Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Reformers did not start out with a plan to found separated churches. Their goal was to reform the entire Latin church. In this they failed. The paradox is sharp, and we need to feel its point and its edge if we Protestants are to reckon honestly with our history…
Conversion is a turning from sin to Christ. Now, let's think about that. Does conversion happen only once in a lifetime, or does it happen many times? That is the question, I believe, that needs answering. From my experience, and from my understanding of the Bible and of Christianity, there…
Israel was supposed to be a priest to the nations (Ex. 19:6). Her water would cause their trees to grow. This was signified to all men when Israel came out of Egypt, for "then they came to Elim, where they were twelve springs of water and seventy date palms, and…
Rousing Soviet songs surround us as we pass through a gloomy gauntlet of titanic statues on our way to Kyiv’s Museum of the Great Patriotic War. My friends, a Polish and a Ukrainian pastor, remember the songs, which played incessantly on the radio during their childhood. The sculpture complex depicts…
This is the second installment of a two-part article. Click HERE to read Part I. The fourth perspective on ceremony is that of the action of the Lord's Supper. As we noted before, the inauguration of the Lord's Supper preceded its interpretation. Jesus did not at that point give an…
The best courses are those that make you see the Bible, the church, or the world differently. The recent Theopolis Architecture Course with Daniel Lee did exactly that. Architect Daniel Lee began the week with architectural theory, continued through the week taking students through a history of architectural practice, and…
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In his 2013 book, Saving Face , Stephen Pattison observes that infants very quickly begin to notice and recognize faces, and to imitate the expressions they see. “To be and to become human socially and emotionally,” he writes, “is to engage in real, nuanced, face-to-face visual relations.” When a child…
Between 1900 and 1960, scholars believed that Plato held to a “cosmological” view of the divine, the notion that gods are “personified forces responsible for bringing order to the sensible world.” Since then, scholars have adopted a “metaphysical” interpretation, arguing that Plato's god is finally a metaphysical principle. So argues…
Ryan Leif Hansen ( Silence and Praise ) describes Roman imperial religion as a social contract that bound the gods, the emperor, and the Roman people in a stable, peaceful order: “ Cultic ritual, sacrifice, and the related economic exchange were integral for sustaining the order of the cosmos ,…
Sara Japhet ( I and II Chronicles ) notes the “unusual” structure of the etiological story behind the name “Jabez” in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. Typically, “an aetiology offers an explanation for a given datum (commonly, but not always, a name) by recounting the causes from which it arose and demonstrating…
In his powerful manifesto, Nation of Bastards , Douglas Farrow argues that the Kulturkampf in which we find ourselves began in the early part of the 20th century with “the promotion of sterilization, eugenics, and the contraceptive mentality.” In short, it started “as an attack on children,” more horrifically in…
In his reflections on Carl Schmitt, Paul W. Kahn ( Political Theology ) contrasts Enlightenment political rationalism to Schmitt's political voluntarism. Kant stands as the representative of the rationalist tradition: “For Kant, the question of freedom was that of how a subject could determine his own action in a causally…
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