Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
References to the Son of Man coming on the clouds occur five times in the Synoptic Gospels. Three times such expressions appear in the parallel accounts of the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:36; Luke 21:27). Then, in parallel accounts of Jesus’ trial before the leaders of Israel, such expressions…
Just what the difference is in the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the New Testament is a question not so easily answered. The distinction is often said to be that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit is on the believer, but in the New…
1. Introduction You should think of 1917 at church on Sunday. Why? Let me explain. There's one film every Oscar season which everyone seems to have watched—your parents, your colleagues, even your pastor. This year, it's 1917— Sam Mendes' WW1 epic following two British Tommies on a seemingly impossible quest…
This piece was originally part of the Bowyer response to the Theopolis series surrounding Professor McDermott’s essay, “Rethinking Israel.” For the sake of brevity, it was removed from the initial response, to be published as a standalone piece. As we’ve argued previously , we are strongly supportive of the right…
Richard Bauckham’s groundbreaking work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony , is profoundly insightful, but the message of the book is hampered by the presupposition of Marcan priority. Ironically the place where this assumption perhaps does its most damage is in Bauckham’s discussion of the apostle Matthew…
The Protestant Reformation was defined by certain clarifying disagreements between the medieval Church and those who came to be known as Protestant Reformers. Chief among these was the nature of justification: whether one was justified by works, or by faith and works, or—as Martin Luther contended—by faith alone. Now over…
Showing page 70 of 309
Showing page 7 of 43
Tim Parks offers this depressingly familiar description of what it’s like to read today . “Every moment of serious reading has to be fought for, planned for. Already by the late 1990s, translating on computer with frequent connections (back then through a dial-up modem) to check email, I realized that…
Andrew Shepherd travels some ways with Levinas and Derrida in his The Gift of the Other , but like other critics he finds that Derrida and Levinas cannot finally support their ethic of hospitality and welcome. He cites David Wood’s criticism that Derrida’s notion of unrestricted, unbounded hospitality smacks of…
According to Eric Costanzo’s study of John Chrysostom’s theology of alms ( Harbor for the Poor ), John considered the judgment scene of Matthew 25 as “this sweetest passage” concerning God’s role in almsgiving and the place of alms in the church. Costanzo writes, “John used this text to illustrate…
Robin Parry’s Worshipping Trinity , now in its second edition, is a solid overview of Trinitarian theology and its implications for worship. He opens with an overview of the Trinity in Scripture and sums of Christian orthodoxy before turning to liturgical questions per se - to Trinity in prayer, song,…
Daniel Lewis goes bird watching, and bird watchers need to know their colors. Lewis is also an historian, so he got interested in how color terms came to be standardized. The work of another bird-watcher was decisive: “Other important color dictionaries were published at the start of the 20th century…
Partly based on the association of “Satan” with accusation in Revelation 12:10, commentators have widely taken the Hebrew word to mean “accuser” or “prosecuting attorney” throughout the Hebrew Bible. In a recent essay in JBL , Ryan Stokes questions that conclusion. Instead, he claims that the word means “adversary” and…
Showing page 584 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
