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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Matthew

Reading Matthew, Identifying Discourses: A Closer Look at the “Six-Discourse” Proposal

In a February blog post for the Theopolis Institute, Benoît Engel offers a thought-provoking challenge to the widely accepted five-discourse structure of Matthew’s Gospel, proposing a sixth discourse in Matthew 21:28–22:14 to reframe the Gospel’s chiastic center. As someone deeply invested in Matthew’s literary design—explored in my book Reading Matthew,…

by Jonathan SedlakJune 26, 2025
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2 Timothy

Avoid Foolish Disputes

Avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and useless. Titus 3:9 Out of a deep love and care for the church, Paul tells Titus and those in the church to avoid four specific things: foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law.…

by Grant Van BrimmerJune 24, 2025
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Baptism

The Indispensable Mark of Worship: Infant Baptism

Theopolis publishes many polemics, especially on the Sacraments. This piece does not necessarily reflect the views of Theopolis, her board, or her editors. -JW Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days.He shall cleanse himself with the water on the third day and on the…

by Tommy ThompsonJune 19, 2025
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American Culture

Ecclesiocentric Life is Back

There is in the United States and the Western World some sort of religious revival occurring. Gen Z men—males born between ca 1997 and 2012—are flooding back in to churches. USA Today noted that Gen Z men—and to a lesser degree women—attending churches more than their millennial predecessors and they…

by Miles SmithJune 17, 2025
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Biblical Studies

Sceptical Text-Critical Hypotheses

The primary task of many Biblical scholars (as they see it) is to explain how and why the Biblical text acquired its final form—i.e., what source material it used, how that material was expanded/redacted, who expanded/redacted it, why they did so, what the weather was like at the time, etc.…

by James BejonJune 12, 2025
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Galatians

Flesh & Spirit in Galatia

Galatians 5:5-15 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from…

by Jeff MeyersJune 10, 2025

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History

Prescient Belloc

Hillaire Belloc concluded a 1927 debate with George Bernard Shaw with this: Our civilization Is built upon coal, Let us chant in rotation Our civilization That lump of damnation Without any soul Our civilization Is built upon coal. In a very few years It will float upon oil.

May 10, 2008
History

Pugin and Foucault

In his 1836 book, Contrasts , architect, designer, and social critic A. W. Pugin contrasts Bentham’s “panopticon” (Foucaultian symbol of modern surveillance and the carceral society) with an idealized Gothic “Ancient Poor House.” In his recent book on medievalism in modern England, Michael Alexander notes that Pugin was one of…

May 10, 2008
Science

Intelligent design

Dispassionate he’s not. In his recent book on evolution and the “big questions,” David Stamos tried to show how evolution can answer all the big questions of existence, far better than ID, for sure. Intelligent design is not “genuine science” but instead “essentially mythological thinking masquerading in a lab coat.…

May 9, 2008
Art

Sacred and architecture

I have some reservations about what Philip Bess means by “the sacred” and “response to the sacred,” but his applications to architecture are very intriguing ( Till We Have Build Jerusalem ; ISI, 2006). When people encounter “the sacred,” he says, they respond with sacrifice, prohibition, obedience. Architecture is one…

May 9, 2008
Literature

Shakespeare and his plays

In his recent biography of Shakespeare, Bill Bryson quotes an anti-Stratfordian comment that contemporary documents never describe Shakespeare as an author. Bryson responds: “That is not even close to being so. In the Master of the Revels’ accounts for 1604-1605 - that is, the record of plays performed before the…

May 9, 2008
American Religion

American Enlightenment

Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes in response to my post on American priestcraft: [1] The dichotomy, “Enlightenment or evangelical” is a bit too pat for my taste, but then I tend to squint until I see shades of gray in what others see as the most black and white…

May 9, 2008

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