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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T he genealogies of Chronicles begin with “Adam,” and the ancestors of the Chronicler's people Israel appear only after a half-chapter of names. Yet the Chronicler, like other Old Testament writers, considers Israel the “firstborn” nation (Exod. 4:23). As Scott Hahn puts it ( The Kingdom of God as Liturgical…
J esus can be an embarrassment, not least to disciples. Peter Brown points to an example in his recent The Ransom of the Soul , Jesus's statement to the rich young ruler to “go and sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in…
I n his stimulating meditation on The Dominion of the Dead , Robert Pogue Harrison observes, following Fustel de Coulanges, that “the ancient house and in its turn the ancient city, were founded upon such sepulchers” (26). Even empires are so founded. Witness The Aeneid : “After the destruction of…
W hatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS . Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of Saussure and the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss, post-structuralism presented itself as a liberation movement: “Structures were to be unmasked as less stable than…
Y ahweh promised Abraham a land and a seed to plant in it. He planted a vineyard and it filled the land. Then He drive them from the land, scattered them out among the Gentiles. “Cast your bread on the water,” Solomon says. “For you will find it after many…
1 Chronicles 9:1 sounds like closure. Israel's genealogies are enrolled, and the Chronicler cites the source of his information, the book of the Kings of Israel. Judah is off in Babylonian exile because of her unfaithfulness. Yet the text moves on, and the genealogy isn't yet done. After the end,…
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