Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Theopolis is delighted to announce that we have hired Brian Moats as Assistant to President Peter Leithart. An Alabama native and graduate of Boyce College in Louisville, Brian is a professional photographer who has also worked as a salesman and dispatcher for Charter Communications and Wayne's Environmental Services. Brian and…
Over the last few years, I have had frequent cause to return to the question of the ways in which the past and its forms of liturgy should be handled within the Church today. Keeping faith with the past is seldom as straightforward an endeavour as it might initially appear,…
The book of Proverbs appears as a largely random collection of aphorisms drawn from experience saturated in law. Despite its random arrangement, however, the book does have an over-arching structure that reinforces its main themes. One way to gather clues regarding the structure of a biblical book (or any book)…
Prior to attending the week-long intensive course on Holistic Mission, my wife and I were living two counties away from Milwaukee, in the comfortably quiet and rural village of Slinger, Wisconsin. In God’s providence, after nearly ten years of living in Slinger, we realized some changes to our comfortable and…
I have many Roman Catholic friends. Leading from my time at Saint Louis University and continuing through various scholarly engagements I often get an opportunity to discuss history and theology with Roman Catholics who are very well educated in their tradition and practice, some of whom are leading scholars in…
Theopolis ended its second year of operation with its Pentecost Term course on Music in Life and Liturgy last week. Co-taught by Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio and scholar-in-residence James Jordan, the Music course was the largest Theopolis course yet. Sixteen pastors, seminary students, and music ministers from nine…
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Throughout the OT, worshipers drew near to God moving from east to west, returning to Eden. The Christian church reversed this, so that Christian worshipers enter by the west door and face east during worship. Is this change justified? What does it signify? No doubt many things, but this at…
1) Jacob goes to Paddan-Aram fleeing from his father’s house; in that far country, he endures abuse and treachery, yet returns with brides and numerous flocks and herds. When he goes out from his father’s house, he has nothing – a staff (32:10) – but he returns to his father’s…
MG Anspach says that “To give a gift in return, to recognize the generosity of the first giver through a corresponding gesture of reciprocity, is to recognize the relation for which the initial gift is only a vehicle.” This helpfully highlights the fact that the return gift is less a…
Levi-Srauss doubts Mauss’ spiritualization of the gift that Mauss draws from the Maori concept of “hau,” the power that is communicated in, with, and under the gift. Rather, hau is “the conscious form whereby men of a given society . . . apprehended an unconscious necessity whose explanation lies elsewhere.”…
Thanks to NSA librarian Ed Iverson for providing references to Mark Twain’s “Letters from Earth,” where he assaults Christianity, and in several places mocks Christian gratitude to God. For instance: “Just so with diseases. If science exterminates a disease which has been working for God, it is God that gets…
Andrew Galloway traces the development of explicit discussions of gratitude in a 1994 article from the Journal of the History of Ideas. A few highlights: 1) Though he admits that gratitude was not “‘invented’ at some moment in human culture,” and that it was “the basis for social and religious…
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