Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The story of Judges 19 and the subsequent chapters are some of the most shocking and appalling accounts in all of Scripture. The callousness of the old host and the Levite, and the monstrous brutality of the men of Gibeah, leaves us feebly scrabbling for words by which to surmount…
David has become king. He has conquered the capital city of Jerusalem. He has brought the ark of Yahweh into the city and placed it in a tent. He has stationed Levites at the tent to offer sacrifices of praise. An anomaly hits him: He has a cedar-paneled palace, and…
In Part 2 of this series we traced what we have of the development of the epiclesis in the liturgy of the Church. In this third and final part we’ll look at the theological implications of this and how we may apply what we’ve learned. As we saw in Part…
In a 2014 piece published in First Things , I offered a "wish list" for Protestant churches, a checklist for a future catholic Protestantism. The wish list doesn't cover everything. It doesn't mention those things that Protestants, especially Evangelicals, already do, often exceedingly well, things like missions and evangelism and…
In the first part of this series we examined the meaning of “blessing” in Scripture and its parallels in Jewish liturgical tradition, but did not find anything that we could properly call an epiclesis (an invocation of the Holy Spirit). We did find examples of invocation of Jesus to “come”…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
Showing page 123 of 309
Showing page 8 of 43
Kim R. Holmes argues in an essay at Public Discourse that “The Donald is very much a child of contemporary American culture, including its multicultural offshoot, identity politics. Although he rejects the leftist ideology of multiculturalism, especially the hypersensitivity of political correctness, he is operating well within its value system.…
Adam Kotsko observes ( Why We Love Sociopaths ) that contemporary TV is awash with sociopathic character, “ruthless individuals who make their own rules.” These he calls “fantasy sociopaths,” who are capable of maintaining two incompatible positions simultaneously. They are “somehow outside social norms—largely bereft of human sympathy, for instance,…
The history of language is the a history of “extinction,” writes John McWhorter at The Atlantic . But there's a contrary trend: “new dialects have been emerging in cities worldwide, and it’s young people—specifically, the children of immigrants—who are driving the trend. One of the surprising consequences of the current…
In an essay on Congar's Tradition and Traditions in the first volume of God Without Measure , John Webster asks what a “Protestant admirer” might say about Congar's, and Catholicism's, project of ressourcement . He objects to the characterization of Protestantism that is embedded in the project: “It ‘explains' Protestantism…
Ryan Leif Hansen ( Silence and Praise ) observes that the command to “Come” frames the book of Revelation. As the Lamb opens the first four seals, each of the four living creatures calls for a horseman to “Come” (6:1-8), and the book ends with three more commands. The Spirit…
The Iliad was the virtual Bible of the Greek world. As Plato says in the Republic, some Greeks (not Plato!) believed that Homer “educated Hellas and that he deserves to be taken up as an instructor in the management and culture of human affairs, and that a man ought to…
Showing page 339 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
