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Theopolis News

2015 Biblical Horizons Conference

This year’s Biblical Horizons conference was another great success and we would like to thank all those who were involved by helping out with the catering or opening up their homes to attendees and speakers. The talks, open-ended as they were, offered a fresh perspective and food for thought on…

by Abi KayJuly 30, 2015
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Children

Training Tools

I find myself often rehearsing conversations with my children. When the house is quiet in the late evening, and I'm standing in front of a pile of soapy dishes, I think about what I am going to say to them in certain situations. When I am driving in the car,…

by Lindsey TollefsonJuly 30, 2015
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Biblical Studies

Cosmic Language, (Part 1)

In Matthew 24:29 , Jesus employs “cosmic language,” signs in the sun, moon and stars, to predict the imminent end of the Old Covenant. His first-century audience would have recognized His allusion to the prophecy against Babylon in Isaiah 13 and understood His discourse as a condemnation of Jerusalem as…

by Mike BullJuly 28, 2015
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Revelation

Triune God of Israel

The Enthroned One speaks to John (Revelation 21:6): “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.” It's a little theology proper. For starters, there's the Greek version of…

by Peter LeithartJuly 23, 2015
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Homosexuality

Stealing a Page from Our Playbook

In reading about how we got into this mess, I came across a very interesting couple of paragraphs that I think the church could learn from if we are going to counter the Obergefell ruling. Prior to 2009, same sex “marriage” had gone to the ballot box thirty-one times in…

by Rich LuskJuly 21, 2015
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Literature

From Garden to Gate of Hell

In my previous essay on Macbeth , I pointed out that Shakespeare rewrote Scottish history to construct a play which points to Adam’s Fall — a man and a woman tempted by devils to steal the throne and become like gods. It is hard to imagine anyone in Shakespeare’s day…

by Ralph Allan SmithJuly 16, 2015

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Harvesting Fruit

Walter Kasper's Harvesting the Fruits reports on various bi-lateral ecumenical dialogues between Catholics and other traditions—Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed and Methodist. Kasper doesn't pretend that consensus has been achieved, but his little book summarizes the remarkable results of the past several decades. The fruits are healthy in the main. Catholics and…

August 26, 2015

Agents of Recreation

The descendants of Levi constitute three sub-tribes in Israel: the Gershonites, the Kohathites, and the Merarites. Each has a specific role to play in the dismantling and re-erection of the wilderness tabernacle. The Gershonites are in charges of the coverings and screens, the Kohathites with the interior furnishings, and the…

August 26, 2015

New Paradigm in Sociology of Religion

In a wide-ranging 1993 review of work in sociology of Religion, Stephen Warner observes that what he calls the “new paradigm” uses economic imagery but isn't defined by economic imagery. Rather, the defining feature is “the idea that disestablishment is the norm” (1053). That is to say, North American pluralism…

August 25, 2015

Picturing Apocalypse

Picturing the Apocalypse by Natasha and Anthony O'Hear is a wide-ranging study of artistic depictions of the book of Revelation. The introduction is a brief but well-informed survey of the interpretation and use of the apocalypse. Each chapter focuses on one portion or image of the apocalypse - the Lamb,…

August 25, 2015

The Hero of Israel

Most studies of the divine warrior theme in the Old Testament are poetic or comparative. Charlie Trimm argues in “YHWH Fights for Them!” that these studies are too limited; brief poems need the enrichment and complexity of longer narrative treatments. His thorough, workmanlike monograph examines the theme in Exodus 1-15.…

August 25, 2015

Losing God's Love

John C. Peckham addresses the long-standing question of whether God's love is conditional or unconditional in his recent The Love of God: A Canonical Model . Peckham doesn't think that either is a good summary of the whole biblical picture. He prefers to talk about the “foreconditionality” of God's love,…

August 25, 2015

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