Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I've pastored a very rural church for well over a decade. Our town has about 1,000 people and will never grow until Jesus returns. 38 people attend our worship on Sundays. Here's a quick list of what we’ve done to grow our church, and what I’ve done to survive pastorally.…
Thanks for sharing so honestly about your current crisis of creativity. I totally understand and relate to that; it’s happened many times in my musical life thus far, and I’ve begun to accept it as a normal rhythm of the creative process. I actually went through a serious dry spell…
The Broken Stones of Israel At Sinai, the tablets of the Law of Moses were broken and restored. The Old Testament is a history of “new covenants,” including that promised in Jeremiah and fulfilled in Zechariah. Ultimately, the vertical Oath and the horizontal Sanctions met in the death of Jesus…
Woe to the sinful nation. Woe to those who enlarge their estates and build their portfolios. Woe to the drunks. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Woe to the proud who are wise in their own eyes. Woe to Congressmen who pass unjust laws and to…
The interpretation of Romans 7:7-25 is notoriously difficult. Good scholars disagree on many aspects of the passage, but the central interpretative difficulty concerns the identity of the “I.” Is Paul referring to himself? Is Paul referring to himself pre- or post-conversion? Does the “I” refer to Adam? Is the “I”…
You board the Metra train at Arlington Heights station one afternoon, heading to downtown Chicago for some sight-seeing. As the train departs from the station, a man in jeans, a striped t-shirt, and a Kansas City Royals baseball cap enters your train car, and begins asking to see each passenger’s…
Showing page 108 of 309
Showing page 1 of 43
John Updike wrote that the ending of Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God “proved unexpected and, as I think about them, beautifully resonant, tragic and theological. That Ezeulu, whom we had seen stand up so invincibly to both Nwaka and Clarke, should be so suddenly vanquished by his own god Ulu…
Donald Barthelme’s The Dead Father is often viciously cynical, sometimes sexually explicit, but at times it hits home, hard. Like this: To the father who says in exasperation to his son, “I changed your diapers for you, little snot,” Barthleme imagines this response from the son: “This is not the…
INTRODUCTION Jesus teaches that our good works are light in a dark world (Matthew 5:14-16). At the center of the sermon, however, He describes acts of righteousness that are not to be done before men but before God alone. These secret acts are crucial to pursuing a righteousness that surpasses…
Matthew 5:44: But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven, for He causes His son to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous…
Some more notes from Kierkegaard. 1. In the Problemata sections of Fear and Trembling , Kierkegaard, posing as Johannes de Silentio, poses a series of questions that arise from his reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac, within the Hegelian framework. The questions concern the “teleological suspension of the…
Irenaeus is cited as one of the early proponents of apostolic succession through episcopal ordination. Only bishops who could reconstruct a line back to the apostles could claim apostolic authority: “With the succession of the episcopate they received the assured gift of truth.” Yet, according to K. J. Woollcombe, “in…
Showing page 1626 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
