Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Can it be that it has been two whole years since I contributed a Theopolis Post! I had been pursuing the topic of integration: “Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World.” I had defined “integration,” simply, as creative putting together. I had posed that seeking it calls for a fundamentally integrative…
What is known as the miracle of the “Feeding of the Five Thousand” occurs in Mark’s Gospel in chapter 6. As with other gospel writers, Mark has a few different points to make as he moves through this story (included in all four gospel accounts) and its surrounding material. Three…
To begin with the source of this narrative: Since no human being was present to observe these events, we must assume that this narrative was revealed directly by God to a human author. There are three ways this might have happened. First, we might read, "God said to Abraham (or…
The serious Bible student cannot help but be struck by the deviousness of Jacob in Genesis 27. If one already expected some underhanded dealings from this twin-born-second whose name means “supplanter” and whose bargaining with his brother for the birthright in Genesis 25 seemed incredibly weighted in his own favor,…
From Barna stats to mainstream headlines, it seems as though the discordant nature of this last year has taken such a toll on churches in the United States that, for many, the injuries have been fatal. It has become a regular occurrence to hear about a congregation that continues to…
In The Bad News Bears (1976), a city councilman hires a washed-up minor league baseball player with a drinking problem to coach a little league team of leftover misfits. Underdog sports movies are usually full of sentimentalism and dramatic victories, but this film is a commentary on the failing dream…
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Anyone wanting to spend some time in the fourth century should check out Fourth Century Christianity at www.fourthcentury.com, which is sponsored by the History Department of Wisconsin Lutheran College and directed by Glen Thompson. The site has chronological charts, original documents or links to other web sites with original documents…
Timothy Barnes, summarizing Lactantius’s objections to Diocletian, writes that “Diocletian possessed great political sagacity, for he had the enviable ability to garner for himself the credit for actions which proved popular while saddling others with responsibility for failures or mistakes.”
I’ve expanded my consideration of the “culture wars” in the age of Obama on the First Things web site: http://www.firstthings.com.
Emphasizing the necessity of starting with the fact of revelation rather than the abstract possibility, Barth charges that “consciously or unconsciously, the Neo-Protestant tradition, in which Lessing, Kant, and Schleiermacher sought access to Christ along a road that could not lead to Him.”
Scripture gives us two “synoptic problems” - the problem of harmonizing the gospels and the problem of harmonizing Kings and Chronicles. That is, the history of the kingdom and the history of Jesus are each told more than once. The parallel is intriguing. It suggests that the two histories are…
Bavinck makes the interesting, Augustinian, and important point that sin can never become our essence because it is not a substance: “it does indeed inhabit and infect all of us, but it is not and cannot be the essence of our humanity. Also, after the fall, we human beings remain…
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