Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The “second Reformation” introduced Reformed liturgy and teaching into Lutheran Germany. This was seen by some as a continuation of the Reformation and a purgation of Catholic remnants. The effort to carry on “further reformation” led to disputes with Lutherans. As Bodo Nischan has put it, the hottest debate in…
In J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century , Tom Shippey observes that Bilbo is a member of the middle class, a bourgeois. Bilbo does not have any servants, but his hole is “the home of a member of the Victorian upper-middle class of Tolkien’s nineteenth-century youth, full of…
Idolatry has deprived Israel of her senses. This was one of the early messages to Isaiah (Isaiah 6). Yahweh sent him out to a people who had been deprived of their senses because of their commitment to idols. They become like the idols they serve. They still have eyes, but…
In the current climate of Trinitarian discussion concerning personhood, it's good to reach back to David Bentley Hart's treatment of the subject in his wonderful Beauty of the Infinite . Hart addresses the dangers of misreading Rahner’s rule, namely, the danger of dissolving the ontological Trinity into the economic. In…
Chris Kou is the oldest son of Chinese immigrants. Chris and his brothers run a branding and marketing business, Imagineering, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. In his spare time, he takes online courses from Reformed Theological Seminary, and aspires to be a pastor. Chris is also one of our…
The following was delivered as the Solemn Charge and Exhortation to Theopolis students beginning the Easter term course on Architecture and Liturgical Space . As we will be reminded repeatedly throughout the week, the Bible has a lot to say about building and buildings. Long stretches of Exodus, Kings, Chronicles,…
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Basics of the biblical symbolism of birds 1)Birds were created on Day 5 of the creation week, along with swarmers of the sea, i.e., fish. Earlier, Elohim had formed earth into a three-decker house, firmament above, earth beneath, waters under the earth. He fills the firmament on Day 4 (with…
A highlight from the latest edition of Mars Hill Audio . If you're not a subscriber, shame on you.D.C. Schindler explains the significance of the classical claim that actuality is prior to potentiality. It means that potential is limited (and also unleashed) by the particular thing that a thing is.…
Thomas Aquinas ( ST I-II, q. 100, art. 5) compares the role of law in human communities with the role of divine law in the commonwealth of men under God: “just as the precepts of human law direct man in his relations to the human community, so the precepts of…
In an essay in a Festschrift for Daniel Block (available here ), Jason DeRouchie wants to teach us to count to ten, as in Ten Commandments. He examines the Hebrew cantillation signs, discourse features, stylistic elements of the Ten to settle which of the various numbering systems is preferable. One…
The "shadow" of sacrificial, tragic mythos, writes David Bentley Hart (in an essay on the First Word in I Am the Lord Your God ), "falls across the philosophical schools of antiquity" (63). Ancient philosophy wasn't, in short, a systematization of obvious common sense, but of ancient common sense. Which…
In the second volume of Robert Jenson’s Systematic Theology (2001), he discusses the Ten Words. His treatment of “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is profoundly important. Sexuality is the intersection of sensuality and reproduction. Sensuality is “the sheer fact that the subject is drawn to an object; it is captivation…
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