Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In a February blog post for the Theopolis Institute, Benoît Engel offers a thought-provoking challenge to the widely accepted five-discourse structure of Matthew’s Gospel, proposing a sixth discourse in Matthew 21:28–22:14 to reframe the Gospel’s chiastic center. As someone deeply invested in Matthew’s literary design—explored in my book Reading Matthew,…
Avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and useless. Titus 3:9 Out of a deep love and care for the church, Paul tells Titus and those in the church to avoid four specific things: foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law.…
Theopolis publishes many polemics, especially on the Sacraments. This piece does not necessarily reflect the views of Theopolis, her board, or her editors. -JW Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days.He shall cleanse himself with the water on the third day and on the…
There is in the United States and the Western World some sort of religious revival occurring. Gen Z men—males born between ca 1997 and 2012—are flooding back in to churches. USA Today noted that Gen Z men—and to a lesser degree women—attending churches more than their millennial predecessors and they…
The primary task of many Biblical scholars (as they see it) is to explain how and why the Biblical text acquired its final form—i.e., what source material it used, how that material was expanded/redacted, who expanded/redacted it, why they did so, what the weather was like at the time, etc.…
Galatians 5:5-15 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from…
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In his TLS review of Kathryn Walls’s study of the symbolism of Una in Spenser’s Faerie Queene ( God’s Only Daughter ), Bart van Es compares Walls’s book to that of John Dixon, a sixteenth century farmer who annotated his copy of Spenser: “Like Dixon, Walls takes the Bible and…
When John enters heaven (Revelation 4), He sees the Enthronement as a precious stone, a stone glowing with light, a stone that sparkles like a star, and He is surrounded with a rainbow that is also described as a precious stone. Specifically, the stone is the emerald. This is the…
In his Caused to Believe , William Bonney follows up suggestions from Charles Giblin regarding the structure of John’s prologue and the structural connections between the prologue and the gospel. Giblin finds what he calls an X-Y pattern in the prologue: “The X of this pattern encompasses verses 1–13. The…
In the latest issue of the International Journal of Systematic Theology , the redoubtable and hyper-productive Matthew Levering probes Augustine’s arguments (in de Trinitate ) for concluding that the Spirit is “love” and “gift.” As Levering points out, the identifications are not straightforwardly asserted anywhere in Scripture, yet Augustine makes…
God’s throne in heaven, like Sinai, flashes with lightning, crashes with thunder (Revelation 4:5). Those throne phenomena are repeated at crucial seams in the book of Revelation, with additions. After the seventh seal, an angel throws fire to earth, which reproduces the heavenly throne on earth (8:5)—thunder, sounds, lightning, with…
Christians walk into church through a door. All of them can come in. There’s no restricted access. Inside, there’s a lectern with a Bible, a table with food, a pastor in white. In some churches, the aroma of incense fills the air. It’s the holy place; in fact, the most…
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