Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mrs. Marguerite Lane of Grand Rapids writes to ask if I have ever noticed a correlation between the eight beatitudes of Matthew 5 and the eight woes of Matthew 23. I confess that I have not. A glance at various commentators reveals that such a correspondence does not seem to…
1. The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, the burden. The man declares to Ithiel, to Ithiel and Ucal: 2. Surely I am more stupid than any other man, And I do not have the understanding of a man. 3. And I have not learned wisdom, But I have…
Psalm 137 is widely regarded as one of the meanest of the imprecatory psalms. Certainly as we read it it is seems to be a song of pure vengeance. The exiles in Babylon, in grief over the judgment that Babylon has brought upon them, pray for the destruction of that…
In the Levitical law, the priests received two particular portions of each peace offering: the "wave offering" of the breast and the "heave offering" (or better, "contribution") of the right thigh. The purpose of this essay is to attempt to determine the reason why the second of these, the thigh,…
The story of Jesus’ visit, early in His ministry, to the synagogue in His home town of Nazareth is recorded for us in Luke 4:16-30. You may remember that Jesus read from Isaiah about how the Messiah would preach the gospel, care for the poor, work miracles, and bring in…
(The essay that follows concerns a rather touchy subject: how the Lord’s Supper is to be done. I am not writing to insult or offend, but to challenge. To that end I have not "held back" but have "gone ahead" and said what I think needs to be said —…
Showing page 308 of 309
Showing page 39 of 43
According to the traditional church calendar, we are several Sundays into Trinity season. Trinity season begins with Trinity Sunday, which is the first Sunday after Pentecost, and Trinity season stretches through the summer and into the autumn, until the beginning of Advent. It is the longest of the seasons of…
Numbers 13:32 Throughout the OT, the land promised to Israel is described as a ?land flowing with milk and honey.?E This is an image of rich abundance, of course, but it is particularly an image of the rich abundance of food. God did not choose a land where Israel would…
Enrique Krauze provides some powerful criticisms of Samuel Huntington’s claims about the influence of Mexican immigration on American cultural identity in the June 21 issue of TNR . Huntington argues in his recent book that there is a core American culture, and it is “Anglo-Protestant.” Mexicans, Spanish-speaking and Catholic, threaten…
James Woods perceptively notes that the triumph of theory in literary studies is less the triumph of Marx than the triumph of Freud: “One of the decisive changes that theory effected was to introduce the idea that texts do not know themselves. It is the critic’s business to reveal their…
Writing on Joyce’s Ulysses just before the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, Declan Kiberd notes the oddity of the ending: “the climax of Ulysses is a meeting between two men, the young poet Stephen Dedalus and the older ad-canvasser Leopold Bloom . . . . The meeting of Dedalus and Bloom…
Can there be a Creator-creature distinction without the Trinity? It would seem not. For a unitarian theology “distance” is introduced only with the world; for a unitarian god to be at a distance, there must be something to be at a distance FROM. But because “distance” is not of the…
Showing page 2081 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
