Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I've pastored a very rural church for well over a decade. Our town has about 1,000 people and will never grow until Jesus returns. 38 people attend our worship on Sundays. Here's a quick list of what we’ve done to grow our church, and what I’ve done to survive pastorally.…
Thanks for sharing so honestly about your current crisis of creativity. I totally understand and relate to that; it’s happened many times in my musical life thus far, and I’ve begun to accept it as a normal rhythm of the creative process. I actually went through a serious dry spell…
The Broken Stones of Israel At Sinai, the tablets of the Law of Moses were broken and restored. The Old Testament is a history of “new covenants,” including that promised in Jeremiah and fulfilled in Zechariah. Ultimately, the vertical Oath and the horizontal Sanctions met in the death of Jesus…
Woe to the sinful nation. Woe to those who enlarge their estates and build their portfolios. Woe to the drunks. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Woe to the proud who are wise in their own eyes. Woe to Congressmen who pass unjust laws and to…
The interpretation of Romans 7:7-25 is notoriously difficult. Good scholars disagree on many aspects of the passage, but the central interpretative difficulty concerns the identity of the “I.” Is Paul referring to himself? Is Paul referring to himself pre- or post-conversion? Does the “I” refer to Adam? Is the “I”…
You board the Metra train at Arlington Heights station one afternoon, heading to downtown Chicago for some sight-seeing. As the train departs from the station, a man in jeans, a striped t-shirt, and a Kansas City Royals baseball cap enters your train car, and begins asking to see each passenger’s…
Showing page 108 of 309
Showing page 38 of 43
The sexual laws of Leviticus 18 have long been puzzling on a couple of levels. The logic of the arrangement of the laws is difficult to discern; the gaps in the laws seems inexplicable (no prohibition, for instance, of father-daughter incest); and the question of how obedience to these laws…
The phrase “righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17 has been the subject of considerable dispute in recent years, with many abandoning a standard Protestant interpretation of the passage (i.e., that the righteousness of God refers to the righteousness that God gives) in favor of a more redemptive-historical understanding (righteousness as…
Theodore Jennings and Tat-Siong Benny Liew have a curious article in the Fall 2004 issue of JBL . They offer an alternative interpretation of the story of the centurion of Matthew 8, an interpretation that hangs on taking “PAIS” not as “slave” or “son” but as “boy-lover.” They find plenty…
In a review of Joseph von Eichendorff’s collected works ( TLS , October 1, 2004), Carol Tully points out the fascination of German Romantics for Spain: “For the poets and theoreticians of the Romantic age in German, Spain was somewhere very special indeed. The nation and its culture were eulogized…
Some intriguing quotations from Luther’s treatise on Two Kinds of Righteousness . 1) The first sort is “alien righteousness”: “The first is alien righteousness, that is the righteousness of another, instilled from without. This is the righteousness of Christ by which he justifies though faith, as it is written in…
INTRODUCTION Because of the imperfections of the reformation of the Eucharist in the sixteenth century, and because of the alien influences that have affected the practice of the Eucharist in the centuries since, there is much left to do in order to renew the Table. The Reformation must at this…
Showing page 2042 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
