Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Can it be that it has been two whole years since I contributed a Theopolis Post! I had been pursuing the topic of integration: “Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World.” I had defined “integration,” simply, as creative putting together. I had posed that seeking it calls for a fundamentally integrative…
What is known as the miracle of the “Feeding of the Five Thousand” occurs in Mark’s Gospel in chapter 6. As with other gospel writers, Mark has a few different points to make as he moves through this story (included in all four gospel accounts) and its surrounding material. Three…
To begin with the source of this narrative: Since no human being was present to observe these events, we must assume that this narrative was revealed directly by God to a human author. There are three ways this might have happened. First, we might read, "God said to Abraham (or…
The serious Bible student cannot help but be struck by the deviousness of Jacob in Genesis 27. If one already expected some underhanded dealings from this twin-born-second whose name means “supplanter” and whose bargaining with his brother for the birthright in Genesis 25 seemed incredibly weighted in his own favor,…
From Barna stats to mainstream headlines, it seems as though the discordant nature of this last year has taken such a toll on churches in the United States that, for many, the injuries have been fatal. It has become a regular occurrence to hear about a congregation that continues to…
In The Bad News Bears (1976), a city councilman hires a washed-up minor league baseball player with a drinking problem to coach a little league team of leftover misfits. Underdog sports movies are usually full of sentimentalism and dramatic victories, but this film is a commentary on the failing dream…
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One of the most annoying things about critical biblical scholarship is the way that every discussion has to contribute to questions of composition, authorship, historical setting, etc. Harrington gives a very intriguing paper on holiness in Ezra-Nehemiah, but the whole thing is part of a “larger” argument about the common…
Hannah Harrington gave a very fine presentation on the holiness and purity terminology in Ezra and Nehemiah. She showed that these post-exilic texts display an expansion of holy space to encompass the whole city as well as an expansion of the duties of Levites, a closing of the gap between…
John Milbank claims that the Wellhausen documentary hypothesis is shaped by what he calls the “liberal Protestant metanarrative,” the view that Christianity moved from a religion of inner simplicity to a religion of complex external ritual (JEDP traces this story). In his SBL presentation, Nick Perrin of Wheaton showed how…
Carl Mosser of Eastern College gave a superb presentation on deification at the ETS meeting. A large part of the presentation was a study of terminology. He noted that the Greek work THEOS (often thought to be equivalent to “God”) had a broader meaning, referring to powers that were immortal,…
A few further scattered comments from and on Latour. 1) He disputes the notion that the modern world is disenchanted, claiming that the claim of disenchantment is merely the reflex of the Constitution of modernity and its premise that We are completely different from Them. He also attributes the modern…
Some reflections based on an ETS talk by Edward Meadors on Romans 9-11. Meadors suggested that “Esau” in Romans 9 refers to Esau as the patriarch of Edom, well-known for its opposition to Israel throughout the centuries. That is Malachi’s focus in the passage Paul cites. And this is set…
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