Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"The faithful use of sacraments, and indeed a fully sacramental view of creation, is vital to the life of the Church. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are rites that directly shape the community and the Body, because they were given by God for that express purpose. A deficient practice of…
Weightlessness is fun. At the beginning of Gravity (2013) , we can see one astronaut dancing the Macarena and another one playing with his jetpack. They like it out there in the space. Apart from zero-gravity they can enjoy beautiful views, and even the silence is likable, although Matt Kowalski…
I recently went to a lunch that is more or less quarterly. About a dozen of us go. It is a lunch held in honor of a retired professor of religion and philosophy. I have been one of his acquaintances for more than 40 years. In his tenure as professor,…
Why Theopolis? Don't we already have seminaries and Bible colleges and other institutions for theological education? Why do we need another one? I get this question now and again. I ask myself this question even more often. What follows is a partial answer. Back in the 1990s, seminaries seemed to…
I think the logic of the Lutheran Reformation can be summarized in one sentence, attributed to Luther himself: "God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does." The first half of that statement is justification by faith . God doesn't need our works to satisfy his justice or…
If you are looking to start a fight with Christians, there is hardly a better subject to do so than the arts. Music, movies, paintings, and literature have provided no small battlegrounds for Christians to war. We are emotionally invested in the arts. A song, a book, or a film…
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In his contribution to The Reader Must Understand , Crispin Fletcher-Louis argues convincingly that “heaven and earth” in Jesus’ eschatological discourses doesn’t refer to “a collapse of the space-time universe . . . but as a collapse of a mythical space-time universe which is embodied in the Jerusalem temple” (162).…
God hangs the earth on nothing (Job 26:7). That’s literally true. There’s no changeless substance beneath the surface of change, nothing holding us up, making it all stable and safe. There’s nothing holding creation in place except God. Every effort to hang the world on something , every effort to…
A friend recently criticized the popular use of dance imagery to describe the perichoretic life of the Trinity. I laughed and played along. I’ve been in churches that have tried to enact the perichoretic dance, and, trust me, it ain’t inspiring. But then I want to say: Doesn’t that criticism…
Registration is now open for the Pentecost term course at Trinity House, an introduction to liturgical theology taught by Pastor Jeffrey Meyers of Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, St. Louis. For more information and registration, click here .
Evelyn Barish’s The Double Life of Paul De Man has received mixed reviews. The NYTBR review cataloged minor errors to build a case against Barish’s reliability. Robert Alter’s review in The New Republic finds Barish’s case compelling. The case is moral and not merely intellectual. Alter writes that de Man…
Every morning Venus lights up in the sky before the sun rises - a speck of light before the sun. Jesus is the morning star (Revelation 22:16), who shines before the light of the Father is revealed. Jesus is the morning star that announces a day where there will be…
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