Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Stalker is a Soviet-era film by Andrei Tarkovsky in which an enigmatic location comes into existence either through an alien crash or a nuclear disaster; the film never makes it clear, but knowing Tarkovsky’s criticism of the spectacle nature of the alien motif after his own filming of Solaris and…
I was scrolling through Instagram on the night of Thanksgiving, the only one awake (as usual), coming down from my extrovert-high after all the conversation and merriment of the day, when I came across a post that stopped me in my tracks. The post contained a picture-perfect image of some…
The Theopolis Institute is pleased to announce the fourth round of the James B. Jordan Prize to honor outstanding doctoral dissertations in biblical theology. James Jordan is one of the most insightful biblical scholars of our time. The Jordan Prize exists to encourage more of the deep Scriptural investigation of…
Suppose I were to write three versions of a story. In every version, the first half of the book looks forward to the coming of the king. There are promises about him and about how glorious his kingdom will be, about how his kingdom will fill the earth with peace…
Introduction Doug Wilson’s American Milk and Honey is now available. There’s a great deal in the book worth commenting on, and I anticipate engaging with that material more broadly in the near future. In the lead up to its release, however, Moscow has not been silent concerning Israel, the Jews,…
Our telling of the Prodigal Son parable usually (and rightly) focuses on the runaway younger brother: the lost son returns, and his father joyfully and graciously receives him. But the full story has an additional element: an angry older brother. Jesus uses the older brother to rebuke the religious leaders…
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The following is an excerpt taken from my Blessed Are the Hungry (Canon, 2000). The Lord’s Supper is the world in miniature; it has cosmic significance. Within it we find clues to the meaning of all creation and all history, to the nature of God and the nature of man,…
John of Salisbury, the 12th-century political thinker, called Orosius, author of Seven Books of HIstories against the Pagans , a "disciple of the great Augustine." It's true. According to Francis Oakley ( Empty Bottles of Gentilism ), Orosius "had studied with Augustine from 414 to 415, and he himself tells…
Elizabeth Digeser ( Making of a Christian Empire ) observes that the Roman emperor Diocletian came to the purple with a disadvantage: He was a usurper. He needed to secure his power, lest another usurp his place. His strategy was to distribute power to a Tetrarchy, and to claim divine…
Thomas argues ( ST I, 28, 2) that since "everything which is not the divine essence is a creature" and "relation really belongs to god," it follows that relation is identical to essence. More fully: "whatever has an accidental existence in creatures, when considered as transferred to God has a…
Peter Schjeldahl claims that Auguste Rodin "or his hand, as his mind’s executive—wrenched figurative sculpture from millennia of tradition and sent it tumbling into modernity." He admits that There’s a stubborn tinge of vulgarity about Rodin, inseparable from his strength." Yet even when we are put off by vulgarity, "your…
"The doctrine of the Trinity is only possible as a piece of baffled theology," writes Joseph Ratzinger ( Introduction to Christianity , 122). This is true in a sheer historical sense: "Every one of the big basic concepts in the doctrine of the Trinity was condemned at one time or…
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