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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Inevitably, after an event like the Biola panel on the future of Protestantism, one wakes up thinking of the things one should have said. Here are a few. 1) One thing I did say that I need to reiterate: It seems that the three participants meant different things when we…
William Logan’s Guilty Knowledge, Guilty Pleasure is incisive, full of juicy assaults like these: “Mary Oliver is the poet laureate of the self-help biz and the human-potential movement. She has stripped down the poetry in Red Bird until it is nothing but a naked set of values: that the human…
Daniel Albright observes in his Panaesthetics that Renaissance perspective “is more unnatural, even seditious to nature, than it first appears” (49). The reason is that “Perspective is less concerned with objects than with space - it lavishes its resources on relations, not on things. In some Renaissance paintings, the thing…
Brad Gregory ( Unintended Reformation ) emphasizes the role of Christian division in the formation of modern institutions and ideologies. But he also shows at several points that the modern efforts to head off the unintended consequences of the Reformation failed or even made the disease worse. Natural law was…
According to John Thiel’s analysis in Senses of Tradition (154), innovation in the church often seems initially to be a threat to tradition: “The ecclesial investment in constancy often leads to the eclipse of the ‘still’ of the present and the ‘will be’ of the future by the ‘always’ of…
In an earlier post , I noted that Revelation 4 describes not only a heavenly temple but a heavenly court. But the judgment isn’t passed until chapter 20, when the saints have taken thrones to share in the proceedings. The beasts have already been throne into the lake of fire…
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