Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
We have moved from death to new life, from Lenten darkness to Easter light. And while Easter Sunday may have come and gone, it's effects are continually with us. This season has brought with it several new relationships, events, and signs of growth for Theopolis. We have been networking with…
In The People's Work , a social history of Christian Worship, Frank Senn summarizes the developments of the medieval period with regard to the Eucharist. He begins by challenging the assumption that medieval society was held together by “the church.” He notes that the church was often divided and conflicted,…
The structure of the Bible resembles something which was grown rather than built, composed rather than assembled. Its employment of “structure-as-sign” at every level from micro- to macrocosmic leads to the conclusion that a hermeneutic worthy of Scripture requires not only training in history, art and music but also the…
For some in first-century Israel, Easter was anything but good news. It was a terrifying surprise. For the rulers and powers that put Jesus to death, the idea that He had been raised by some power beyond their control was chilling. Early in Luke’s gospel, we're told that Herod thought…
Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…
God is not mocked, Paul says. God is mocked, says Matthew. Who’s right? The two are in perfect harmony, but to see that, we need to run through the passage again. We’ll see that at every point, the mockery is being turned against the mockers. At every point, mockery is…
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Obama’s election shuffles up the politics of race not only in the obvious ways but in subtle ways. He got to the Presidency without moving through the post-civil rights black establishment - witness the tense relationship he had with Jesse Jackson. He got to the Presidency without playing the victimhood-and-entitlement…
Madden examines the Jewish War (66-70 AD) in some detail, using it as an illustration of the difficulty of controlling religiously motivated terrorism, and he interestingly points out that Diaspora Jews not only celebrated the exploits of Palestinian guerillas but also initiated conflicts in their own cities: “As news of…
Thomas Madden ( Empire of Trust ) notes “In 1939 Belgium had an army larger than that of the United States.” Today, there are 40,000 Belgians in uniform. Like many countries of Europe, it has a military that is “good for parades.” Britain has reduced its navy from 900 vessels…
Sage advice for Obama from a 2007 report from the Brookings Institution: “the only things standing between Iraq and a descent into a Lebanon- or Bosnia-style maelstrom is 140,000 American troops.” And if the future of Iraq is not sufficient motivation, there’s the legacy: If America withdraws, “we should expect…
William Weinrich, formerly patristics professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and currently serving as Rector of the Luther Academy, the seminary for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia in Riga, Latvia, offers some important correctives to my claims about the absence of debate about Christianizing the empire…
From Neill and Wright again, summarizing the assumptions behind William Hietmuller’s early twentieth-century work on Paul’s views on sacraments. Hietmuller placed Paul within the history of religions, and arrived at conclusions that have guided many Pauline scholars ever since. As summarized by Neill and Wright, there are four principles at…
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