Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
That there is something wrong with the world is obvious. It does not take much time or brilliance to notice it. Once we get the feeling that we could imagine a better world, we are tempted to fix it or, if we cannot, to escape it. For both the world-fixers…
“Our Father in heaven,” what is man that we should be called your sons and daughters, beloved children of God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, Yahweh of Hosts, the Ancient of Days. You are not a father preoccupied with work or engrossed in your smartphone; you are a present…
The Son of God took on human flesh and entered into the sin and suffering of our world. His life and teaching and suffering from His conception to His suffering on the cross teaches us a lot about how the good news enters into the world. Recently, I was teaching…
There is an unspoken rule about typology that permeates Evangelical thinking. It goes something like this: “If the New Testament authors don’t use an Old Testament character as a type, we don’t either.” There is a soundness in this reasoning, at least in a preliminary sense. There is no better…
In The world of Silence, Max Picard writes, “There does not seem to be any space left where there could possibly have been anything but noise. We take it for granted much as we take the air itself for granted. Everything begins and ends with noise.” Is it fair to…
God is Not There God is not in the book of Esther. Do a word search and you will get 0 results. Also try Lord, Yahweh, Prayer, Temple, or Sacrifice. Even names with God’s name in them, like Elijah, Jeremiah, or Daniel are missing. The fool says in his heart,…
Showing page 57 of 309
Showing page 39 of 43
Sophie Read's Eucharist and the Poetic Imagination in Early Modern England examines six early modern English poets on the assumption that “particularities of belief can be made manifest in the verbal texture of a literary work: that there is an analogy between the rhetorical and theological plans of understanding, and…
Karen Jobes ( 1 Peter ) understates the point when she says that 1 Peter 3 is “more obscure than we might wish,” but she highlights the central point of Peter's odd claim that Jesus preached to spirits in prison: “(1)Being linked with 3:13-17 by hoti kai (because also, 3:18),…
Susan Holman devotes a few pages of her The Hungry Are Dying , a study of “beggars and bishops” in Cappadocia, to a sketch of Rabbinic teaching on almsgiving, drawn from the writings of the Talmudim. The poor appear in three main contexts in rabbinic writing: “First, they are recognized…
English Bibles rarely employ the words “ceremony,” “rite,” or “ritual” to translate biblical terms. The NASB, for example, uses the words “ritual” and “rite” in only three instances, all having to do with the Passover (Exodus 12:25-26; 13:5). The Authorized Version uses the word “ritual” only at Number 9:3. The…
Anthony Carroll summarizes his Protestant Modernity in a 2009 article in the Archives of European Sociology . Recognizing that Weber's theory of secularization “has greatly influenced later social theorists in their accounts of secularisation, rationalisation, and modernisation,” he wanted to set Weber's theory “within its liberal Protestant heritage.” This is…
The ruined city Babylon is a city where things that used to happen don't happen anymore. John's description is under the rubric “no longer” ( ou eti , used 6x in Revelation 18:21-24). In Babylon, music, crafts, milling, light, and weddings have ceased. The old has passed, the new has…
Showing page 295 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
