Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“What’s the fastest route” he asks me as we quickly come to a stop behind a sea of red brake lights. I pull out my phone and map all the options. Every way is red with traffic backed up. Deep down I must be a small town girl because traffic…
Dear Friend of Theopolis, I have signed a stack of documents in the years since we started Theopolis, but my heart jumped a few beats as I looked at the thick lease contract. “This is real,” I thought. “This makes it really real.” Theopolis has been real for nearly three…
In the Edenic world of Perelandra, from C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, Ransom notices something about how the Green Lady treats the animals: [1] “There was in her face an authority, in her caresses a condescension, [2] which by taking seriously the inferiority of her adorers made them somehow less inferior…
In my previous two articles, I argued for the significance of the fact that baptism addresses our bodies in their objectivity. In the body, the self has an existence that runs deeper than our consciousness, decision, self-expression, and action. In washing our passive bodies, baptism seals us with an anticipatory…
Judah is a sinful nation, weighed down with iniquity. They are not the seed of Abraham, but the seed of iniquity. Their worship is abominable to Yahweh, because their hands are covered with innocent blood. They have not done good, or sought justice, or reproved the ruthless, or defended the…
Although we tend to define ourselves by our subjectivity —our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, decisions, actions—we are frequently forgetful of the objectivity of the self as body, the reality of the self that underlies and precedes all of our subjectivity. The body is the site of our ‘givenness’, where we are…
Showing page 139 of 309
Showing page 1 of 43
In his just-published Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Cultural Liturgies) , James KA Smith quotes this remarkable passage from a speech by David Foster Wallace: “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships.…
AJ Bandstra ( The Law and The Elementa of The World An Exegetical Study In Aspects of Pauls Teaching ) takes Paul’s distinguishes “heir” and “slave” in Galatians 4:1, the first referring to Jews and the second to Gentiles. Chapter 3 ends with Paul’s ringing declaration that those who are…
In his Life of Moses (II.20-23) Philo notes the difference between the law of the Jews and the laws of other peoples. Scythians don’t keep Egyptian laws, nor Egyptians Scythian, Asians and Europeans keep to their own laws. But it’s different with the laws of Moses: “They lead after them…
NT Wright has long emphasized the centrality of the prophecy of the temple’s destruction to Jesus’ ministry and teaching. But that has not been as prominent a theme in Wright’s Paul work. In Paul: In Fresh Perspective (56), he makes it clear that he believes “Paul is aware . .…
In his Paul: In Fresh Perspective (19), NT Wright notes that even scholars who have largely abandoned old methods and approaches to Paul cling to old conclusions about Paul. This is evident in their assumptions about the Pauline canon: “The extremely marked stylistic difference between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians…
Mackubin Thomas Owens doesn’t think mixing men and women on the front lines is a good idea: “The glue of unit cohesion is what the Greeks called philia —friendship, comradeship, or brotherly love. In The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle , J. Glenn Gray described the importance of philia…
Showing page 806 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
