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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I am preaching through Luke at Trinity Reformed Church, and I will be posting sermon notes at this site. Here are the notes from last week’s sermon: Things Fulfilled Among Us, Luke 1:1-56 INTRODUCTION Luke’s gospel is the first part of a two-volume work. Luke wrote his gospel to tell…
At the beginning of the worship service at Trinity Reformed Church, where I’m serving as organizing pastor, I give an exhortation. Here is the exhortation for this week: This week, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) confirmed Gene Robinson, an openly…
Bruce Ellis Benson’s Graven Ideologies , a study of Nietzsche, Derrida, and Marion, confirms something I’ve suspected from my sketchy reading of Derrida. Benson says that Derrida emphasizes that all thought is set in a structure of “not yet but still to come.” This is Derrida’s famed notion that final…
I’ve been reading a good bit of Mikhail Bakhtin this summer, and have come across some pretty mind-blowing passages in his Dialogic Imagination and Rabelais and his World . The following quotations have to do with the role of humor in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The laughing, parodic-travestying literature…
Another article from Biblica , this time from 1991, on the use of ” herem ” (“the ban”) in 1 Kings 20:42, where it is part of the Lord’s complaint against Ahab after he lets Ben Hadad go free. Philip Stern argues that the author of Kings uses the word…
There’s a neat little study of 1 Kings 16:34 (Hiel’s rebuilding of Jericho) in a 1996 issue of Biblica . Charles Conroy, the author, begins with a structural analysis of 1 Kings 16:29-34. He points out that grammatically the passage breaks down into an introductory statement (29a), a summary of…
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