Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The “second Reformation” introduced Reformed liturgy and teaching into Lutheran Germany. This was seen by some as a continuation of the Reformation and a purgation of Catholic remnants. The effort to carry on “further reformation” led to disputes with Lutherans. As Bodo Nischan has put it, the hottest debate in…
In J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century , Tom Shippey observes that Bilbo is a member of the middle class, a bourgeois. Bilbo does not have any servants, but his hole is “the home of a member of the Victorian upper-middle class of Tolkien’s nineteenth-century youth, full of…
Idolatry has deprived Israel of her senses. This was one of the early messages to Isaiah (Isaiah 6). Yahweh sent him out to a people who had been deprived of their senses because of their commitment to idols. They become like the idols they serve. They still have eyes, but…
In the current climate of Trinitarian discussion concerning personhood, it's good to reach back to David Bentley Hart's treatment of the subject in his wonderful Beauty of the Infinite . Hart addresses the dangers of misreading Rahner’s rule, namely, the danger of dissolving the ontological Trinity into the economic. In…
Chris Kou is the oldest son of Chinese immigrants. Chris and his brothers run a branding and marketing business, Imagineering, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. In his spare time, he takes online courses from Reformed Theological Seminary, and aspires to be a pastor. Chris is also one of our…
The following was delivered as the Solemn Charge and Exhortation to Theopolis students beginning the Easter term course on Architecture and Liturgical Space . As we will be reminded repeatedly throughout the week, the Bible has a lot to say about building and buildings. Long stretches of Exodus, Kings, Chronicles,…
Showing page 115 of 309
Showing page 8 of 43
Deuteronomy 6 is the closest thing the Old Testament has to a confession of faith: “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh your God, Yahweh is one” (v. 4). That isn't merely a “doctrinal” confession. The text immediately goes on to exhort those who confess the one God to love that one God…
The land of promise is not a land like Egypt, and when Moses describes the differences between them he focuses on hydraulics. Egypt draws its water from below, pumped with a foot pump from the Nile. Canaan, though, lives off heavenly rain, the waters above, water that comes from Yahweh…
It would seem that a major schism would so weaken the church that it would be ill-suited to major expansion and growth. So it might seem. In his contribution to Sacred Schisms , however, Joseph Bryant argues that the third-century schism between the Catholic and Katharoi factions actually facilitated the…
Moses is typically depicted in modern scholarship as a prophet. There is reason for that, but in his monograph on Royal Motifs in the Pentateuchal Portrayal of Moses , Danny Mathews argues that the Pentateuch surrounds Moses with various royal symbolisms as well. He points to Deuteronomy 33:4-5, “Moses charged…
When Franco Basaglia took over the Gorizia asylum in 1961, it reminded him of his time in a fascist prison back in 1944. The stench of death and shit was overwhelming, and it made Basaglia physically ill. According to John Foot's The Man Who Closed the Asylums , it was…
Marilynne Robinson has some sobering things to say about Christianity, America, and fear. She starts from the premise, by no means universally accepted in the world of the New York Review of Books , that “America is a Christian country.” From this she formulates a two-part thesis: “first, contemporary America…
Showing page 378 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
