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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Running through the four elements, Smart celebrates the air: For the AIR. is purified by prayer which is made aloud and with all our might. For loud prayer is good for weak lungs and for a vitiated throat. For SOUND is propagated in the spirit and in all directions. For…
More Smart: For FRICTION is inevitable because the Universe is FULL of God’s works. For the PERPETUAL MOTION is in all the works of Almighty GOD. For it is not so in the engines of man, which are made of dead materials, neither indeed can be.
More from Christopher Smart: For the feast of TRUMPETS should be kept up, that being the most direct and acceptable of all instruments. For the TRUMPET of God is a blessed intelligence and so are all the instruments in HEAVEN. For GOD the father Almighty plays upon the HARP of…
INTRODUCTION 2 John is written into a crisis situation. As Jesus predicted, antichrists have “gone into the world” (v. 7), deceiving those who are not on guard. John writes to warn about the deceivers, and to tell the church how to respond to them. THE TEXT “The Elder, to the…
1 John 5:21: Little children, guard yourselves from idols. John tells us that those who are begotten of God are not dominated by sin, and that the one begotten of God keeps him from the evil one. It’s not clear here who is doing the guarding. Is the “Begotten One”…
1 John 5:13: “These things I have written to those who believe into the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.” We are all born into the world bearing the name of Adam, with his heritage and his destiny. Baptism…
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