Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Why there is more to Jephthah than meets than eye It was not that long ago that I realized the Jephthah-story and the Jesus-story were basically the same story. Sounds crazy, I know. But here is a one-paragraph synopsis of both: The people of God have gone their own way,…
G.K. Chesterton famously said that the Gospels don’t reveal Jesus’ mirth. It’s true we never catch Jesus laughing. But can we believe He never did? I don’t think so. Laughter is human, and Jesus was fully human. Jesus promised that those who mourned would laugh. He mourned; would He not…
Matthew 2 has all the elements of an exodus story. There’s a murderous king, who slaughters Jewish babies. There’s a infant who will be Israel’s future deliverer, saved from the murderous king so He can later return to save His people and lead them to the Promised land. There’s an…
The calendar of Israel was primarily theological, centered on commemorating the salvific acts of God, but also agricultural, celebrating the creation-restoring effects of those salvific acts. The feasts of the first month celebrated the reviving of the world in the Spring, and typified the cutting off of the Savior in…
The chiastic shape corresponds to the shape of human life. This should not surprise us, because we are made in the image of God, and God is manifest in Word and Spirit. If we are living epistles, our lives will look a bit like the literary shape of the books…
Back in January, Venkatesh Rao wrote a fascinating post on the Ribbonfarm blog, discussing different forms of models of narrative. Engaging with Ursula LeGuin’s talk ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ , Rao explores her contrast between the (male) ‘hero narrative’ and the (female) ‘carrier-bag story’, and suggests a third…
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The entire Bible is a book of exodus. The Gospel is the good news of exodus, the announcement that the God of exodus has entered our broken world to lead His children from the tomb to His table. The God of exodus comes to lead creation itself into the glorious…
A few additional reflections on National Conservatism and Christian Nationalism. My recurring, obsessive theme is: The dualism isn’t the solution; it’s the problem . First: In his contribution to the Theopolis Conversation on National Conservatism, William Wolfe writes , “NatCon is not trying to ‘save a nation’ in a spiritual…
Over the past week, Theopolis Senior Fellow Alastair Roberts has been embroiled in an intense online controversy. Alastair identified Thomas Achord as the author of racist tweets on a Twitter account that used the pseudonym “Tulius Aadland.” Until the controversy broke out, Achord was headmaster of a classical Christian school…
Two recent books on Christian nationalism became surprise Amazon bestsellers: Christian Nationalism by Gab founder Andrew Torba and pastor Andrew Isker, and The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe. The first is a brief biblical defense of Christian nationalism; the latter is a quasi-Thomistic, two-kingdoms argument for Christian nationalism.…
Romantic thinkers like Johann Gottfried Herder, developed an organic conception of nationhood. For Herder, a nation is an extended family, and so a perfect nation, the most natural state, is “one nation, an extended family with one national character." (I rely on this essay by Richard White.) People have a…
A few weeks ago, I gave an online talk for the Colson Center. These were my opening comments. Let me begin by playing a game theologians often play, the game of challenging the question. The title of this series is, “The Essential Church: Why Christians (and the World) Still Need…
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