Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In a February blog post for the Theopolis Institute, Benoît Engel offers a thought-provoking challenge to the widely accepted five-discourse structure of Matthew’s Gospel, proposing a sixth discourse in Matthew 21:28–22:14 to reframe the Gospel’s chiastic center. As someone deeply invested in Matthew’s literary design—explored in my book Reading Matthew,…
Avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and useless. Titus 3:9 Out of a deep love and care for the church, Paul tells Titus and those in the church to avoid four specific things: foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law.…
Theopolis publishes many polemics, especially on the Sacraments. This piece does not necessarily reflect the views of Theopolis, her board, or her editors. -JW Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days.He shall cleanse himself with the water on the third day and on the…
There is in the United States and the Western World some sort of religious revival occurring. Gen Z men—males born between ca 1997 and 2012—are flooding back in to churches. USA Today noted that Gen Z men—and to a lesser degree women—attending churches more than their millennial predecessors and they…
The primary task of many Biblical scholars (as they see it) is to explain how and why the Biblical text acquired its final form—i.e., what source material it used, how that material was expanded/redacted, who expanded/redacted it, why they did so, what the weather was like at the time, etc.…
Galatians 5:5-15 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from…
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John Walton argues in The Lost World of Genesis 1 (114) that the Bible attributes to God things that we explain in “natural” terms. He concludes that attempting to divide causation between “divine” and “natural” causation is “essentially unbiblical.” But then he proposes what amounts to a slight variation of…
Yahweh warns that He is going to measure out the wages for those who defy him (Isaiah 65:6-7): A. I will repay to their bosom B. their iniquities and the iniquities of their fathers C. because they have turned-to-smoke D. on mountains D’. And on high places C’. have scorned…
The first table setting in the Bible is the table of showbread in the tabernacle, set with twelve loaves of bread (Exodus 40:4, 22-23). That tabernacle table sets the stage for subsequent table settings. When Israel questions whether Yahweh can set a table in the wilderness (Psalm 78:19), they are…
Hughes Oliphant Old is the dean of Reformed liturgical scholars, and he has crowned his career with the publication of a massive (900+ pages) study of Holy Communion in the Piety of the Reformed Churches . The title is significant: Old is interested in Eucharistic piety and practice as much…
Peter Sloterdijk opens his Art of Philosophy (9-10) with a summary of the “epistemic suspended animation” that philosophy has traditionally demanded from its practitioners: “My aim is to show why the idea that the thinking person has to be a kind of dead person on holiday is inseparable from the…
Evangelia Anagostou-Laoutides’s Eros and Ritual in Ancient Literature is a complex, footnote-stuffed delight. She examines three myths with erotic overtones - Atalanta, Daphnis, and Orpheus - summarizing the different presentations of the myths in early Greek (Hesiod, Greek drama), Hellenistic (Theocritus, Callimachus), and Roman (Virgil, Ovid, Propertius) literature. Along the…
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