Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Imagine driving up to Canada and stopping at a restaurant to get a bite to eat. While you’re sitting at the table, an enthusiastic young man comes over to you and says in an excited voice, "Are you an American?" You reply, "Yes, I am." "Wonderful! I have so little…
1 O Lord Almighty, God of our fathers, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and of their righteous posterity; 2 You who have made heaven and earth with all their order; 3 who have shackled the sea by Your word ofcommand, who have confined the deep and sealed it with…
Part 1: 1When King Astyages was laid with his fathers, Cyrus the Persian received his kingdom. 2 And Daniel was a companion of the king, and was the most honored of his friends. 3Now the Babylonians had an idol called Bel, and every day they spent on it twelve bushels…
This debate has been going on for some time. But with few exceptions, almost all explanations of Presbyterian church polity claim that a “church” (meaning a single local congregation) must be ruled by “a plurality of elders” of whom one may happen to teach and work full-time doing so. This…
I hope that those who are advocating reading more of the ancient, "classical" literature of the ancient, "classical" world, are also promoting the Apocrypha. I’m afraid that many Christians don’t realize what great literature much of the Apocrypha is. It is not, of course, inspired by God, and perhaps because…
PRESBYTERIANISM is a term referring to a system of government in the Church. It is commonly contrasted with Congregationalism and Episcopalianism. Presbyter is a Greek word that is translated as “elder” in our English New Testaments. Thus, Presbyterianism is commonly defined as “rule by elders.” This is a misleading definition.…
Showing page 243 of 309
Showing page 8 of 43
Isaiah 49 is reassurance to Zion that Yahweh has not forgotten her. Her walls are continuously ( tamid ) before Yahweh, like the sacrifices and showbread (v. 16). And Yahweh goes beyond the assurance of His concern to promise that Zion will be surrounded by gathered people, returned exiles and…
The Hebrew of Isaiah 49:17 is beautifully symmetrical. Transliterated, it reads: miharu banayik meharsayik umacharivayik mimmek yetze’u . The endings of the six words form a neat pattern: one - u followed by four words ending with the second person singular pronomial suffix ( k ), and then another -…
The Hebrew word beten frequently means “womb” (Genesis 25:23; Number 5:22; Psalm 22:9-10; 71:6; Jeremiah 1:5). In a few instances, though, the word is used in unusual contexts. When Yahweh offers Ezekiel a scroll to eat, He orders him to eat it with his beten and to fill his “bowels”…
God has no needs. Philo, Seneca, and classic Christian theology agree on that. But I think the explanation differs. Seneca ( On Benefits (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca) , bk. 4) explains that “God bestows upon us very many and very great benefits, with no thought of any…
The Christian conviction that Jesus had defeated the powers and brought an end to old rites had major effects on early Christian social engagement, Gary Ferngren implies in his 2009 Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity . “Before the advent of Christianity,” he says, “there was no concept of…
For all its reputation for iconoclasm, modernism, says Robert Alter in Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture (The Franz Rosenzweig Lecture Series) , is more accurately described as a “paradoxical amalgam of iconoclasm and hypertraditionalism” (p. 8). Alter’s book explores this phenomenon, along with the “double…
Showing page 854 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
