Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Optimism is “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” 1 On the other hand, pessimism is “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.” We can see that optimism and…
If we wish to understand the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must begin with seeing them as a part of the creational order. Trees, along with plants and seed-bearing things, come to life by the word of God as part of…
“I chant slips and irreversible disasters, wiltings, failures, scars, the little disappointments and the large, blue streaks down a world that wishes it was only suncolors.” Paul J. Pastor from Kintsugi Song I recently lost something very valuable. Something I’d had for years and used every day. But, it wasn’t…
In his eponymous book, Jonah follows an exodus pattern. He travels through the waves and east of the city into the wilderness. On a first reading, it looks like another use of this common literary shape in the Old Testament: salvation through the waters of death and the wilderness of…
“Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The unknowing master of ceremonies didn’t know how right he was. We see this play out in John’s apocalypse. The end is like the beginning,…
Read in isolation, The Test of Adultery (Num 5:11-31) presents the reader with a seemingly bizarre ritual, conjuring up ideas bordering on the Salem Witch Trials. Beyond this, pressing questions linger—such as, “Why is the woman in particular singled out, while no test is provided for the husband of a…
Showing page 23 of 309
Showing page 40 of 43
Virgil is not a critic of empire, but he’s not quite an unqualified celebrant either. He knows the costs, and mourns them. But neither he nor his hero wishes the conquests away. Sunt lacrimae rerum , indeed, but neither the tears nor the things are going to cease. This is…
In a review of Harry Frankfurt’s On Truth (a sequel to Frankfurt’s widely read On Bulls*** ), Oxford’s Simon Blackburn offers a neat summary of postmodern notions of truth. He questions the tendency to use postmodernism as a “whipping boy” against whom “many readers may feel that no insult is…
For anyone with $150 of spare change, Cambridge University Press has just published what it’s calling the first-ever complete English translation of Isidore’s Etymologies , one of the most widely studied books in Christendom between 600 and 1600.
Thanks to Chris Morris for suggesting this line of thinking about 1 John 2:28-29. 1 John 2:28: Little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. As I’ve emphasized a couple of times this…
1 John 3:1: See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. Throughout this passage, John speaks about two different genealogies, two different families, two different kinds of people. On the one hand are those who…
We live out the Christian life, John says, between appearances of Christ. He appeared first to remove sin and to loose us from the works of the devil, and He appears again as judge and to transform us into His likeness. But Jesus comes again and again, not just twice.…
Showing page 1764 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
