Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"The faithful use of sacraments, and indeed a fully sacramental view of creation, is vital to the life of the Church. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are rites that directly shape the community and the Body, because they were given by God for that express purpose. A deficient practice of…
Weightlessness is fun. At the beginning of Gravity (2013) , we can see one astronaut dancing the Macarena and another one playing with his jetpack. They like it out there in the space. Apart from zero-gravity they can enjoy beautiful views, and even the silence is likable, although Matt Kowalski…
I recently went to a lunch that is more or less quarterly. About a dozen of us go. It is a lunch held in honor of a retired professor of religion and philosophy. I have been one of his acquaintances for more than 40 years. In his tenure as professor,…
Why Theopolis? Don't we already have seminaries and Bible colleges and other institutions for theological education? Why do we need another one? I get this question now and again. I ask myself this question even more often. What follows is a partial answer. Back in the 1990s, seminaries seemed to…
I think the logic of the Lutheran Reformation can be summarized in one sentence, attributed to Luther himself: "God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does." The first half of that statement is justification by faith . God doesn't need our works to satisfy his justice or…
If you are looking to start a fight with Christians, there is hardly a better subject to do so than the arts. Music, movies, paintings, and literature have provided no small battlegrounds for Christians to war. We are emotionally invested in the arts. A song, a book, or a film…
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Here’s lectures notes on the first of my lectures on the Trinity at the upcoming Ministerial Conference in Moscow. The next two posts will be notes for my other two lectures. Lecture #1: The Dance of God, the Dance of Life: Perichoresis in Creator and Creature INTRODUCTION Since the patristic…
Silence is often seen as the summit of piety. Barth wisely says: Confronted with the mystery of God, the creature must be silent: not merely for the sake of being silent, but for the sake of hearing. Only to the extent that it attains silence, can it attain to hearing.…
A couple of quotations from Barth (both from Church Dogmatics , II.2, p. 5), not surprising or unusual in the post-Barth theological world, but well said: “We should still not have learned to say ‘God’ correctly (i.e., as understood in the Christian Church and on the basis of Holy Scripture)…
Well, Barth at least agrees that there is a nature/grace dualism implicit in the infralapsarian position. Strikingly, he points to the danger of anthropocentrism in supralapsarianism, arguing that by making the salvation of individual x and the damnation of individual y the primary purpose of the whole show, supras encouraged…
I’m poring over Barth and Berkhouwer on decrees and election, and seem to be making some progress. Try this: The doctrine of the decree is not merely that everything is predetermined. When the decree is formulated this way, it is hard to distinguish from determinism, and the decree has very…
Every tree That sheds autumnal glory In hope of spring Reveals The eternal life Of God
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