Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“We have a God who hides things because He loves to be sought out, chewed out and found out.” As Christians, we are rightly taught that we must not question God’s Word. The problem is that the Scriptures record many things which appear to have been given to us for…
The book of Revelation is a liturgy. John begins “in the Spirit” on the “Lord’s day” (1:10). Jesus appears, and Jesus tells him to record messages to seven churches, words of encouragement and rebuke, like the call to worship and confession at the beginning of a Christian liturgy. In chapter…
In my previous posts, I looked at the theme of creation as it is found in a sequence of psalms devoted to Yahweh’s Kingship (Psalms 93-100). Among other matters, these psalms declare that when the Kingdom of Israel’s God comes, it is the Kingdom of the world’s own Creator .…
The church in Corinth was a pastoral nightmare. Factionalism, sexual immorality, incipient syncretism, using the church as a stage for self-promotion, and denial of the final resurrection were just some of the problems. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he confronts each of these problems directly and in…
The first chapters of the Word of God have a poetic rhythm. This is used to discredit their accuracy as historical narrative, but the truth is that these same rhythms continue far beyond the book of Genesis. In fact, the later texts shed light on the frustratingly succinct account of…
Mr. Martian: What’s that there? Mr. Edison: (Edison holds up a standard, 60 watt lightbulb). It’s a lightbulb. Mr. Martian: A “lightbulb” you say? What exactly is a “lightbulb”? Mr. Edison: A lightbulb is an object used to illuminate a dark area, say a room. It’s made primarily of filament…
Showing page 154 of 309
Showing page 35 of 43
“Scholars today (though in practice it is more the custom of the popularizers and media exponents) can afford to be snide or patronizing about the missionary movement,” writes Andrew Walls in The Cross-Cultural Process of Christian History . “But many branches of Western learning now exist because of it.” He…
After several chapters of polemic against nomos , Paul finally has a kind word for law, commending the “law of Christ” in Galatians 6:2. Some have suggested that the phrase refers to a set of teachings of Jesus, the sermon on the Mount perhaps as a kind of Christianized Torah.…
Scott Sunquist ( Understanding Christian Mission , 127-8) asks why African Christianity so often developed into independent churches rather than as mission plants from Western churches. He enumerates a number of causes, all of them revealing. One, unsurprisingly, was the “authoritarianism” of Western missionaries: “There were many well-educated and strong…
In a brief review of recent Asian Church history ( From Every Tribe and Nation ), Mark Noll makes the arresting comment that “Mao Zedong counts as one of the most significant figures in modern church history.” Noll hastens to add this was not Mao's intention; rather, it is “because…
I n an essay on “Christianity in the Non-Western World” found in The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History , Andrew Walls observes that “With relatively few (though admittedly important) exceptions, the areas and peoples that accepted Islam have remained Islamic ever since: Arabia seems now so immutably Islamic that it…
At the end of Galatians (6:11-16), Paul picks up on themes from the first part of the letter. In the opening greeting, Paul summarized his gospel as the Son’s self-giving to deliver us from the present evil age. At the end, he says that his participation in the cross means…
Showing page 419 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
