Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This was a newspaper column that I wrote for the Minco Millennium back in January of 2000 when I had first moved to Minco, Oklahoma to pastor First Reformed Presbyterian Church. I wasn’t able to catch the recent performance of the musical, Godspell , in Oklahoma City. However, my dad…
Awhile back, there was a big debate among Evangelicals as to whether one had to trust Jesus “as Lord” as well as “as savior. Some claimed that one could be saved by Jesus through a faith that did not involve submission to him as Lord. Others claimed that one must…
I originally wrote this a few weeks ago in April 2002 as a column in the local newspaper, The Minco Millennium under the title “Faith & Follow-Through.” Several passages in the book of Hebrews are difficult for Protestants to swallow. The author affirms the once-and-for-all work of Christ and yet…
N. T. Wright’s commentary on Romans is destined to be a classic. The introduction alone is worth the hefty price of the book — but the exegesis itself is, well, priceless. I will not attempt a full review — these are just miscellaneous thoughts and random reflections — but I…
At an inn in the town of Lystra three men sat around a corner table. All three were well-known disciples of Joshua Messiah, members of what the town called a new cult, the Way. The short gray-haired man with the enormous beard was clearly restless. “This is taking too long,”…
Recently there has been some surprising debate in some circles over where Paul summarizes his Gospel. I say “surprising” because many Evangelical Bible scholars have held, for quite some time, that Paul’s Gospel is encapsulated in Romans chapter 1, verse 3 and 4. Here is the passage in context: Paul,…
Showing page 228 of 309
Showing page 1 of 43
Matthias Scheeben’s nature/supernatural scheme depends on the assumption that matter is ponderous, an obstacle and obstruction to the free operation of spirit, an enslaving massiveness, gross and crass. Scheeben wrote before the revolution of twentieth-century physics, so we can forgive him for not thinking out the implications of quantum physics…
N. T. Wright has recently been telling people they’ve got personal eschatology wrong. Heaven is not the final destination for the saints, but they will be raised in transfigured bodies to inhabit a newly united heaven-and-earth. That this causes jaw-dropping astonishment is itself jaw-droppingly astonishing. Hasn’t anyone ever read the…
Scheeben says that what is natural to one being may be supernatural for another. Immortality is natural to angels, “a pure spirit, whose entire essence is on a higher plane, because no opposition between matter and the principle of life has place in him.” For men, immortality is supernatural, since…
Matthias Scheeben makes explicit the troubling underpinnings of the nature/supernatural distinction. When we are refashioned by grace “on the model of the higher, divine nature,” we enter into a “new, special relationship with God, who now draws near to man in His own essence, and not only as Creator of…
Can unbelievers know truth? The whole question has been distorted by failing to ask, Which unbelievers? In what circumstances? In what stage of unbelief? The New Testament shows the Jews who reject Jesus as blind, but also shows them being blinded, or blinding themselves. To give a zero-sum answer to…
My son Woelke pointed me to a piece in Slate on the resignation of Tim Goeglein, who resigned recently as the White House liaison to religious groups, after it was revealed that he had stolen material for published columns over the past several years. What tipped off Nancy Nall Derringer,…
Showing page 1556 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
