Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For Part 1, click HERE . How did Paul’s earliest commentators view his juxtaposition of music and drunkenness, and did they connect it to the ancient Greek ideas of musical ethos described in Part I? Origen, one of the earliest commentators on Paul, writes about Ephesians 5:18-19: One, however, who…
Perhaps it is because I am a musician that I have always found Ephesians 5:18-19 so arbitrary. But isn’t it a little odd to contrast music and drunkenness? Perhaps it is not obvious that that is what Paul is doing; I know, for myself, that it is remarkably easy to…
In 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 Paul deals with how the Corinthian Christians are supposed to be relating to unbelieving spouses. He essentially tells them, “Look, if your unbelieving spouse is willing to stay with you as a faithful Christian, don’t initiate a divorce. If he/she wants to leave you, let him/her…
For Part 1, click HERE . Those who focus on the supposed “pacifism” of Jesus and condemn the violence of God’s judgments throughout the Old Testament overlook the ministry of sacrificial bloodshed as an alternative to human bloodshed. The sword bearing of the sacrificial system was introduced to avoid the…
How should a Christian respond to the objection that the Bible, like the Koran, is a book of violence and bloodshed? Numerous answers have been offered by well-meaning exegetes, but none of them gets to the heart of the matter: God desires to place a sword in the hands of…
Beginning this summer, Dr. Alastair Roberts will join the Theopolis Institute as an adjunct Senior Fellow, the Institute has announced. Dr. Roberts will be a regular on the Theopolis podcast, teach intensive courses and in the Fellows Program, and help develop new programs and outlets. Roberts earned his PhD from…
Showing page 94 of 309
Showing page 35 of 43
Isaiah 56 begins with an exhortation concerning justice. In parallel phrases, Yahweh instructs Israel to “guard judgment” ( mishpat ) and to “do justice” ( zedaqah ). Along with God’s statutes and commandments, His judgments are to by guarded (Leviticus 18:5, 28; 25:18). “Guarding” judgment suggests a conservative, protective, preserving…
What’s The Trouble With Physics ? asks Lee Smolin. The answer has something to do with the absence of diversity within the scientific community (xxii): “Science requires a delicate balance between conformity and variety. Because it is so easy to fool ourselves, because the answers are unknown, experts, no matter…
According to Robert Sparling’s account in Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project (145), Moses Mendelssohn considered human beings to be isolated individuals. Language is a tool used by these isolated individuals to connect concepts in our head to things in the world. Speech involves assembling little bundles of signs…
Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ is largely a defense of definite atonement against the hypothetical universalists of his day (see Jonathan Moore’s English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology ). Owen argues that there is an inseparable connection between Christ’s death…
I am not convinced by the texts Owen cites in defense of the notion of a “covenant of redemption,” a “compact” between Father and Son “concerning the work to be undertaken, and the issue or event thereof” ( The Death of Death in the Death of Christ ). But the…
Means are designed to serve ends, and John Owen ( The Death of Death in the Death of Christ ) says that the means are of two sorts. Some are good in themselves without any reference to the means. Others “have no good at all in any kind, as in…
Showing page 755 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
