Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For Part 1, click HERE . How did Paul’s earliest commentators view his juxtaposition of music and drunkenness, and did they connect it to the ancient Greek ideas of musical ethos described in Part I? Origen, one of the earliest commentators on Paul, writes about Ephesians 5:18-19: One, however, who…
Perhaps it is because I am a musician that I have always found Ephesians 5:18-19 so arbitrary. But isn’t it a little odd to contrast music and drunkenness? Perhaps it is not obvious that that is what Paul is doing; I know, for myself, that it is remarkably easy to…
In 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 Paul deals with how the Corinthian Christians are supposed to be relating to unbelieving spouses. He essentially tells them, “Look, if your unbelieving spouse is willing to stay with you as a faithful Christian, don’t initiate a divorce. If he/she wants to leave you, let him/her…
For Part 1, click HERE . Those who focus on the supposed “pacifism” of Jesus and condemn the violence of God’s judgments throughout the Old Testament overlook the ministry of sacrificial bloodshed as an alternative to human bloodshed. The sword bearing of the sacrificial system was introduced to avoid the…
How should a Christian respond to the objection that the Bible, like the Koran, is a book of violence and bloodshed? Numerous answers have been offered by well-meaning exegetes, but none of them gets to the heart of the matter: God desires to place a sword in the hands of…
Beginning this summer, Dr. Alastair Roberts will join the Theopolis Institute as an adjunct Senior Fellow, the Institute has announced. Dr. Roberts will be a regular on the Theopolis podcast, teach intensive courses and in the Fellows Program, and help develop new programs and outlets. Roberts earned his PhD from…
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What theologians was Feuerbach reading? If God is to be transcendent, he said, “the human, considered as such, is depreciated . . . . To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all in all, man must be nothing.” He certainly wasn’t reading Paul, or if he…
Steven Pinker (TNR, October 9) has a field day demolishing George Lakoff’s recent Whose Freedom? Lakoff attacks conservatives’ use of freedom to justify their political agenda and argues that liberals can regain political power by reframing political debate using new metaphors. Along the way, Pinker also scores some points against…
After noting the political import of the Pope’s recent speech (eg, its implicit warning against including Turks in the European Union - in which context the citation of Manuel II Paleologus, who spent his life fighting Turks, was particularly apt), David Nirenberg (TNR, October 9) concludes that Benedict XIV’s speech…
John Frame distinguishes between facts as states of affairs and facts as statements concerning those states of affairs: “It would not be true to say that facts in the sense of states of affairs are identical with our interpretations of them, but facts in the sense of statements of fact…
With lots of help from Gary Burge’s NIV Application Commentary . . . . INTRODUCTION The world around us seems to solid and permanent. We can hardly imagine what life would be like without well-stocked grocery shelves, autumn elections, air travel, electricity, running water, and all the amenities of modern…
1 John 2:5: Whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. As we saw in the…
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