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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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John

And the Holy of Holies Became Flesh

And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory...(John 1:14) Commentaries on John, discussing the Word or Logos in John 1, routinely turn to Greek philosophy and say that John is using a term and at least part of an idea familiar in the ancient…

by James B. JordanMarch 8, 2016
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Contentment

Defining Contentment

Jeremiah Burroughs defines contentment as “that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition” Contentment is one Christian virtue that Americans have an incredibly hard time understanding and applying. We have such comfortable lives that we…

by Lindsey TollefsonMarch 3, 2016
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Course Recap

Out of Exodus

"The goal I have for myself, my family, and my church is total bible saturation. I expected the Exodus Intensive class to help me with that, but I am shocked just how much it did," said Mark Balthrop, a pastor in Oklahoma City who attended Theopolis' recent course on the…

by Brian MoatsMarch 2, 2016
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Atonement

Gospel as Atonement Theory

In a characteristically pithy essay, Robert Jenson has decried the “two paired errors” of traditional atonement theory. On the one hand, the cross is separated “from its future, in the resurrection” and, on the other, from “its past in the canonical history of Israel.” For the apostles, crucifixion is “anything…

by Peter LeithartMarch 1, 2016
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Biblical Theology

What is Systematic Typology? - Part One

The Historical-Grammatical Nanny State Typological interpretation is either abused or frowned upon, a domain relegated to mystics and charlatans, where the angels of modern academia fear to tread. But what if the Bible itself contained safeguards against irresponsible flights of fancy? And if it did, what would they look like?…

by Mike BullFebruary 25, 2016
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Contentment

Beginning Contentment

It is harsh advice for a suffering soul to be told to be content, to be happy, to be delighting in the rough circumstances. Is Christian contentment something we should automatically have as a result of being in Christ? Is it something we do? Is it an action or is…

by Lindsey TollefsonFebruary 23, 2016

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Kantian Eschatology

I n his essay on “The End of All Things,” Kant analyzes the “pious language” that speaks of “a person who is dying as going out of time into eternity.” Kant finds no comfort in the thought. On the contrary there is “something horrifying” about it. The end of time…

January 4, 2017

Urban Utopia

E ric Gilchrest ( Revelation 21-22 in the Light of Jewish and Greco-Roman Utopianism ) suggests that the conclusion vision of Revelation would receive a quite different reaction from its original readers, depending on whether they had been schooled in Jewish or in Greco-Roman Utopian traditions. For a Jewish reader,…

January 3, 2017

Watchers

T he angelic “guards” at the gates of the new Jerusalem are, argues Margaret Barker ( Revelation of Jesus Christ , 323), “probably a memory of the ancient guardians of the city known to Isaiah, ‘the watchmen set on the walls' (Isa. 62.6).” Barker claims that “These ‘watchers' are concealed…

January 3, 2017

Merry Christmas

I ‘m taking a break from blogging over the Christmas holidays. For daily seasonal musings and meditations, see the Theopolis blog .

December 19, 2016
Poetry

Poetic Apocalypse

C hristian Wiman ( My Bright Abyss , 51-2) claims that some poets—“surprisingly few”—possess “a very particular gift for making a thing at once shine forth in its ‘thingness' and ramify beyond its own dimensions.” He sites several lines from Norman MacCaig: “Straws like tame lightnings lie about the grass…

December 16, 2016

Enemy to Life

C hristian Wiman ( My Bright Abyss , 41) quotes a poem, “These Poems, She Said” by Robert Bringhurst, which Wiman says he “carried . . . in my mind like a totem.” It begins: These poems, these poems, these poems, she said, are poems with no love in them.…

December 16, 2016

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