Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"The faithful use of sacraments, and indeed a fully sacramental view of creation, is vital to the life of the Church. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are rites that directly shape the community and the Body, because they were given by God for that express purpose. A deficient practice of…
Weightlessness is fun. At the beginning of Gravity (2013) , we can see one astronaut dancing the Macarena and another one playing with his jetpack. They like it out there in the space. Apart from zero-gravity they can enjoy beautiful views, and even the silence is likable, although Matt Kowalski…
I recently went to a lunch that is more or less quarterly. About a dozen of us go. It is a lunch held in honor of a retired professor of religion and philosophy. I have been one of his acquaintances for more than 40 years. In his tenure as professor,…
Why Theopolis? Don't we already have seminaries and Bible colleges and other institutions for theological education? Why do we need another one? I get this question now and again. I ask myself this question even more often. What follows is a partial answer. Back in the 1990s, seminaries seemed to…
I think the logic of the Lutheran Reformation can be summarized in one sentence, attributed to Luther himself: "God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does." The first half of that statement is justification by faith . God doesn't need our works to satisfy his justice or…
If you are looking to start a fight with Christians, there is hardly a better subject to do so than the arts. Music, movies, paintings, and literature have provided no small battlegrounds for Christians to war. We are emotionally invested in the arts. A song, a book, or a film…
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While mourning, Israelites would put ashes and dust on their heads. Why? Yahweh told Adam and Eve that they would die, returning to the dust: From dust you were taken, to dust you shall return. Abram prayed to Yahweh saying that he was nothing but dust and ashes, acknowledging that…
Gibbon captures the pervasive character of idolatry in Roman society and culture in a passage from the Decline and Fall : “it was the first but arduous duty of a Christian to preserve himself pure and undefiled by the practice of idolatry. The religion of the nations was not merely…
A 2007 article from Church History examines the role of fasting in French Reformed piety, and concludes with this: “Why did the fast acquire this remarkable status and power in the Reformed world, particularly in France? The response, in part, relates to Reformed Protestants’ deep reverence for Scripture and its…
In his recent book Travelling Heroes, Robin Lane Fox examines Greek travel in the eighth century BC, focusing on the Euobean Greeks who traded and settled throughout the Mediterranean. Fox argues, in the summary of Edith Hall, the TLS reviwer , that “these electrying Euobeans can explain much of the…
Some reflections in spired by a paper on the biblical theology of the city by a student, Lisa Beyeler. 1) Genesis 1-11 is often treated as a “prologue” to Israel’s history, but that tends to detach it as “natural history” as opposed to “redemptive history.” It is a preparation for…
The following is a Christological speculation, not a Christological affirmation. My student, Brad Littlejohn, has suggested, based on a study of the theology of “life” in the gospel, that the divine-human relation in Christ changes after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The humanity participates in God’s life from the…
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