Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the Bible, fatness is such a blessing, that it is especially hard to understand why wicked men are permitted to enjoy such a state. It requires a theodicy and faith in God. Thus: “For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek . They are…
[fve]http://vimeo.com/71901553[/fve]
The allusion to the Exodus story is contained in the first words of Deuteronomy 14:1 — “ye are the sons of Yahweh your God” — as well as in 14:2 in the use of the technical term translated “treasured possession,” “His own possession,” “peculiar people,” “precious people,” and so forth.…
I have argued that Deuteronomy 14:1-21 is an independent literary unit that applies the Third Word to the lives of Israelites from the time of Moses and Joshua. In this short pericope, Moses suggests broad and deep meaning by means of literary allusion to the stories of the creation and…
In his recently republished The New Creation , the late, delightful Herbert McCabe defends the priesthood of the plebs as roundly as anyone could want. Citing Hebrews, he claims that "there is an essential difference between the Christian community and the community of the Old Law, or any other religious…
Augustine famously prayed, “Our hearts our restless until they rest in You.” True indeed. Being creatures, we inherently sense our ontological poverty—our innate condition of dependence—and are compelled to find a sense of security. And it is also true—as Augustine’s own narrative painfully illustrates—that one of the things we most…
Showing page 190 of 309
Showing page 43 of 43
Sophie Read's Eucharist and the Poetic Imagination in Early Modern England examines six early modern English poets on the assumption that “particularities of belief can be made manifest in the verbal texture of a literary work: that there is an analogy between the rhetorical and theological plans of understanding, and…
Karen Jobes ( 1 Peter ) understates the point when she says that 1 Peter 3 is “more obscure than we might wish,” but she highlights the central point of Peter's odd claim that Jesus preached to spirits in prison: “(1)Being linked with 3:13-17 by hoti kai (because also, 3:18),…
Susan Holman devotes a few pages of her The Hungry Are Dying , a study of “beggars and bishops” in Cappadocia, to a sketch of Rabbinic teaching on almsgiving, drawn from the writings of the Talmudim. The poor appear in three main contexts in rabbinic writing: “First, they are recognized…
English Bibles rarely employ the words “ceremony,” “rite,” or “ritual” to translate biblical terms. The NASB, for example, uses the words “ritual” and “rite” in only three instances, all having to do with the Passover (Exodus 12:25-26; 13:5). The Authorized Version uses the word “ritual” only at Number 9:3. The…
Anthony Carroll summarizes his Protestant Modernity in a 2009 article in the Archives of European Sociology . Recognizing that Weber's theory of secularization “has greatly influenced later social theorists in their accounts of secularisation, rationalisation, and modernisation,” he wanted to set Weber's theory “within its liberal Protestant heritage.” This is…
The ruined city Babylon is a city where things that used to happen don't happen anymore. John's description is under the rubric “no longer” ( ou eti , used 6x in Revelation 18:21-24). In Babylon, music, crafts, milling, light, and weddings have ceased. The old has passed, the new has…
Showing page 295 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
