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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Spinoza summarizes the common opinion of his day: “They suppose, forsooth, that God is inactive so long as nature works in her accustomed order, and vice versa , that the power of nature and natural causes are idle so long as God is acting: thus they imagine two powers distinct…
Spinoza writes in his Theologico-Political Treatise that “the sign of circumcision is, as I think, so important, that I could persuade myself that it would preserve the nation forever. Nay, I would go so far as to believe that if the foundations of their religion have not emasculated their minds…
Calvin described Scripture as an accommodation to human capacities - God babbles to us like a parent to a baby. Spinoza and Galileo appealed to the same principle. For Galileo, it was a way of retaining the truth of Scripture, at least as regards matters of faith, while also maintaining…
Frampton’s book makes it clear that the appeal of Cartesian method was its promise to cut through the fog of skepticism and debate and get to demonstrable certainty. Lodeqijk Meyer’s preface to Spinoza’s Principia philosophiae Cartesianae (1663) makes this explicit: “You will find that with the exception of mathematics hardly…
When the Arminian pastor at Warmond was dismissed from his post after Dordt, the congregation refused the Gomarist pastor sent to fill the vacancy. Instead, led by Gijsbert van der Kodde, the church organized itself into a “college,” a democratically organized Bible study group, devoted, as they thought, to the…
Grotius “proved” the truth of the Bible by saying that “in their stories as well as in the rules they give, nothing is taught that is unworthy of God, nothing that is not conducive to the best conduct of life, whereas poets, philosophers and all those who claim to instruct…
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