Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Stories, frankly all human stories are practically always about one thing aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . “There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must…
Matthew is organized around 5 discourses, which trace out the history of Jesus as a recapitulation of the history of God and Israel in the Old Testament. Jesus first speaks as a new Moses, instructing His disciples on a mountain about a righteousness that surpasses the righteousness of the scribes…
The fall of the Sethites in Genesis 6 is the third fall of mankind, or the third degree of Adam’s original fall. Adam sinned in a Garden against his Father by stealing something he was supposed to wait to obtain. (“Every tree shall be food for you” Genesis 1:29.) Cain…
The recent fantasy film Noah and a slightly related blog comment by my friend Douglas Wilson have stirred up again the question of whether the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 who married the “daughters of men” were fallen angels or the priestly line of Seth. Doug argues for angels,…
The prophecy of Jude concerns apostasy. An illustration of apostasy and its consequences is found in verse 6, which the New American Standard Bible translates this way: "And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for…
At His death, Jesus is surrounded by a Roman centurion and his cohort of Gentile solders. Matthew doesn't say that any disciples are there. But women are, and so is Joseph of Arimathea, identified as a “disciple” but, as John tells us, a “secret disciple for fear of the Jews,”…
Showing page 176 of 309
Showing page 8 of 43
Are the ritual texts of Leviticus “practical” texts designed to guide priests and people in sacrificial and other rituals? If so, argues Leigh Trevaskis in Holiness, Ethics, and Ritual in Leviticus , they don’t do a very good job of it. Too much is left out, and things that are…
In a few places, Leviticus uses the Hebrew word adam to refer to “any person.” Why adam ? Most commentators suggest that it’s to emphasize sexual inclusiveness. Trevaskis ( Holiness, Ethics, and Ritual in Leviticus ) thinks there’s more. He points out that the tabernacle is an architectural garden of…
In his masterful study of ancient Greek Miasma , Robert Parker notes death was intensely defiling: “Extramural burial was the norm in almost all classical Greek cities. It would be shocking to mingle the dwellings of the dead with those of the living, still more with those of the gods”…
A.A. van Ruler argues that “Israel is the great disturbing factor in the paganism of the world’s nations,” and the church follows Israel’s path ( Calvinist Trinitarianism and Theocentric Politics , 152-3). This is partly because Christianity “is wholly and completely oriented to concrete, visible reality,” since it “thinks and…
Brian Mattson of the Center for Cultural Leadership offers a lively, compelling analysis of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah . He shows that the film is consistent and sticks close to its sources. The only problem is that Aronofsky’s sources are Kabbalic and Gnostic. Mattson writes, “The world of Aronofsky’s Noah is…
I state a thesis: Dostoevsky is a polyphonic hedgehog. The subthesis is that Tolstoy is a monologic fox. The second part of that comparison comes from Isaiah Berlin’s The Hedgehog and the Fox . Berlin cites the Greek poet Archilochus’s dictum, “A fox knows many things; a hedgehog knows one…
Showing page 646 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
