Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The story of Judges 19 and the subsequent chapters are some of the most shocking and appalling accounts in all of Scripture. The callousness of the old host and the Levite, and the monstrous brutality of the men of Gibeah, leaves us feebly scrabbling for words by which to surmount…
David has become king. He has conquered the capital city of Jerusalem. He has brought the ark of Yahweh into the city and placed it in a tent. He has stationed Levites at the tent to offer sacrifices of praise. An anomaly hits him: He has a cedar-paneled palace, and…
In Part 2 of this series we traced what we have of the development of the epiclesis in the liturgy of the Church. In this third and final part we’ll look at the theological implications of this and how we may apply what we’ve learned. As we saw in Part…
In a 2014 piece published in First Things , I offered a "wish list" for Protestant churches, a checklist for a future catholic Protestantism. The wish list doesn't cover everything. It doesn't mention those things that Protestants, especially Evangelicals, already do, often exceedingly well, things like missions and evangelism and…
In the first part of this series we examined the meaning of “blessing” in Scripture and its parallels in Jewish liturgical tradition, but did not find anything that we could properly call an epiclesis (an invocation of the Holy Spirit). We did find examples of invocation of Jesus to “come”…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
Showing page 123 of 309
Showing page 43 of 43
Russell Moore gave a vigorous presentation at ETS on why egalitarians are winning the evangelical gender debate. He summarized some of the recent sociological work on evangelical family life, which presents a mixed picture. On the one hand, Bradford Wilcox’s Soft Patriarchs, New Men shows that evangelical fathers are not…
In For the Time Being , W. H. Auden described Herod’s reaction to the news that “God has been born.” If this is true, and if the news gets out, Herod thinks, all is lost; confusion will reign. The passage is one of the most effective descriptions of the nature…
In For the Time Being , W. H. Auden described Herod’s reaction to the news that “God has been born.” If this is true, and if the news gets out, Herod thinks, all is lost; confusion will reign. The passage is one of the most effective descriptions of the nature…
Lundin spends considerable time describing Emerson’s rejection of Christian orthodoxy in favor of an American version of Romanticism, and shows that Emerson’s departure from orthodoxy centered on his rejection of the Eucharist. Emerson resigned his post at the Second Church of Boston because he could no longer administer the Supper…
Toward the close of Lundin’s book, he offers a number of intriguing criticisms of CS Lewis as a literary critic. He claims that while Lewis recognized the corrosive effects of the Enlightenment and Romantic conception of the self in his theological writings, he adopted a form of romanticism in his…
One of the important themes that emerges from Lundin’s book (mentioned in the previous post) is the centrality of gratitude in thought. Heidegger, he says, “was fond of the seventeenth-century Pietist phrase Denken ist Danken , ‘to think is to thank.’” Lundin expounds the point a few pages later: “Through…
Showing page 1924 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
