Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“What’s the fastest route” he asks me as we quickly come to a stop behind a sea of red brake lights. I pull out my phone and map all the options. Every way is red with traffic backed up. Deep down I must be a small town girl because traffic…
Dear Friend of Theopolis, I have signed a stack of documents in the years since we started Theopolis, but my heart jumped a few beats as I looked at the thick lease contract. “This is real,” I thought. “This makes it really real.” Theopolis has been real for nearly three…
In the Edenic world of Perelandra, from C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, Ransom notices something about how the Green Lady treats the animals: [1] “There was in her face an authority, in her caresses a condescension, [2] which by taking seriously the inferiority of her adorers made them somehow less inferior…
In my previous two articles, I argued for the significance of the fact that baptism addresses our bodies in their objectivity. In the body, the self has an existence that runs deeper than our consciousness, decision, self-expression, and action. In washing our passive bodies, baptism seals us with an anticipatory…
Judah is a sinful nation, weighed down with iniquity. They are not the seed of Abraham, but the seed of iniquity. Their worship is abominable to Yahweh, because their hands are covered with innocent blood. They have not done good, or sought justice, or reproved the ruthless, or defended the…
Although we tend to define ourselves by our subjectivity —our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, decisions, actions—we are frequently forgetful of the objectivity of the self as body, the reality of the self that underlies and precedes all of our subjectivity. The body is the site of our ‘givenness’, where we are…
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Matthew 14:11: And his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she carried it to her mother. There are two tables in our sermon text, two feasts. There is the murderous feast of Herod, a cannibal king, a shepherd who devours the best of his…
There are echoes in the story of the book of Esther, at least in Mark’s version of John’s execution. Matthew tells us that when the daughter of Herodias danced before Herod, he promised with an oath to give whatever she asked. Mark records Herod’s words somewhat differently: He promises not…
In an old JBL article (on Peter in Matthew), Jack Dean Kingsbury points out that “with” statements frame the gospel of Matthew: “God with us” at one end, and “I am with you always” at the other. Within the gospel, Kingsbury argues that Jesus is mainly “with” the Twelve. Matthew…
Every time the name “Herod” appears in the gospel of Matthew, innocents die. Herod the Great is a prominent character in chapter 2, and the name Herod doesn’t appear again until chapter 14, where Antipas agrees to give Herod’s head to the female Herod, Herodias. Herod doesn’t appear in the…
Peter’s name is used 24 times in Matthew’s gospel. He is identified as “Simon, who is called Peter” or “Simon Peter” three times (4:18; 10:2; 16:16), once called “Simon” (17:25) and once “Simon Barjona” (and two more times is identified as “Simon” (16:17). The distribution of his major appearances in…
I suggested in an earlier post that time is not a lava flow that is liquid and dynamic until it reaches the past, at which point it hardens to rock. If not lava, then what? How does the past keep flowing when it’s no longer present (except as the “present…
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