Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up in the 1950s. This was before the "Sixties" and the democratization, informalization, and general cheapening of the church and her worship. Ministers were Father Donovan, Pastor Eckhart, Reverend MacPherson, Mister (Episcopal) Parker, and Brother Smith. Liturgical speech was high language, sounding kind of like the King James…
Metaphor exerts a surprisingly powerful influence within our thinking. Although it is easily dismissed as little more than a figure of speech, when we attend more closely to the ways in which we use it, metaphor’s importance swiftly becomes more apparent. Although many of our metaphors have become quite invisible…
What is a tree, scientifically speaking? A mere googling gives the following answer: “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.” We can increase detail by describing its family, genus, species and…
The majority of Western evangelical Christians rarely, if ever, fast as a form of spiritual discipline. In our culture, fasting is more connected with dieting than worship, the other side of our deeply ambiguous fascination with food. Food is everywhere. We eat more than ever before, at greater speed, and…
A Grammar of Creation An understanding of the visual-musical language of the Bible must begin with Genesis 1. This is fortunate, because when explaining biblical types to academics, as opposed to children, one is repeatedly forced to start from scratch. From birth, a healthy child is attuned to rhythm and…
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have…
Showing page 134 of 309
Showing page 36 of 43
A recent issue of Science News reports that rats live longer if they are constantly stimulated by novelty. Rats that have nothing to look forward to but another day in the maze or on the wheel die sooner. That may say something about human beings, but it certainly gives us…
In offering his nominations for “Books of the Year,” Tom Shippey (TLS, Dec 5) tells the following story: “Some years ago a Farmborough biker with an interest in the occult climbed Glastonbury Tor and asked the Goddess to help him find Excalibur before the next full moon. The day before…
How is it that the unity of the Church shows the world that the Father has sent the Son, as Jesus says in John 17? There are doubtless many dimensions to this, but here’s one possibility: The unity of the disciples, the way they share their lives together in harmony…
Rich Lusk of the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, LA, put me onto the works of M.F. Sadler, a late 19th-century Anglican theologian, and I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve found there. For example: In the first chapter of his Church Doctrine, Bible Truth , Sadler points out…
Eucharistic Meditation for Fourth Sunday in Advent: I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon today the error that some Christians have fallen into of resting the whole of our redemption on the incarnation itself. They treat Christmas as if it were detachable from the life of Jesus, from Good…
Exhortation for Fourth Sunday in Advent: For many the Christmas season is not a time of good cheer but almost the opposite. It’s a time of frustration, anxiety, bad temper, family strife, and disappointed expectations. It’s a time when kids eat too much candy, which leads first to hyperactivity and…
Showing page 2148 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
