Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We are too used to reading the Gospels’ stories of Jesus’ arrest, trial, condemnation, and death from a devotional perspective and so we miss a lot of what’s going on. We actually have a difficult time trying to figure out the meaning of the details of the story. Of course,…
This is the first in a series of essays on "Continuing the Reformation." Many different churches descend from the original Protestant Reformation, and those that are the most conservative are often insistent that they are largely if not completely true to the Reformation, or to the branch from which they…
Trinity House fellow James B. Jordan will be teaching a one-day seminar on "How to Read the Bible for the First Time . . . Again" next Friday, February 22, in North London. The event is sponsored by Emmanuel Evangelical Church, Southgate, costs 20 pounds (10 for theology students) and…
Audio Reading of this Post https://theopolis-blogcast.simplecast.com/episodes/a-primer-on-ash-wednesday What is Ash Wednesday? Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a season focused on the sufferings and cross of Jesus. But Jesus’ death on the cross cannot be separated from the cross we are called to bear in union with him, so…
Welcome to the Trinity House web site. It’s unfinished, as you’ll soon discover, but it’s more finished than it was, and for that we are very grateful. Thanks to David Dalbey for the design, and to my son Sheffield for the execution. Trinity House exists to advance the reformation of…
In our I hope brief blog-versation, Doug Wilson has posted a couple more things to think about. In one he asks who our father/Father is. We either have God or the devil as our father. Well, yes and no. I’m with Doug in what he’s getting at, I think, but…
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Students of Ancient Near Eastern religions and cultures have typically assumed that the peoples of the ANE operated, like ancient Israelites, with a dichotomy of holy and profane. Beate Pongratz-Leisten doubts this, both for Mesopotamia and for Israel. The notion that this dichotomy is a universal religious structures goes back…
K. van der Toorn has a 1989 article summarizing the purity system of ancient Mesopotamia. He describes purity rules as a form of temple etiquette. What makes something unclean is not that it is immoral but that it is displeasing in a particular setting, in this case displeasing before the…
Rivka and Moshe Ulmer summarize rabbinic teaching about charitable giving in Righteous Giving to the Poor . The book includes an overview of rabbinic literature in general before it gets to its main topic. Rich in quotation, the section on tzedakah examines the theological underpinnings of charity, the this- and…
Lida V. Nedilsky’s Converts to Civil Society is a sociological study of civil society in contemporary Hong Kong. But the use of the religious term “convert” is not accidental. Nedilsky argues that Christian conversion in Hong Kong opens up possibilities for other forms of voluntary association, both religious and non-religious.…
Ole Bjerg ( Making Money ) doesn’t believe the classic “commodity” accounts of the rise of money, found in both Adam Smith and Marx. Both posit an original barter economy that is made more efficient by the introduction of a commodity that is used as a medium of exchange. Bjerg…
Gerd Theissen’s contribution to The Depth of the Human Person sharply challenges mainstream views of Paul’s anthropology. It’s not that Paul’s theory is holistic rather than dualistic. That assumption is based on a faulty understanding of ancient anthropology. A holistic anthropology doesn’t necessarily imply a positive view of the body,…
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