Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Our creeds, taking cues from Matthew 28:18-20 and other biblical texts, speak of the order of the Trinity as “Father, Son, Spirit.” This order is evident in the order of redemption as well: the Father sends the Son, who ascends to heaven to receive and send the Spirit. Luke 1,…
The category of “relation” has long been central to Trinitarian theology, [1] but in recent theology it has become a transcendental, as many theologians have argued that relationality is the leading feature not only of divine life but of created life. [2] Human beings made in the image of the…
Listen to Trinity House President Peter Leithart discuss his article on the End of Protestantism with LCMS pastor Todd Wilken at Issues, Etc .
One of the keys to understanding the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13) is to understand the time frame. Jesus is speaking in pictures and symbols about some period of history, but which? What’s the beginning, and what’s the end of the parable? Is Jesus talking about what…
Shakespeare wrote two tetrologies of English history, patriotically celebrating the Tudor monarchy by recounting its chaotic prehistory. Read in chronological order, Shakespeare’s English histories trace the depressing collapse of medieval politics, from the ineffectual but dignified medieval kingdom of Richard II, through the usurpation of Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV,…
The Heart of Liturgy What we call sacrament, the food-aspect of worship, is essential here. Biblically, sanctuary worship, or worship in the heavenlies, is always a “marriage supper,” always sacramental. The Papal Church made the Eucharist into a private act largely separated from the community of the church. Protestant churches…
Showing page 183 of 309
Showing page 1 of 43
“The Word was God,” says John. Where’d he get that? Genesis 15:1 is the first place where Scripture uses the phrase “word of Yahweh” ( dabar-YHWH ), and already here the use of the phrase hints that the dabar is a person. The word of Yahweh “came” to Abram (15:1,…
Peter Olivi set out a scheme of prophecy chronology from Adam to Abraham to the destruction of Jerusalem. The accuracy of this is not the point, but rather the claim that the end of the temple was a decisive redemptive-historical event. “Ab Adam usque ad primam primissionem factam Abrahe, Genesis…
A number of readers have suggested that I was wrongly critical of Athanasius’s claim that without God’s sustenance creation tends toward nothing; I said that this implied that creation has some tendency “independent” of God. The readers point out that Athanasius’s claim is exactly that creation has no independence and…
Diderot’s D’Alembert’s Dream develops a mythological monistic materialist ontology in which multiplicity develops from an original “polyp” but where nothing ever becomes really distinct from the whole or from anything else. There is no freedom, no real otherness, no real possibility of love. D’Alembert describes this ontology while masturbating in…
Athanasius repeatedly says that created things, having come from nothing, have an inherent tedency to move toward nothing again. They have to be sustained by God to remain in existence. No problem with the conclusion that God keeps things in existence. But the notion that things tend toward nothing seems…
Peter Olivi is one of a number of medieval exegetes who placed enormous significance on the fall of Jerusalem. In part, this was driven by anti-Jewish polemics; they argued that prophecies foretold that the Messiah would come and the temple sacrifice would be ended - since the temple sacrifice has…
Showing page 1457 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
