Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory...(John 1:14) Commentaries on John, discussing the Word or Logos in John 1, routinely turn to Greek philosophy and say that John is using a term and at least part of an idea familiar in the ancient…
Jeremiah Burroughs defines contentment as “that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition” Contentment is one Christian virtue that Americans have an incredibly hard time understanding and applying. We have such comfortable lives that we…
"The goal I have for myself, my family, and my church is total bible saturation. I expected the Exodus Intensive class to help me with that, but I am shocked just how much it did," said Mark Balthrop, a pastor in Oklahoma City who attended Theopolis' recent course on the…
In a characteristically pithy essay, Robert Jenson has decried the “two paired errors” of traditional atonement theory. On the one hand, the cross is separated “from its future, in the resurrection” and, on the other, from “its past in the canonical history of Israel.” For the apostles, crucifixion is “anything…
The Historical-Grammatical Nanny State Typological interpretation is either abused or frowned upon, a domain relegated to mystics and charlatans, where the angels of modern academia fear to tread. But what if the Bible itself contained safeguards against irresponsible flights of fancy? And if it did, what would they look like?…
It is harsh advice for a suffering soul to be told to be content, to be happy, to be delighting in the rough circumstances. Is Christian contentment something we should automatically have as a result of being in Christ? Is it something we do? Is it an action or is…
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Traditional debates about faith and works might be clarified and illuminated by highlighting eschatology. To wit: God intends to establish perfect justice and peace, reconciling all things by the Spirit in the Son. That is the future of the world. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence…
As Jacob re-enters the land after his sojourn in Haran, he sends ahead a present ( minchah ) to appease ( kafar ) his estranged brother Esau (Genesis 32:20-21). This is a “peace offering,” and not only in a metaphorical sense. The text uses the language of sacrifice, and other…
God is, Edwards says, “self-existent from all eternity, absolutely perfect in himself, in possession of infinite and independent good . . . above all need and all capacity of being added to and advanced, made better and happier in any respect.” Edwards also says things like this: “That nature in…
Stephen Stein doesn’t much like what he calls Jonathan Edwards’s “strange and troubling” interpretation of Esther (an essay in Jonathan Edwards at 300: Essays on the Tercentenary of His Birth ). Edwards linked Esther with the account of the Amelikes in Exodus 17, and used the “curse of perpetual war…
What is an American? Twenty years ago, Garry Wills ( John Wayne’s America ) answered that the “archetypal American is a displaced person – arrived from a rejected past, breaking into a glorious future, on the move, fearless himself, feared by others, a killed cleansing the world of things that…
The biblical writers don’t know how to end a story. Genesis 22, one of the best-known and most dramatic of biblical texts, the story of Abraham’s interrupted sacrifice of Isaac, is a case in point. Give the episode to a Hollywood script writer and the thing would end with a…
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