Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Along His journey to Jerusalem, Jesus stops frequently to have meals, three times with Pharisees (7:37-50; 11:37-54; 14:1-35). Meals were central to Jesus’ ministry. He comes “eating and drinking” (Luke 7:34). While His meals are not just for refreshment, they are opportunities for teaching the protocols of the kingdom. Meals…
Time as a realm of participation can be difficult for us imaginatively to grasp. While music is a profoundly temporal art, exploring the medium of time like no other, most of our temporal experience seems decidedly unmusical in character, disjointed and unorchestrated. The form in which we naturally discover time…
John devotes much attention to Jesus’ burial clothes. He tells us that Nicodemus brought about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to spice Jesus body, and that He was bound in linen wrappings. We find out that His body and His head were wrapped separately. (John 19:39-40; 20:6-7). When…
Thinking about time in terms of music also helps us to appreciate its unity and inner relations. Henri Bergson observes our cultural habit of dividing time into discrete moments, and conceiving of these as if akin to objects in a spatial succession. [1] Against such a notion, Bergson argues for…
As we attend to these and other aspects of music’s temporality, Begbie suggests, we will find means by which to resist some of our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing time, most especially our tendency to conceive of time as if it were a homogeneous set of technologically quantifiable units laid…
The Hidden Dimension In many fields of scientific study, the apparent complications and contradictions are dispelled once the internal logic is perceived. Biblical hermeneutics is no different, since the author of Creation is the Author of the Word. The Bible’s literary labyrinth radiates organically from an algorithm so simple it…
Showing page 133 of 309
Showing page 39 of 43
When John goes into heaven (Revelation 4-5), he enters a worship service. Four living creatures and twenty-four elders are engaged in a cycle of praise, including a version of the Sanctus and a proclamation of the worthiness of the Creator. When the Lamb appears and takes the book, the worshiping…
David Goldman (“Spengler”) is suitably appalled by the revelations of Peter Schweitzer's Clinton Cash . But he seen enough of global corruption to put the onus where it belongs: “What kind of people are we Americans, that we allow these kleptocrat’s hirelings to persist in public life? The answer, I…
Paul describes the church as a body animated by the Spirit - one body with many members, each member necessary to the health of the body, each making its unique contribution to the common good. It would be consistent with Paul's ecclesiology to use musical rather than somatic images. Each…
Raymond William Baker ( One Islam, Many Worlds of Muslims ) wants to reassure his Western readers. Islam's resurgence isn't mainly driven by extremists and terrorists, but by mainstream Islam of the Islamic renewal: “The source of Islam’s power derives from the far broader al Tagdid al Islami (Islamic Renewal).…
In an article on Revelation 14, David deSilva summarizes recent biblical work that employs a social-rhetorical mode of interpretation. He draws on Vernon Robbins's notion of “rhetography,” the ways in which texts create mental pictures in hearers and readers. This is not to dismiss the more common idea of verbal…
Culture is formed by cult. The liturgy is the first form of culture. What happens in the sanctuary shapes what happens outside. Rivers flow from Eden's garden to the four corners. A spring starts from the throne of God and flows to the Dead Sea, refreshing as it goes (Ezekiel…
Showing page 423 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
