Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This essay is adapted from my articles in Theopolis’s In Medias Res as a series of Holy Week meditations. Like many celebrities such as Kanye or Beyoncé or Adele, Josquin des Prez (d. 1521) was often known only by his first name, in his own time as now. “Josquin” is…
Sight is a major theme in the scriptures. The church has long identified sight’s relationship to the future fulfillment of the eschaton. As Paul says, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (1 Cor 13.12). Sight is associated with…
What is the chief end of man? —yes, to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But how ought man–and all creation–so glorify him? I propose a Theopolitan addition to the catechism, question and answer number 1.5, begun in the last question and answered as follows: Earth’s inhabitants were created to…
Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words. Genesis 49:21 Frederick Buechner once said, “We move into the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” In poetry, this happens by way of a compressed code of analogs; often, two or more very ordinary things begin to reveal something that…
The evangelical milieu of America has often lost a vision of the fruit of repentance. We tend to simplify repentance by asking for forgiveness. After all, Jesus tells Peter to forgive 70 times 7. This verse must be paired with Paul’s scoffing at the question: why not sin more so…
I. The hemorrhaging woman. En route to Jairus’ house, Jesus is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage of blood (Matt 9:18–26; Mk 5:21–34; Lk 8:40–48). The story is one that many of us know very well. She has been yoked to her illness for twelve years, all of her…
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Yahweh summons the nations to bring their witnesses to vindicate themselves (Isaiah 43:9), but Israel is the chief witness in His defense (43:9, 10, 12; 44:8, 9). How? Isaiah 44:8 appears to give the answer: Yahweh long ago announced what He would do and declared it. He promised, for instance,…
When Yahweh pours out the refreshing water of the Spirit on the dry land of Israel, it will transform the land. And it will give everyone a new identity, a new belonging. One will say, I am Yahweh’s, another will identify himself by the name of Jacob, and another will…
The Servant of Yahweh comes quietly and gently, no breaking off a bent stick or snuffing out a smoldering wick (42:2; Heb. upishtah kechah lo yekabenah ). Ain’t he nice? But Yahweh does what the Servant does not do - He quenches and extinguishes wicks (43:17; Heb. kapishtah kavu ).…
Yahweh is the Holy One. Many interpreters suggest that this means that He is transcendent, other, separated from creation and all that is unholy and unclean. Holy things and persons and places are separated to Yahweh: To call them holy is to say that Yahweh claims exclusive rights to them.…
Pages 157-9 of Patrick Coleman’s Anger, Gratitude, and the Enlightenment Writer provide the best summary I’ve come across of what happens to gratitude in the early modern period and Enlightenment. There’s a political dimension: Because of the rise of nation-states and new definitions of sovereignty, and because of religious division…
In his Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II (v. 2) (p. 43-4), Michael Moriarty observes that Descartes limited the scope of mechanistic philosophy. For Descartes, mechanical explanations offer “a new theory of how the passions work” but in contrast to Hobbes “he does not attempt to rethink…
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