Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Along His journey to Jerusalem, Jesus stops frequently to have meals, three times with Pharisees (7:37-50; 11:37-54; 14:1-35). Meals were central to Jesus’ ministry. He comes “eating and drinking” (Luke 7:34). While His meals are not just for refreshment, they are opportunities for teaching the protocols of the kingdom. Meals…
Time as a realm of participation can be difficult for us imaginatively to grasp. While music is a profoundly temporal art, exploring the medium of time like no other, most of our temporal experience seems decidedly unmusical in character, disjointed and unorchestrated. The form in which we naturally discover time…
John devotes much attention to Jesus’ burial clothes. He tells us that Nicodemus brought about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to spice Jesus body, and that He was bound in linen wrappings. We find out that His body and His head were wrapped separately. (John 19:39-40; 20:6-7). When…
Thinking about time in terms of music also helps us to appreciate its unity and inner relations. Henri Bergson observes our cultural habit of dividing time into discrete moments, and conceiving of these as if akin to objects in a spatial succession. [1] Against such a notion, Bergson argues for…
As we attend to these and other aspects of music’s temporality, Begbie suggests, we will find means by which to resist some of our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing time, most especially our tendency to conceive of time as if it were a homogeneous set of technologically quantifiable units laid…
The Hidden Dimension In many fields of scientific study, the apparent complications and contradictions are dispelled once the internal logic is perceived. Biblical hermeneutics is no different, since the author of Creation is the Author of the Word. The Bible’s literary labyrinth radiates organically from an algorithm so simple it…
Showing page 133 of 309
Showing page 6 of 43
Mary Lefkowitz ‘s Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths was published last year, and has been a recent selection for the Conservative Book Club . Lefkowitz argues that though we no longer share ancient theology, we “still have much to learn from listening to what the…
Victor M. Wilson’s book, Divine Symmetries , studies literary and numerological patterns in the Bible. He has a chapter on Luke-Acts, and includes some fairly standard material about the structural parallels between the two books, but draws some interesting conclusions. Here is a reproduction of his page summarizing the parallel…
Tom Aitken reviews The Passion of the Christ in the March 26 issue of the London Times Literary Supplement , and says everything I would want to say about the weaknesses of the film, and more. Aitken goes off track a few times when he talks about the gospels themselves,…
This was delivered at a joint Trinity-Christ Church Good Friday Service, April 9 2004. 1 Corinthians 2:8-9: We speak God?s wisdom among you in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age had understood;…
This article is reprinted from Tabletalk 25.4 (April 2001): 9-10, 54. Thanks to John Barach for typing it up for use here. Many today boast of near-death experiences. I do not. I have never had a near-death experience. But I am not intimidated by those who have, because I can…
The Westminster Dictionary of Worship has this explanation for the name Maundy Thursday: “The title for Thursday in Holy Week derives through Old French mande from the Latin ‘mandatum novum,’ ‘a new commandment’ (John 13:34), associated with the ceremonial washing of feet, which is still continued in some token form…
Showing page 2101 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
