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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Matthew

Reading Matthew, Identifying Discourses: A Closer Look at the “Six-Discourse” Proposal

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,…

by Jonathan SedlakJune 26, 2025
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2 Timothy

Avoid Foolish Disputes

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.…

by Grant Van BrimmerJune 24, 2025
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Baptism

The Indispensable Mark of Worship: Infant Baptism

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…

by Tommy ThompsonJune 19, 2025
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American Culture

Ecclesiocentric Life is Back

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…

by Miles SmithJune 17, 2025
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Biblical Studies

Sceptical Text-Critical Hypotheses

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.…

by James BejonJune 12, 2025
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Galatians

Flesh & Spirit in Galatia

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…

by Jeff MeyersJune 10, 2025

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Murder and Manuscript

We might not have the Nag Hammadi library if it had not been for a gruesome murder. The collection was found in 1945 by two brothers in Egypt, Muhammed and Kalifah Ali. As Giovanni Filoramo tells it, when the brothers took the jar containing the texts back to their village,…

December 20, 2007
Theology

Guy Waters

One Brian Cosby has a review of Guy Waters’s book on the Federal Vision in the latest issue of the Westminster Journal. After a fair summary of Waters’s book, Cosby levels two charges: First, that Waters “criticizes the various FV proponents’ positions and doctrines appealing to older, unrevised editions that…

December 19, 2007
History

Mr Magoo Abroad

In the October 22 issue of TNR , Walter Russell Mead compares American foreign policy to Mr Magoo, since it seems to “wanter nearsightedly but relatively unscathed past one hazard after another.” The pattern goes back at least to the Jefferson administration, and Mead quickly summarizes Magoo’s foreign policy through…

December 19, 2007
History

Covenant of Peace

Bossy again, from the same essay: He quotes Oberman’s claim that “in the old dispensation the holiness of the Church and its governors was made manifest by their power to transmit to the body of Christians the condition of peace, and conversely that the absence of peace was an indication…

December 19, 2007
History

Priesthood of Plebs

In a 1977 review in Past and Present , John Bossy summarizes an essay by Heiko Oberman about the “closing gap between the sacred and the secular” in late medieval life (Oberman’s description). Bossy says this involved “an abandonment of metaphysical hierarchies in favor of a direct and covenantal partnership…

December 19, 2007
History

The Last Theocrats

In his controversial book, The Stillborn God , Mark Lilla suggests that nineteenth-century German liberalism attempted to raise political theology from the grave to which it had been consigned since Hobbes. Their political theology had little to recommend it. Charlotte Allen sums up in her Weekly Standard review: “The liberal…

December 18, 2007

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