Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I revisited Athanasius’s On the Incarnation in light of Advent this year. A particular passage struck me with a question that I hadn’t considered before. When addressing Adam’s fall, Athanasius says this: “If then there were only the offense and not the consequence of corruption, repentance would have been fine.…
There is much wisdom for kings in the first letter of Paul to the Church in Corinth. As I am preaching through this letter, this is one of the major themes that stands out. That is the theme of the reign of the Christian as we live in union with…
1 The title should not be a surprise to anyone who believes the Bible to be true. According to the Bible, any and every faith and religion that does not conform to the Gospel of Christ are not only false, but ultimately inspired by false spirits. Though Jeffrey Niehaus is…
Names are weighty things, a fact repeatedly evidenced in the biblical narrative. There are several occasions when the names mothers or fathers chose for their children, and the reasons for which the names were chosen, are given extended attention in the text. Much of Genesis 29 and 30, for instance,…
Growing up, I was crestfallen about any Christmas that fell on Sunday. Christmas on Sunday meant going to church when I’d rather lollygag around the Christmas tree in my pajamas, playing with new toys. Christmas on Sunday was a drag. If I still felt that way, I know what I’d…
Growing up in the church in Southern America, there was an oft-used category for leaders in the church. It was a category which was used to justify a variety of rules and restrictions on church leaders. Leaders were to be “above reproach” and that meant not drinking in public or…
Showing page 36 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.
