Babel Academy, Part 1
The Business of Keeping the Saints in the Dark Let there be light! The first recorded “spoken” words of God. Curiously, even this creative decree was a deed whose fruit required an appraisal. God judged the light and separated it from the darkness. As the cardinal act within a newborn heavens and earth, this ruling […]
Music and Drunkenness, Part 2
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 inquires into the nature of the […]
Music and Drunkenness, Part 1
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 read Paul (and the Bible, […]
Unequal Holiness
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 go. The believer is not […]
The Sword of Adam: Preterism vs. Pacifism, Part II
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 slaying of human beings, and the first […]
The Sword of Adam: Preterism vs. Pacifism, Part 1
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 His children. There is no […]
Alastair Roberts Appointed As Adjunct Senior Fellow
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 Durham University, is co-author of the […]
Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World: Indwelling Polanyian Integration
So far I have claimed that, especially in this era of fragmentation, we seek some way to integrate our lives. I have suggested that the view that modernity holds of what knowledge is has actually been a critical source of the fragmentation we sense in the modern West. Imagining knowledge to be impersonal, explicit, transferable, […]
Theopolis Names New Executive Director
The Theopolis Institute has appointed John Crawford as Executive Director. John has been a student in the Junior Fellows Program this year, and proven to be an enthusiastic and articulate advocate of Theopolis’s vision. “Theopolis brings a unique, comprehensive paradigm to cultural change – with the Church at the center,” he said. He singled out Theopolis’s “appreciation […]
Artist-Priests in God’s Poetic World
Metaphor is already intrinsic to the Trinity. Jesus is not the Father. And then again, He is indwelt by the Father, and He in turn indwells the Father. “He who has seen Me,” Jesus said, “has seen the Father.” This fundamental is/is not relationship is the relationship of metaphor. A world created by the Triune […]
Addressees and Author of James
James, a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the diaspora, greetings (James 1:1). Though the epistle of James is considered a “general” epistle, the letter originated from particular circumstances that can be discerned from the New Testament. In order to sketch its background, it will be helpful […]
Introduction to the Ascensions
Before considering the details of the Leviticus, we must have before us certain matters that have been established in Genesis and Exodus. These are things that we as Israelites already know when we first hear Moses report what God dictated to him in Leviticus. Adam Let us begin with Adam. Adam watched God plant the […]
The Principalities and Powers, Part 2
For Part 1 of this series, click HERE. The great question for the emerging East, Asia and other awakening third world areas, for an emerging nation like China is, “what fate awaits them?” They are now emerging from an analogous paganism that the West emerged from centuries ago. Here is an amazing quotation from David Aikman, […]
Seeking Integration in a Fragmented World: Integration and the Good Life
Recently I gave a short talk at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, as part of their Wisdom Forum series.1 This particular forum concerned “the good life.” My portion concerned longing for God in connection with the good life. I share that talk with you here. This foray concerns a matter ever so close to who we […]
Mothers, Fathers: Bury Your Dead
“But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at […]
Liturgical Man, Liturgical Woman, Part II
For part 1 of this series, click HERE. The New Covenant changes none of this. There is nothing new or odd about Mary’s sitting at Jesus’ feet, nothing strange about various “deaconesses” serving the Incarnate Tabernacle. Paul affirms that in Christ there is neither male nor female, but he equally insists on a distinction in […]
Liturgical Man, Liturgical Woman — Part 1
The ordination of women to the Christian ministry, specifically the pastoral office of overseeing worship and performing preaching and the Lord’s Supper, is a recent development in Church history. From the early church until the late 20th century, women were never ordained as ministers, not in any branch of the Church, East or West, Protestant […]
The Crooked Way to Glory
During the final hours of Jesus life, His disciples stumble. They stumble for the same reason that John and his disciples were in danger of being scandalized. A Messiah who leaves suffering and imprisonment in His wake is not much of a Messiah. A Messiah who gets seized and tried and crucified, and doesn’t do […]
The Dew of Heaven
The Hebrew word for dew (tal) refers both to morning dew and nighttime mist. Dew was important to Ancient Near Eastern agriculture. The climate was so hot and dry that often only the dew kept vegetation alive during drought and heat. According to the New Bible Dictionary, “Dew is beneficial to summer crops. This has […]
The Principalities and Powers, Part 1
Paul contends that with the death of Christ on the Cross, there was an overcoming of the Principalities and the Powers (Col. 2:15). A great deal has been written on this subject over the last 60 years.1 What was for a long time either ignored, or regarded by liberal scholars as a mythological element in his thought, recaptured scholarly […]
The True Temple & The True Sacrifice
The Gospel reading for the third Sunday in Lent this year (John 2:13-22) was enclosed by two verses (13 and 23) each of which mentions Jerusalem, the city where God chose to place His Name and habitation, and the Passover, the festival which, above all others, speaks of the Lamb of God. In John chapter […]
Course Recap: “Theology of the Sexes” with Alastair Roberts
The 2018 Theopolis Easter term course on the theology of the sexes was a resounding success. Visiting instructor Dr. Alastair Roberts (PhD, Durham) laid out a rich biblical theology of sexuality, before addressing a variety of philosophical, political, and ethical issues. Roberts stressed that our questions about sex and gender, as much as our answers, […]
Why We Should Jettison the “Strong Female Character,” Part III
Click HERE for part 1 of this series, and HERE for part 2. The recurring characterization problems with such Strong Female Characters arise in no small measure from the struggle to show that men and women are interchangeable and can compete and cooperate with each other on the same terms. As I have already noted, […]
Why We Should Jettison the “Strong Female Character,” Part II
The Rise of the Action Heroine Click HERE for part 1 of this series. Partly as a result of this everywoman heroine trend, partly in order to be more inclusive in traditionally male dominated genres, partly in order to push back against stereotypes, partly in order to legitimate eye candy for male audiences, partly in […]
Lamech’s Patsy: The Human Cost of State Hypocrisy
I was in prison and you came to me. (Matthew 25:36) From the New York Times: U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, […]