Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In a February blog post for the Theopolis Institute, Benoît Engel offers a thought-provoking challenge to the widely accepted five-discourse structure of Matthew’s Gospel, proposing a sixth discourse in Matthew 21:28–22:14 to reframe the Gospel’s chiastic center. As someone deeply invested in Matthew’s literary design—explored in my book Reading Matthew,…
Avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and useless. Titus 3:9 Out of a deep love and care for the church, Paul tells Titus and those in the church to avoid four specific things: foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law.…
Theopolis publishes many polemics, especially on the Sacraments. This piece does not necessarily reflect the views of Theopolis, her board, or her editors. -JW Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days.He shall cleanse himself with the water on the third day and on the…
There is in the United States and the Western World some sort of religious revival occurring. Gen Z men—males born between ca 1997 and 2012—are flooding back in to churches. USA Today noted that Gen Z men—and to a lesser degree women—attending churches more than their millennial predecessors and they…
The primary task of many Biblical scholars (as they see it) is to explain how and why the Biblical text acquired its final form—i.e., what source material it used, how that material was expanded/redacted, who expanded/redacted it, why they did so, what the weather was like at the time, etc.…
Galatians 5:5-15 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from…
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Paul’s discussion of the future of Israel assumes Jesus’ predictions about the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. This is what he’s talking about when he talks about “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” and when he quotes from Hosea and Isaiah in 9:25-29. In 9:27, the “remnant” does…
INTRODUCTION As a church, we believe that before the foundation of the world God ordained whatever happens in the world, down to the slightest detail. But this seems to be contrary to some explicit statements of Scripture, which talk about God changing His plans. And it seems to nullify the…
In a 1975 article in JBL, one Bruce Dahlberg suggests that the background to Matthew 16:13-23 is less Isaiah 22 (the “key” of Eliakim’s shoulder) than Jeremiah 1, the call of the prophet. Some of his arguments rely on extrabiblical associations of keys with the temple (this has a biblical…
In his study of Matthew’s five-discourse structure, BW Bacon mentions commentators who connect the miracles of Matt 8-9 with the ancient idea that there were 10 plagues, 10 miracles by the sea, and 10 miracles in the sanctuary. His main reasin for disputing this interpretation is that the sequence, in…
Dale Allison notes that Matthew “stipulates that it be interpreted in the context of other texts. This means that it is, in a fundamental sense, an incomplete utterance, a book full of holes. Readers must make present what is absent; they must become actively engaged and bring to the gospel…
The Jewish scholar GC Montefiore wrote: “What one would have wished to find in the life-story of Jesus would be one single incident in which Jesus actually performed a loving deed to one of his Rabbinic antagonists or enemies. That would have been worth all the injunctions of the Sermon…
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