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Writing

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

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Church Calendar

Herbertian Lessons for Lent

I live in an area where Mardi Gras is in full swing, and I can remember from my upbringing that Fat Tuesday was a last ditch effort at debauchery before the pseudo-spiritual practice of “giving something up for Lent” really began. In my youth I would give up some kind…

by Brian G DaigleFebruary 13, 2018
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Biblical Theology

Of Wine and Wineskins

Part 1: Observations from the Texts (Matthew 9:14-17, Mark 2:18-22, Luke 5:33-39) The precipitating context for the new wine/old wineskins discussion is people asking Jesus why His disciples did not fast. His immediate answer is that you can’t get the friends of the groom to fast at the bachelor party…

by Tim NicholsFebruary 8, 2018
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Culture

True Progress

Simply, “progress” means to move forward. In that sense, a slug can progress from one end of the sidewalk to the other. But for us in twenty-first century America, progress means something else. For us, it is almost a synonym for goodness. The slug can only “progress” if the other…

by Christian LeithartFebruary 6, 2018
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Abortion

On Abortion and Real Love

I have the privilege of being able to counsel a lot of women who are seeking abortions. I can tell you that the majority of them are seeking to end their pregnancies not because they feel like it would be a fun thing to do, but because they are scared…

by MargaretAnn HesterFebruary 1, 2018
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Culture

What Pastors Could Learn From Jordan Peterson

Last night, along with a few online friends, I watched this debate on the meaning of life between William Lane Craig, Rebecca Goldstein, and Jordan Peterson, hosted by Wycliffe College. While watching it, and reflecting upon Peterson’s work more generally (about which I’ve written in the past ), I was…

by Alastair RobertsJanuary 30, 2018
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Epistemology

Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World

I’m glad to have been invited to contribute regularly to the Theopolis Institute website. Thank you, readers, for welcoming and joining what I hope will be a venture of integration. Integration itself is what I want to explore. And for me personally, this is the shape of my current integrative…

by Esther Lightcap MeekJanuary 25, 2018

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History

Hospitality

For us, hospitality usually means entertaining. It means having our friends and neighbors and church members into the home. Sometimes, in our world, it involves jockeying for position and power by showing hospitality to the right kinds of people. That’s how the rich and famous create and sustain the aura…

March 24, 2007

Obscene dancing

The London Times fulminates: “It is quite sufficient to cast one’s eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and close compressure of the bodies, in this dance, to see that it is far indeed removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So…

March 22, 2007

Christ and Horrors

Marilyn McCord Adams ( Christ and Horrors , Cambridge, 2006) proposes to demonstrate the coherence of Christology not by starting with sin and explaining how Christ has dealt with sin, but by starting with “horrors” and asking, What must Christ be and do if He is going to rescue us…

March 22, 2007
History

The Alexandrian West

In her book on medieval Bible scholarship, Beryl Smalley notes that “Alexandrian exegesis penetrated to the Latin middle ages, when knowledge of Greek had declined, by two main channels: indirectly through the Latin Fathers and directly through translations of Origen’s works. Rufinus’ translations of some of his homilies were used…

March 22, 2007

Allegory and empire

Philo thought of allegory as a means for universalizing Jewish history and law, analogous to the way the Roman world had fused all peoples into a single empire. Literalists are “citizens of a petty state,” while allegorists are “on the roll of citizens of a greater country, namely, this whole…

March 21, 2007

Androgynous numbers

Why did God create the world in six days? Philo said that 6 is the perfect number, both the sum and the product of its factors, which happen to be the first three integers (1, 2, 3). But there’s more: “We may say that [6] is in its nature both…

March 21, 2007

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