Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The “second Reformation” introduced Reformed liturgy and teaching into Lutheran Germany. This was seen by some as a continuation of the Reformation and a purgation of Catholic remnants. The effort to carry on “further reformation” led to disputes with Lutherans. As Bodo Nischan has put it, the hottest debate in…
In J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century , Tom Shippey observes that Bilbo is a member of the middle class, a bourgeois. Bilbo does not have any servants, but his hole is “the home of a member of the Victorian upper-middle class of Tolkien’s nineteenth-century youth, full of…
Idolatry has deprived Israel of her senses. This was one of the early messages to Isaiah (Isaiah 6). Yahweh sent him out to a people who had been deprived of their senses because of their commitment to idols. They become like the idols they serve. They still have eyes, but…
In the current climate of Trinitarian discussion concerning personhood, it's good to reach back to David Bentley Hart's treatment of the subject in his wonderful Beauty of the Infinite . Hart addresses the dangers of misreading Rahner’s rule, namely, the danger of dissolving the ontological Trinity into the economic. In…
Chris Kou is the oldest son of Chinese immigrants. Chris and his brothers run a branding and marketing business, Imagineering, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. In his spare time, he takes online courses from Reformed Theological Seminary, and aspires to be a pastor. Chris is also one of our…
The following was delivered as the Solemn Charge and Exhortation to Theopolis students beginning the Easter term course on Architecture and Liturgical Space . As we will be reminded repeatedly throughout the week, the Bible has a lot to say about building and buildings. Long stretches of Exodus, Kings, Chronicles,…
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The world enters our worship, it is brought into the King’s palace and made part of the King’s worship, so that it can be transformed, so that it can reach its telos . Worship is a microcosm, or, as Jordan puts it, a “microchron.” What is brought into worship? Our…
We often believe, Paul Griffiths writes ( Decreation , 162-4) that eros is “a drive or appetite internal to itself by means of which it relates itself to a world external to itself.” Not so. “The flesh's eros is received as git, not possessed as aspiration.” We become capable of…
In the first of his Hulsean lectures, Richard Hays claims ( Reading Backwards ) that “many ‘mainstream' Protestant churches today are . . . naively Marcionite in their theology and practice: in their worship services they have no OT reading, or if the OT is read it is rarely preached…
John sees great signs in heaven (Revelation 12:1-4). After sweeping the stars from the sky, the dragon stands ready to devour the child that the woman bears. To “stand before” another is a liturgical position. Priests stand before the Lord. That is the position of the dragon in relation to…
A GPS can locate a human being. The “glowing blue dot on the Google-mapped smartphone” shows where your phone is. But, Paul Griffiths ( Decreation ) argues, these devices cannot locate human flesh. Such devices work only as they treat your flesh as “inanimate body,” which is not what it…
Philip Jenkins's contribution to The Globalization of Christianity (edited by Gordon Heath and Steven Studebaker) offers sobering and exciting news by turns. On the sobering side, he describes the statistical stagnation of Christianity, and compares it to the spread of Islam. For the past century, Christianity has held steady at…
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