Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I live in an area where Mardi Gras is in full swing, and I can remember from my upbringing that Fat Tuesday was a last ditch effort at debauchery before the pseudo-spiritual practice of “giving something up for Lent” really began. In my youth I would give up some kind…
Part 1: Observations from the Texts (Matthew 9:14-17, Mark 2:18-22, Luke 5:33-39) The precipitating context for the new wine/old wineskins discussion is people asking Jesus why His disciples did not fast. His immediate answer is that you can’t get the friends of the groom to fast at the bachelor party…
Simply, “progress” means to move forward. In that sense, a slug can progress from one end of the sidewalk to the other. But for us in twenty-first century America, progress means something else. For us, it is almost a synonym for goodness. The slug can only “progress” if the other…
I have the privilege of being able to counsel a lot of women who are seeking abortions. I can tell you that the majority of them are seeking to end their pregnancies not because they feel like it would be a fun thing to do, but because they are scared…
Last night, along with a few online friends, I watched this debate on the meaning of life between William Lane Craig, Rebecca Goldstein, and Jordan Peterson, hosted by Wycliffe College. While watching it, and reflecting upon Peterson’s work more generally (about which I’ve written in the past ), I was…
I’m glad to have been invited to contribute regularly to the Theopolis Institute website. Thank you, readers, for welcoming and joining what I hope will be a venture of integration. Integration itself is what I want to explore. And for me personally, this is the shape of my current integrative…
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When Hebrews 13:15 exhorts believers to offer a continuous sacrifice of praise to God, we naturally think of a continuous offering of verbal or sung praise. That is how the verse ends: “the fruit of lips that confess His name.” The sacrifice of praise is verbal, but I suspect that…
Many OT scholars emphasize the commonalities between Ancient Near Eastern and biblical cosmologies. While recognizing a similarity, Guthrie rightly points to the radical difference in this comment on Psalm 82 and Genesis 1 ( Theology as thanksgiving: From Israel’s Psalms to the church’s Eucharist , p. 36): These passages “are…
Harvey Guthrie’s Theology as thanksgiving: From Israel’s Psalms to the church’s Eucharist has multiple problems, but I think he gets the meaning of zedek (“righteous”) just right (p. 9): “the original meaning of zedek may have been been connected with the action of a protector god toward a devotee who…
In his Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (Clarendon Paperbacks) , Richard Seaford traces a shift from Homeric interpersonal reciprocity to the impersonal cult of the Greek polis . Seaford believes this transition in the sources of power and legitimacy are reflected in the development of…
A NYTBR review of White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf highlights the “Pharisaical” motives behind the push for white bread: “At the turn of the 20th century, urbanization outpaced civic infrastructure. Most bread was baked at home, but in dank city bakeries, bakers worked around the clock…
Several friends have objected to this statement of mine from a recent post on natures and substances: “‘The finite cannot contain the infinite’ was an axiom of Greek philosophy. But the incarnation says the opposite.” My friends have said (nicely) that this statement was at least unguarded and at worst…
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