Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory...(John 1:14) Commentaries on John, discussing the Word or Logos in John 1, routinely turn to Greek philosophy and say that John is using a term and at least part of an idea familiar in the ancient…
Jeremiah Burroughs defines contentment as “that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition” Contentment is one Christian virtue that Americans have an incredibly hard time understanding and applying. We have such comfortable lives that we…
"The goal I have for myself, my family, and my church is total bible saturation. I expected the Exodus Intensive class to help me with that, but I am shocked just how much it did," said Mark Balthrop, a pastor in Oklahoma City who attended Theopolis' recent course on the…
In a characteristically pithy essay, Robert Jenson has decried the “two paired errors” of traditional atonement theory. On the one hand, the cross is separated “from its future, in the resurrection” and, on the other, from “its past in the canonical history of Israel.” For the apostles, crucifixion is “anything…
The Historical-Grammatical Nanny State Typological interpretation is either abused or frowned upon, a domain relegated to mystics and charlatans, where the angels of modern academia fear to tread. But what if the Bible itself contained safeguards against irresponsible flights of fancy? And if it did, what would they look like?…
It is harsh advice for a suffering soul to be told to be content, to be happy, to be delighting in the rough circumstances. Is Christian contentment something we should automatically have as a result of being in Christ? Is it something we do? Is it an action or is…
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The distinction between sacred and profane is said to be a universal religious structure, but it’s remarkably rare in the Hebrew Bible. Holy things are “profaned” with some frequency (e.g., Exodus 31:14, on profaning the Sabbath) but “profane” as a noun describing a space is use only a handful of…
An angel with a stamp comes from the rising sun, ready to mark the foreheads of 144,000 of God’s bondservants (Revelation 7:3). That’s just the spot where Aaron and the other high priests were marked: “Holy to Yahweh” was engraved on the golden blossom at the front of the priest’s…
Robert Jenson is a profound theologian. He is also a spritely essayist. The essay may in fact be his genre of choice. Cascade has just released a compilation of these essays under the Jensonian title, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics . Most of the essays are fairly recent, but it’s rather…
Every spring, basketball takes over my life for several weeks. I still function: I continue to do those things I tell my kids constitutes my “work.” I eat, sleep, talk, teach, write. But for a few weeks baseketball is my life. A Brazilian friend went through something similar recently -…
Next door, my friend Gerald McDermott responds to my piece on tradition with a brief exposition of Newman’s theory of the development of doctrine. Gerry is right that I agree with a lot of what Newman has to say about tradition and development, and the corruptions that Newman protested were…
The following is a response from Gerry McDermott to my response to his response to my essay. The remainder of this post is from Gerry: I agree that Newman’s “continuity of principle” can be slippery in application. The question begged is indeed, “Who decides”? Which makes the question all the…
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