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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Last year, we got the first season of Lost on DVD and were instantly hooked. These guys sure know how to hold an audience. But for me the hold is weakening as we begin watching the second seson, as it becomes increasingly clear that all these people escaped from a…
An early modern document celebrates the purifying qualities of coffee: Coffee is good for “fat persons whose thickened humors circulate with difficulty.” And, it reduces impurities and generally clears out the system: “it restores the stomach, consumes its superfluous humidity, dissipates wind, dissolves the phlegm of the bowels, where it…
Madness in what Foucault calls the “classical period” is conceived as a dazzlement - the madman is darkened with excessive light. In this context, “the Cartesian formula of doubt is certainly the great exorcism of madness. Descartes closes his eyes and plugs up his ears the better to see the…
Madness in what Foucault calls the “classical period” is conceived as a dazzlement - the madman is darkened with excessive light. In this context, “the Cartesian formula of doubt is certainly the great exorcism of madness. Descartes closes his eyes and plugs up his ears the better to see the…
For the Renaissance, Foucault argues, the line between madness and reason was thin and easily crossed. The madman, in fact, frequently gained insight that the sane did not; think Lear howling on the heath. Over time, madness and truth had been clearly distinguished, and madness ceased to be instructive. Foucault…
Dr Jim West is annoyed at me (http://drjimwest.wordpress.com/2006/09/19/confession-time-im-annoyed), though he doesn’t name me. He is responding to an article I wrote attacking what I called “Zwinglian poetics,” where I suggested that Protestants must “exorcise the ghost of Zwingli” if we are going to develop a solid Protestant poetics, which, I…
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