Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We have moved from death to new life, from Lenten darkness to Easter light. And while Easter Sunday may have come and gone, it's effects are continually with us. This season has brought with it several new relationships, events, and signs of growth for Theopolis. We have been networking with…
In The People's Work , a social history of Christian Worship, Frank Senn summarizes the developments of the medieval period with regard to the Eucharist. He begins by challenging the assumption that medieval society was held together by “the church.” He notes that the church was often divided and conflicted,…
The structure of the Bible resembles something which was grown rather than built, composed rather than assembled. Its employment of “structure-as-sign” at every level from micro- to macrocosmic leads to the conclusion that a hermeneutic worthy of Scripture requires not only training in history, art and music but also the…
For some in first-century Israel, Easter was anything but good news. It was a terrifying surprise. For the rulers and powers that put Jesus to death, the idea that He had been raised by some power beyond their control was chilling. Early in Luke’s gospel, we're told that Herod thought…
Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…
God is not mocked, Paul says. God is mocked, says Matthew. Who’s right? The two are in perfect harmony, but to see that, we need to run through the passage again. We’ll see that at every point, the mockery is being turned against the mockers. At every point, mockery is…
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In the first part of his article “Soul of Reciprocity,” Milbank contrasts Cartesian generosity with Christian: “if the cogito is the donum , it is an impoverished donum . Generosity, in Descartes, begins as generosity towards oneself, or rather, as an expansive willing, that already is, auto-effectively, generosity. It is…
Maarten Wisse scores some points against Trinitarian “participationist” ontology in his 2011 Trinitarian Theology beyond Participation: Augustine’s De Trinitate and Contemporary Theology (T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology) . But there are irritations. Early on, he points out that participationist theologies attempt to redress the modern disenchantment of the world.…
Vickers ( Invocation and Assent: The Making and the Remaking of Trinitarian Theology ) gives a thorough and challenging account of the collapse of Trinitarian theology in seventeenth-century English Protestantism. He thinks that the collapse can be traced to three roots: The appeal to Scripture as the rule of faith;…
Building on the work of Robert Jenson and especially JND Kelly, Jason Vickers argues in Invocation and Assent: The Making and the Remaking of Trinitarian Theology that the proto-creedal affirmations of Trinitarian theology that are found in the various “rules of faith” specifically aim to undergird confidence in the efficacy…
“Despite the contemporary belief that ‘the normal sacrificial cult is a cult without revelation or epiphany,’” writes Kimberley Patton in her Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity , “primary evidence suggests that the Greeks believed that the gods both attended and responded to sacrifice. In Book 12 of…
The cultural history of night is the subject of two recent books. Roger Ekirch’s At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past is a broad history of the uses and symbolism of night prior to the invention of electric lighting. One of his most fascinating discoveries was the habit of segmented…
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