Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mystical theologians are often unguarded, extreme, un-nuanced, pressing to the edges of heresy, sometimes beyond. Still, the mystics are worthy of study. Why? Many reasons. Unlike some late medieval and post-Reformation dogmaticians, mystical theologians are often instinctively and richly Trinitarian. Historical-critical approaches to Scripture left mystical theologians virtually untouched; mystics…
Portia of Belmont is a “lady richly left,” as Bassanio says of her in the first Act of The Merchant of Venice . Plus, she’s beautiful and wise. Suitors clamber to Belmont in hope. Her father knew it would be so, and in his will set up a fairy-tale test…
[fve]http://vimeo.com/72195198[/fve]
In the nature of the case, “the” Christian meditation on Deuteronomy 14:1-21 cannot be written. Meditation offers too many possibilities, opens too many doors. There is not one and only one correct set of associations for a Christian to consider when thinking of Deuteronomy 14:1-21. We could, for example, consider…
Having retold the story of the cumulative sin of Israel leading to the great atonement on the cross, Paul then reemphasizes that, just as both Jew and Gentiles were locked into sin and judgment, now they are both justified by faith: Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.…
Deuteronomy 14 is full of allusions to events of Israel’s history and other portions of Scripture. What would an Israelite learn by mediation on these allusions? The answer, I believe, is at least fourfold. Faith, Worship, War For the ancient Israelite first hearing Moses’ sermon, or perhaps hearing it read…
Showing page 189 of 309
Showing page 4 of 43
My friend John Barach pointed me to an interview with Peter Jackson in which Jackson explained the reasons for the change in the ending of the LOTR. Jackson did not, he claims, want to make Frodo heroic; he wanted to leave Frodo with the sense that he failed. Jackson said,…
In the two years I spent in graduate studies with Peter Leithart at New Saint Andrews College, he taught me how to be a good student by being a good student himself. Dr. Leithart read texts with us charitably and patiently. He fully engaged his imagination in reading the Bible…
Jenson ( Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God (Systematic Theology (Oxford Hardcover)) (Vol 1) , 138-9) summarizes how “the christological concept of ‘nature’ has swung back and forth between unhelpful abstraction, as it denoted merely the list of attributes a god or human being must have, and disastrous concretion,…
We address Jesus, Jenson argues, personally, as “human beings to a human being” ( Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God (Systematic Theology (Oxford Hardcover)) (Vol 1) , 137 ). But this man that we address has died and risen, and therefore “we see and hear and touch him in…
Summarizing the various Christologies that led to Chalcedon, Jenson ( Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God (Systematic Theology (Oxford Hardcover)) (Vol 1) , 130-3) points to the fateful influence of Leo’s Tome. It affirms the “unobjectionable” claim that Jesus is “true God” and “true man,” but then adds: “Each…
Pannenberg ( Jesus - God and Man (scm classics) , 285 ) offers a more sympathetic summary of Schleiermacher’s Christology than I have done. He agrees that Schleiermacher’s definition of “nature” as “a limited being existing in opposition to others” doesn’t fly: It “does not meet the patristic doctrine, since…
Showing page 818 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
