Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Job appears in the Bible as a true story and it is regarded as such in other Scripture: As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the…
Thanksgiving is warfare. Gratitude is a weapon. Wield it well. Give thanks for the preparation. The hustle and bustle, the messy kitchen, the endless cleaning, the extra chairs, and stained tablecloths sing the song of hospitality. God desires that we prepare a place for friends and strangers, feasting and laughing,…
We often hear that, along with Leviticus, Ecclesiastes is the “most peculiar book,” lurking in the Bible’s back alley. 1 But it is high time that we retire this old dirge. God has concealed much gold here, therefore much glory is ours if we are careful to read Solomon’s wisdom…
1 Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the does? 2 Can you number the months that they fulfill, and do you know the time when they give birth? Job 39 We have and we do, Lord God. Spring is calving season.…
For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a holy day, a Sabbath of complete rest to Yahweh. - Exodus 35:2 The instructions for building the tabernacle end with a Sabbath command and the narrative about building begins with a Sabbath command, before…
High in the list of now forgotten sins is simony. It was not always so: the medieval schoolmen believed simony to be the worst of ecclesiastical crimes and waged a centuries long campaign to purge the Church of this financial and spiritual corruption. As the schoolmen robustly defined it, “simony…
Showing page 26 of 309
Showing page 35 of 43
In a review of several books on Henry Miller for the TLS , Karl Orend highlights Miller’s religiosity and his sense of religious mission. He “was Buddhist for most of his life,” and considered his task to be a continuation of Whitman’s plant “to write new Bibles for our times.”…
The Economist (August 30) reports on research by a team from the University of Duisburg-Essen on animal magnetism - not animal charisma, but animals responding to the magnetic polarities of the earth. Studying pictures from Google Earth, they “concluded that cattle do generally align themselves in a north-south direction. Moreover,…
Jenson’s discussion of the “Being of the One God” at the end of the first volume of his Systematic theology is intriguing both as historical and as systematic theology. He summarizes the Greek answer to the question “What is Being” in three steps. Being is “immunity to time”; it is…
Mark 8:7 says that Jesus “blessed” the fish before distributing them to the 4000. As my colleague Toby Sumpter points out, this is the verb of the sea creatures in Gen 1:27, where Yahweh tells them to be fruitful and multiply. Jesus too, the Creator incarnate, blesses fish to multiply…
INTRODUCTION As Jesus and His three disciples descend from the mountain, they find the other disciples struggling to help a demon-possessed boy. The disciples fail. Jesus is the greater Elisha, and His disciples are like Elisha’s bumbling sidekick, Gehazi. They still lack even a mustard seed of faith (v. 20).…
Jesus told Peter, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself.” Self-denial is a basic demand of discipleship. We can’t follow Jesus if we don’t do it. Jesus is not talking about afflicting our bodies with fasting and flagellation, but about something more fundamental. Self-denial means giving…
Showing page 1470 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
