Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the first post of this series, I proposed that the sacraments of baptism and communion are the nexus point for the evangelical and ecumenical movements. In the following post , I proposed a new orientation for ecumenism – a conciliarity of the cross – with the necessary confession of…
“Contextualization” is now, and has been for a long time, the buzzword for the day. 1 Missionary effort in non-Western countries is all about “contextualization” — making our communication of the Gospel, if not the Gospel itself, fit into the culture to whom we from the West speak. 2 There…
In my previous post , I highlighted the sacraments as the point of convergence between evangelicalism and ecumenism arguing that baptism and communion are presented in the New Testament as signs of the gospel that simultaneously enact and remember union with Christ and the unity of Christ’s body. I concluded…
Click HERE for Part I of this series. What does baptism have to do with culture? As I said in the previous essay, the short answer is “everything!” To begin with, baptism is baptism into Jesus’ death (Romans 6:3). Paul explains this as the crucifixion of the “old man” (“old…
In the accounts of our Lord’s nativity and early childhood, so familiar to us from many years of Advent and Christmas services, we often fail to recognize in them the gentle intimations of a greater nativity that is yet to come. The attentive ear, however, can discover in these passages…
Isaiah warns that Yahweh is coming to remove Judah’s leaders in every area of social, economic and political life so completely that there will be no one left to lead besides children (3:4) and women (v. 12). As Isaiah goes on, however, it becomes clear that the women of Judah…
Showing page 101 of 309
Showing page 39 of 43
W illiam Johnstone points out in the first volume of his commentary on 1 & 2 Chronicles that the Chronicler's (C) list of the kings of Edom oddly repeats the phrase “then king so-and-so died and there reigned in his place” seven times. In part, this places greater stress on…
I f not unique, Robert Banks's Reenvisioning Theological Education is a rarity among studies of theological education in the amount of attention he devotes to biblical models of education and training. In reviewing recent literature on efforts to rethink seminary education, he notes again and again that little attention is…
R obert Pogue Harrison ( The Dominion of the Dead ) spends several pages on Walter Pater's novel, Marius the Epicurean . A deathbed convert to Christianity, Marius is struck in his first encounter with the church by the continuities between Christianity and the oldest of Roman religions, the religion…
R emember the poor,” Paul told the Galatians. But what did that mean? Peter Brown ( The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity , 39-40) explains that “For early Christians, as for many other ancient persons, memory was far more than a passive storage space.…
A ccording to Lily Gurton-Wachter's Watchwords: Romanticism and the Poetics of Attention , “the first documentation of the disorder we now call Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” is found in “a medical text published in London in 1798.” Scottish physician Alexander Crichton described the “morbid alterations to which attention is subject”…
R obert Pogue Harrison calls the twentieth century “the fitful and prolonged continuation of a process that began in earnest a century earlier: the end of the Neolithic era” ( Dominion of the Dead , 31). One might think that we left the Neolithic a long time ago, but Harrison…
Showing page 276 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
