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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Many object to typology because it seems to lack control, but one obvious control is historical context. Consider this piece of poetry: Jack-booted waves march down a silent street, Cross the thresholds of besieged homes, Batter doors, and smother all in brown. Think about how the imagery works if the…
“Figure of speech” is a figure of speech.
Are imprecatory prayers inconsistent with the biblical demand to love our enemies? On the surface it seems so, but since the Bible contains both imprecations and commands to love our enemy and since Scripture is internally consistent, they cannot be contradictory. Far from being contradictory, in fact, they are mutually…
In his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell cites this from Harold Laski: “I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in…
Joshua 10:26-27: Afterward Joshua struck them and put them to death, and he hanged them on five trees; and they hung on the trees until evening. And it came about at sunset that Joshua commanded, and they took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where…
In today’s sermon, we’ll learn about Joshua’s zeal for fighting the enemies of Yahweh in order to conquer the land of promise. While he is fighting five kings, the sun begins to go down. He could easily have said, “Enough for today. We can take care of them tomorrow.” Instead,…
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