Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We have moved from death to new life, from Lenten darkness to Easter light. And while Easter Sunday may have come and gone, it's effects are continually with us. This season has brought with it several new relationships, events, and signs of growth for Theopolis. We have been networking with…
In The People's Work , a social history of Christian Worship, Frank Senn summarizes the developments of the medieval period with regard to the Eucharist. He begins by challenging the assumption that medieval society was held together by “the church.” He notes that the church was often divided and conflicted,…
The structure of the Bible resembles something which was grown rather than built, composed rather than assembled. Its employment of “structure-as-sign” at every level from micro- to macrocosmic leads to the conclusion that a hermeneutic worthy of Scripture requires not only training in history, art and music but also the…
For some in first-century Israel, Easter was anything but good news. It was a terrifying surprise. For the rulers and powers that put Jesus to death, the idea that He had been raised by some power beyond their control was chilling. Early in Luke’s gospel, we're told that Herod thought…
Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…
God is not mocked, Paul says. God is mocked, says Matthew. Who’s right? The two are in perfect harmony, but to see that, we need to run through the passage again. We’ll see that at every point, the mockery is being turned against the mockers. At every point, mockery is…
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“Scholars today (though in practice it is more the custom of the popularizers and media exponents) can afford to be snide or patronizing about the missionary movement,” writes Andrew Walls in The Cross-Cultural Process of Christian History . “But many branches of Western learning now exist because of it.” He…
After several chapters of polemic against nomos , Paul finally has a kind word for law, commending the “law of Christ” in Galatians 6:2. Some have suggested that the phrase refers to a set of teachings of Jesus, the sermon on the Mount perhaps as a kind of Christianized Torah.…
Scott Sunquist ( Understanding Christian Mission , 127-8) asks why African Christianity so often developed into independent churches rather than as mission plants from Western churches. He enumerates a number of causes, all of them revealing. One, unsurprisingly, was the “authoritarianism” of Western missionaries: “There were many well-educated and strong…
In a brief review of recent Asian Church history ( From Every Tribe and Nation ), Mark Noll makes the arresting comment that “Mao Zedong counts as one of the most significant figures in modern church history.” Noll hastens to add this was not Mao's intention; rather, it is “because…
I n an essay on “Christianity in the Non-Western World” found in The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History , Andrew Walls observes that “With relatively few (though admittedly important) exceptions, the areas and peoples that accepted Islam have remained Islamic ever since: Arabia seems now so immutably Islamic that it…
At the end of Galatians (6:11-16), Paul picks up on themes from the first part of the letter. In the opening greeting, Paul summarized his gospel as the Son’s self-giving to deliver us from the present evil age. At the end, he says that his participation in the cross means…
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