Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"The faithful use of sacraments, and indeed a fully sacramental view of creation, is vital to the life of the Church. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are rites that directly shape the community and the Body, because they were given by God for that express purpose. A deficient practice of…
Weightlessness is fun. At the beginning of Gravity (2013) , we can see one astronaut dancing the Macarena and another one playing with his jetpack. They like it out there in the space. Apart from zero-gravity they can enjoy beautiful views, and even the silence is likable, although Matt Kowalski…
I recently went to a lunch that is more or less quarterly. About a dozen of us go. It is a lunch held in honor of a retired professor of religion and philosophy. I have been one of his acquaintances for more than 40 years. In his tenure as professor,…
Why Theopolis? Don't we already have seminaries and Bible colleges and other institutions for theological education? Why do we need another one? I get this question now and again. I ask myself this question even more often. What follows is a partial answer. Back in the 1990s, seminaries seemed to…
I think the logic of the Lutheran Reformation can be summarized in one sentence, attributed to Luther himself: "God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does." The first half of that statement is justification by faith . God doesn't need our works to satisfy his justice or…
If you are looking to start a fight with Christians, there is hardly a better subject to do so than the arts. Music, movies, paintings, and literature have provided no small battlegrounds for Christians to war. We are emotionally invested in the arts. A song, a book, or a film…
Showing page 131 of 309
Showing page 7 of 43
At the end of Revelation 9, we are informed that even the three plagues of fire, smoke, and brimstone did not drive men to repentance. Instead, they clung to their idols. Once idols are mentioned, they are described in terms of both materials and their threefold inability. They are constructed…
The idolater ends up eating ashes, Isaiah says (Isaiah 44:20). In context, that fits with Isaiah’s emphasis on the fact that the idols is made from the refuse of a building project. A carpenter cuts cedar, builds a fire, cooks bread and his meat, and from the leftovers he makes…
Isaiah’s attack on idols elaborates on the tools and technologies that the id0l-maker uses. The smith uses an iron tool and hammer (Isaiah 44:12), the carpenter a measuring line, plane, and compass (v. 13). Several of these words are used nowhere else in the Old Testament, and this is one…
Idols are substitutes for the true God. But as Isaiah describes the construction of idols in his idol polemic in Isaiah 44, the idol emerges equally as an alternative temple, an alternative “meeting place” between God and man. The echoes of the temple texts are numerous. Isaiah refers to iron…
We are now certain that the Trinity Institute exists. It’s on Facebook - www.facebook.com/TheTrinityInstitute
Lacey Baldwin Smith’s 1997 Fools, Martyrs, Traitors: The Story of Martyrdom in the Western World (CUSA) is a maddening book. On the one hand, it is peppered with insights into the dynamics and history of martyrdom. Like: “martyrdom for all of its religious and teleological overtones is at heart a…
Showing page 867 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
