Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Many contemporary thought leaders have spoken intriguingly about a future without Jesus or, to be more precise, a future in which the transcendent truths of the Christian faith hold little or no sway over society. More to the point, these thought leaders often pose as anthropologists who find Christianity dehumanizing…
Jeffery Bishop’s magisterial The Anticipatory Corpse concludes with a question: “Might it not be that only theology can save medicine?” 1 To that question I want to give not merely a general affirmation, but a particular affirmation. Not only can “only theology save medicine” but, in fact, only a biblical…
John Ahern recently made the case on this site for having shorter hymnals. “ I believe hymnals should be shorter than they are ”, he says. “ Much shorter. 100 hymns at most. ” Swap hymnal for “repertoire”, or “hymns” for “worship songs” and it all still applies. A big…
The Psalter is the hymnbook of the church. For too long, the psalter has taken a far-secondary place in the worship of God's people. And when psalms are sung, they are often changed drastically from what the Spirit gave us. In this course, Paul Buckley and Brian Moats will explore…
The Theopolis Institute is pleased to announce that Dr. Trevor Laurence is the winner of the 2021 James B. Jordan Prize for outstanding work in biblical theology. Dr. Laurence receives this award for his 2020 Exeter dissertation, “Cursing With God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer.” Laurence…
In late 2013 two nearly simultaneous events happened in evangelicaldom: Mark Driscoll was publicly accused of “plagiarism” and Ergun Caner was hired as the president of a Christian college. The first appears to be the first domino that would lead eventually to Driscoll resigning as the pastor of Mars Hill…
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The story is told of the desert father Abba Apollo, who was appalled when he encountered a devil without knees. John Ratzinger wrote of this story “The inability to kneel is seen as the very essence of the diabolical.”
Malcolm Ruel, again in the Blackwell Reader in the anthropology of religion, traces the changing meanings of “faith.” For the Hebrew Bible, ‘mn “denotes . . . a quality of relationship: it was used of the reliability or trustworthiness of a servant, a witness, messenger, or a prophet, but is…
Asad identifies the particular moment when “Christianity” (in the pejorative sense I’ve used it) was invented: In the wake of the post-Reformation wars, Lord “Herbert produced a substantive definition of what later came to be formulated as Natural Religion - in terms of beliefs (about a supreme power), practices (its…
The aforementioned reader in anthropology of religion includes Talal Asad’s essay on the construction of “religion” as an anthropological concept. He argues that it is usually assumed, for instance, that medieval “religion” was the same in essence as modern religion, but that “its social extension and function were different in…
The second edition of the Blackwell Reading in the Anthropology of Religion (edited, Michael Lambek) looks to be a great resource, for those who like such things. There are classic essays from Tylor, Durkheim, Weber, and Geertz, Wittgenstein on Frazer, Susanne Langer on symbols and Mary Douglas on clean and…
In his Theology of the New Testament (Zondervan, 2005), Frank Thielman responds to the claim that justification is secondary to participation with Christ in Paul’s theology. Thielman does not agree, but he does say that it is true that “Paul’s references to the death of Christ more often support his…
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