Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
"The faithful use of sacraments, and indeed a fully sacramental view of creation, is vital to the life of the Church. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are rites that directly shape the community and the Body, because they were given by God for that express purpose. A deficient practice of…
Weightlessness is fun. At the beginning of Gravity (2013) , we can see one astronaut dancing the Macarena and another one playing with his jetpack. They like it out there in the space. Apart from zero-gravity they can enjoy beautiful views, and even the silence is likable, although Matt Kowalski…
I recently went to a lunch that is more or less quarterly. About a dozen of us go. It is a lunch held in honor of a retired professor of religion and philosophy. I have been one of his acquaintances for more than 40 years. In his tenure as professor,…
Why Theopolis? Don't we already have seminaries and Bible colleges and other institutions for theological education? Why do we need another one? I get this question now and again. I ask myself this question even more often. What follows is a partial answer. Back in the 1990s, seminaries seemed to…
I think the logic of the Lutheran Reformation can be summarized in one sentence, attributed to Luther himself: "God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does." The first half of that statement is justification by faith . God doesn't need our works to satisfy his justice or…
If you are looking to start a fight with Christians, there is hardly a better subject to do so than the arts. Music, movies, paintings, and literature have provided no small battlegrounds for Christians to war. We are emotionally invested in the arts. A song, a book, or a film…
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Milbank sums up Victor Turner by saying that “the sublime is no longer outside the social, at the margin of individuality [as in Weber’s charisma], and nor is it the social whole [as in Durkheim]: instead it is situated within society in the constant negotiation of dangerous passages. Paradoxically, it…
City of God 10.6 is a rich and important, though obscure, explanation of what might be called the sociology of sacrifice. At the beginning of the chapter, Augustine defines sacrifice as any act we perform in order to be united to God in holy society. Acts of mercy are sacrifices,…
Dodaro again: “Only when it is understood by believers that God mediates goodness to human beings directly, without intermediary spiritual beings such as angels - and certainly not through priests - is it possible to put an end to spiritual rivalries.”
The Donatists are usually seen as the sectarians of the early church but Robert Dodaro points out that for Augustine their sectarianism derived from their clericalism: “Augustine explains that cultic acts which remit sins, such as baptism, are in reality performed by Christ, who acts through Christian priests. Augustine’s frequent…
INTRODUCTION Like Moses (Numbers 27:17), Jesus sees that Israel is like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36), a field white to harvest. Moses gave authority to Joshua to lead Israel in and out in conquest; Jesus gives authority to the Twelve to carry out another conquest (10:1). THE TEXT “And…
Matthew 9:36: And seeing the multitudes, He felt compassion for them, because they were harassed and thrown down like sheep having no shepherd. I mentioned in the sermon that the phrase “sheep without a shepherd” appears in the prophecy of Micaiah who warns Ahab that he will die if he…
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