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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Aseity is the property that describes a being’s self-causation. In theology, to speak of divine aseity is to say that God exists in and of Himself. He is not derived from or dependent upon anything else. He is fully Himself in Himself and of Himself. He is a se .…
Naomi Koltun-Fromm argues ( Hermeneutics of Holiness ) that the concepts of purity and holiness, while normally distinct in the Hebrew Bible, are blurred in some passages where qadash is used in contexts that speak of purity and purification rather than of consecration. In 1 Samuel 21:6, David says that…
Explaining Ezra’s concern about the mixed marriages in the restoration community, Naomi Koltun-Fromm ( Hermeneutics of Holiness ) writes, “Ezra presents Israel not only as holy but as a qodesh in its own right—a freestanding holy thing, a holy seed, a sanctum. As such, it must be protected (or in…
In his contribution to Seeing Things Their Way , Richard Muller discusses and commends the recent effort to free church history from denominational apologetics. When the Reformers are viewed in the light of late medieval theology (as in the work of Heiko Oberman), unexpected commonalities appear: “Common ground can be…
At the end of Albert Camus’s The Stranger , the narrator is on death row for killing an Arab. Death is familiar to him. It is the “black wind” that has blown through his entire life. For Camus’s Stranger, the inevitability of death makes life indifferent. It does not matter…
In his recent Zero to One , Peter Thiel sets out a neat typology of philosophy, politics, and cultural attitudes based on differing stances toward the future. He distinguishes optimists and pessimists, and subdivides each into “definite” and “indefinite.” Optimists and pessimists are obvious: One is bullish about the future,…
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