, but this film is a commentary on the failing dream…
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Pastor Ralph Smith’s series of essays on Deuteronomy 22-23 continues at the Trinity House web site.
John 12:20-23 seems slightly comical. Some Greeks want to see Jesus, and approach Philip, a Galilean. Philip doesn’t simply tell them where Jesus is, but tells Andrew, who goes to tell Jesus that some Greeks want to see Him. In the end, it’s not at all clear if the Greeks…
Israel was redeemed from Egypt ( padah , Deuteronomy 7:8), and in various ways signified that redemption by redemption of firstborn animals (Exodus 13:13-15; 34:20). Jeremiah too speaks of redemption (15:21) from the hand of the wicked and violent. He hopes for a new exodus, enacted not in the life…
I like Ross Douthat, a lot. But I hate to agree with Nate Cohn’s rebuttal to Douthat’s claim that Bush’s overreach in the Iraq war is “responsible for liberalism’s current political and cultural ascendance.” Douthat implies, Cohn claims, that Americans are still conservative. I’m inclined to think that Cohn is…
Derrrida got started early with his combination of intelligence and obscurity. Emily Eakin notes : “In May of 1951, at the age of twenty, Jacques Derrida took the entrance exams for the prestigious École Normale Supérieure a second time, having failed, as many students do, in his first attempt the…
Contemplating the death of his first wife, Dostoevsky uncovered what he thought was a proof of the afterlife. (The notebook entry is translated in Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time , 407-9.) The first plant of the argument was to notice that human beings are incapable of following…
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