Theopolis Logo

Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

See all
night-sky
Astral imagery

The Lady and Her Jewels: An Epiphany Meditation

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery (Revelation 12:1-2). Then Joshua spoke…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 6, 2015
extreme-unction
Anointing

Fattening Our Suffering

In his post asking Ought we Anoint the Dying? Peter Leithart makes an excellent and important point about our suffering as members of Christ. However, he only parenthetically mentions that the verb in question in James 5 is not chrio but aleipho . By assuming that these words are interchangeable,…

by Robert MaddoxDecember 30, 2014
sacre-bleu-r__kixb0i5m-unsplash
James

Death as Frenemy

We spend a lot of time in the church talking about what it means to live like a Christian. But what does it mean to die like a Christian? If we are to follow Christ in life, what does it mean for us to follow him in death as well?…

by Rich LuskDecember 23, 2014
giammarco-zeh-ljawhtg-unsplash
Literature

Was Shakespeare A Christian?

How would one go about answering the question posed by my title? That depends on what the question means. Obviously, different definitions of the question would require different approaches to an answer. Right off hand, I can think of at least three possible — though not necessarily mutually exclusive —…

by Ralph Allan SmithDecember 23, 2014
day-2-ferguson-protests-nationwide
American Culture

Phobophobia

In recent weeks and months, we have seen events that are not the event. The drama around these events is not the events themselves, but the anxiety about the events, and then even the anxiety about the anxiety about the events. That is the real event. The events in Ferguson,…

by Richard BledsoeDecember 22, 2014
anointing-david
Anointing

Ought We Anoint the Dying?

Anointing the sick, including the dying, is one of the traditional seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. The Reformers denied that the rite qualified as a sacrament. Formally, this was because anointing did not have a direct authorization from Jesus; more theologically, it was not one of the marks that…

by Peter LeithartDecember 18, 2014

Showing page 163 of 309

See all
See all

Exhortation

Honor was a chief value in the ancient world. For Jews, Greeks, and Romans, any violation of honor – by insult or attack – had to be avenged. Men – and this was a masculine ethic – had to defend their honor or endure a shameful reputation for weakness. Honor…

September 9, 2007

Phallic gaze

For ancient Romans, Shadi Bartsch argues in her The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire , sight was not merely passive and receptive but active. Gazing with the evil eye meant sending out “little bodies” out of the eye that “penetrate the…

September 9, 2007

More Blame-shifting

This time from Tertullian, in his treatise on the veiling of virgins. Christian women, he says, ought to “go about in humble garb, and rather to affect meanness of appearance, walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully…

September 9, 2007

Blame Shifting

Speaking of his sexual sin in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Reuben blames women for being too enticing: “For women are evil, my children, and by reason of their lacking authority or power over man, they scheme treacherously how they might entice him to themselves by means of their…

September 9, 2007

Means of grace

In the final “General Remark” in Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone , Kant deals with means of grace. Baptism, he claims is the “first reception of a member into a church” and therefore “is a solemnity rich in meaning which imposes grave obligations either upon the initiate, if…

September 9, 2007
History

The Shoah and Western Civilization

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz of the Institute of World Politics analyzes the role of Holocaust revisionism in the Islamic assault on the West: “The terrible, if unstated, implications of the anti-Jewish logic of the Islamists are clear. For them, the Holocaust is the secular religion of the West. The United States…

September 8, 2007

Showing page 1633 of 2212

Browse by Category

In Medias Res

Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.

Donate

Theopolis is nearly 100% donor-supported. Consider joining us on our mission.