Theopolis Institute

The Theopolis Podcast
Episode 781:
Thyatira (Revelation 2:18-29)
with James Jordan

Episode 781: Thyatira (Revelation 2:18-29), with James Jordan James Jordan on the church at Thyatira in Revelation 2. To listen to this ENTIRE series right now (with class notes!), download the Theopolis App! Use the code "theopolitan" to get your first month f

Toward An American Orthodoxy:
How Baptists Can Become the American Mainline
by: Josh Abbotoy

"There will be no Baptist future if the SBC fails to attract the very best men for leadership."

Toward An American Orthodoxy: How Baptists Can Become the American Maineline - Theopolis Institute What church but the SBC could plausibly serve as America’s mainline today? The erstwhile mainline abandoned God over the course of the 20th century, being now a husk with the trappings of church but with none of the spiritual substance. Competing traditions such as the Roman Church or various east...

Theopolis Podcast
Episode 780
After the Order of Melchizedek
(Hebrews 5:1-10)

Episode 780: After the Order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5:1-10) Peter Leithart, Alastair Roberts, James Bejon and Fr. Mark Brians discuss Hebrews 5. _____ GIVE TO THEOPOLIS theopolisinstitute.com/give/ Get the Theopolis App! app.theopolisinstitute.com/menu Use Co

Easter Meditation (Part 2)
by: Ralph Smith

"Jesus rose from the dead, never to be humiliated again, though He still suffers with His people."

Easter Meditation (Part 2) - Theopolis Institute For Part 1, click HERE. The four Gospel accounts give us their strange and wonderful historical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. The rest of the New Testament, either explicitly or by suggestion, refers to the resurrection in every book except 3 John. Unlike the Gospel accounts, however, most....

Easter promises abundant pardon. By raising Jesus from the dead, the Father assures us that He has had compassion on us and will forgive all our sins. As Isaiah says, “For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you.”

But Easter demands that we turn from our own ways and our own thoughts. By raising Jesus, the Father appointed Him as judge of the living and dead.

Once God overlooked sin, Paul tells the philosophers on Mars Hill, but now He declares that everyone everywhere should repent because He has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through an appointed Man, and given proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.

The message of Easter is, Come, Rejoice! The message of Easter is also, Repent! The risen One is also the Judge. Don’t think for a moment you can have the joy of Easter without turning from your sins.

Easter Blessings,
Peter Leithart

By His resurrection, Jesus delivers us from Sheol. Insofar as Sheol is an experience of this life, He delivers us from all the deaths that we might suffer, from all the threats, distresses, assaults, fears, illnesses that frustrate life.

Like the Psalmist, we face sickness, enemies, isolation, rejection, persecution, loss. Like the Psalmist, we may be exiled, enslaved, oppressed, under the wrath of God, cut off. There may be times when we seem condemned to a frustrated, fruitless existence.

Through the resurrection of Jesus, we know that God will not abandon our soul to Sheol. He will not leave us in exile; He will make the infertile fruitful; He will open the womb of the barren.

What if we don’t survive these threats? We all know Christians who experience what appears to be permanent fruitlessness and frustration. What if the barren do not become fertile?

We all know Christians who die early, who die violently, and they are not brought back from the dead as Jesus was. What if sickness does cut us down in our youth, before we have ripened, before we have completed our life’s projects? What about Christians who suffer failure in a career, in marriage, with children?

Has the resurrection failed for them? Has God abandoned them in Sheol?

No. Easter contains a promise also for them. Even if we are cut down “before our time,” we are seed dying in the ground to bear much fruit. Even if your life seems fruitless and absurd, even if you are frustrated and defeated, your dying is fruitful in Christ.

No Christian is ever abandoned to Sheol. No Christian ever suffers death-in-life without fruit. No Christian ever suffers premature physical death without being a seed planted. Even the apparent defeats and failures of life are transformed into victory.

Because Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!

- Peter Leithart

Atheists murmur about the silence of God. Why doesn’t God show Himself? Why doesn’t He say something? The gospel got there long before. No other faith confesses God is eternal Word. No other faith confesses that the eternal Word went silent.

What Chesterton said about the cry of dereliction applies too to Holy Saturday:

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

Holy Saturday is the mystery of God’s silence, and it is a great mystery. But the Son of God cannot claim Sheol as its Lord without turning death upside down. Death cannot hold Him; He is too big. Silence cannot muzzle the eternal Word, not forever. His descent is harrowing for Hades.

Jesus rises from the grave as talkative as ever, dispelling fear, reassuring doubters, commissioning disciples, teaching everything concerning Himself in all the Scriptures. He twists death inside out, just by the fact of tasting death and submitting to its silence.

Psalm 88 asks, “Shall Your lovingkindness be declared in the grave? Or Your faithfulness in the place of destruction?” The gospel answers with a resounding Yes! The grave is no longer silent. His wonders are proclaimed in the tomb. The dead do praise Him.

The voice of Yahweh thunders, thunders now even in the grave, and death joins everything in the temple of the world to cry “Glory!”

- Peter Leithart

The cross doesn’t contradict or qualify God’s sovereign Lordship. It’s the opposite. It’s a shocking demonstration of His Lordship. We shouldn’t say: Yes, God is the sovereign Lord, who does as He pleases; but He is also, in addition, the God who went to the cross.

No. Instead, we confess God is Lord precisely because He was incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth, because he was born, grew, suffered, and died.

We think in our rebellion that we can create a God-free Zone, that we can keep God out of human life. The gospel declares there is no sign saying “No God Allowed” at the gateway of human life. Or, if there are such signs, our God can push past them. He has pushed past them and entered the territory that we thought was ours and ours alone.

No moment of a human life, no experience of human death, is untouched by God, nothing human is alien to Him, save sin alone.

Good Friday is our taunt to all the idols and pretenders and secularists: Can your God be born, live, die, and rise again as a man? Can your God do that? Ours can. Ours has.

- Peter Leithart

Has the Moment Passed for Baptists?
by: Mark Tooley

Has the Moment Passed for Baptists? - Theopolis Institute Jack Waters suggests that the collapse of Mainline Protestantism leaves Baptists, specifically the Southern Baptist Convention, as the “rightful inheritors of mantle of leadership in American Christianity.  He notes that shifts in U.S. population favor it: The many outsiders who move to the South...

The Theopolis Podcast
Episode 779
Jesus the Great High Priest
(Hebrews 4:14-5:10)

Episode 779: Jesus the Great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14-5:10) Peter Leithart, Alastair Roberts, James Bejon and Fr. Mark Brians discuss Hebrews 4-5. _____ GIVE TO THEOPOLIS theopolisinstitute.com/give/ Get the Theopolis App! app.theopolisinstitute.com/menu Use

The Chiastic Structure of Lord of the Rings

The Chiastic Structure of Lord of the Rings - Theopolis Institute The chiastic structure of The Hobbit we considered in the previous essay is highly suggestive of what might lie in store for The Lord of the Rings saga. It is undoubtedly the case that J. R. R. Tolkien was a literary craftsman. It may even be the case he is more of a craftsman than he is […]

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God . . . and it will be given to him,” James says.

James is alluding to the story of Solomon asking for wisdom to judge the vast nation of Israel. According to James, we can all be Solomons. We can all be kings and priests by the Spirit of wisdom, and all we have to do is ask.

But notice where James begins: “If anyone lacks wisdom.” This is where Solomon begins too: “I am but a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in,” Solomon says when Yahweh appears to him.

Here is an essential difference between the wisdom from above and the demonic wisdom from below.

Earthly wisdom is self-sufficient, arrogant, proud. When we act as if we have all the wisdom we need, we can only reproduce the selfishness, grasping ambition, and chaos of hell.

Godly wisdom doesn’t begin in fullness, but in emptiness.

As James says later in his letter, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. If we want wisdom to rule, we must first humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, confessing our sins and acknowledging our weakness.

We are exalted as kings when we lower ourselves.

The first step to wisdom is to admit our folly.
- Peter Leithart

Do you love the church and long to renew her music?

The Theopolis Te Deum Fellowship in Church Music aims to equip pastors and church musicians to implement the Theopolitan vision of liturgy and music in their own local contexts.

We aim to give church musicians a reason why that they can bring back to their local contexts.

Apply now:

The Te Deum Music Fellows Program - Theopolis Institute REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN Vision The Theopolis Te Deum Fellowship in Church Music aims to equip pastors and church musicians to implement the Theopolitan vision of liturgy and music in their own local contexts. We aim to give church musicians a reason why that they can bring back to their local conte...

The Theopolis Podcast
Episode 778
Pergamum (Revelation 2:12-17)
with James Jordan

Episode 778: Pergamum (Revelation 2:12-17), with James Jordan James Jordan on the church at Pergamum in Revelation 2. To listen to this ENTIRE series right now (with class notes!), download the Theopolis App! Use the code "theopolitan" to get your first month f

Baptists Show why we Must Retake the Mainlines
by: Richard Ackerman

Baptists Show why we Must Retake the Mainlines - Theopolis Institute Will Baptists lead the way in the future of the American church? Jack Waters, in “The Baptist Future: America’s Last Best Hope” believes so. He accurately tells the tale of the fall of the old American Protestant establishment: for the better part of America’s history, her de facto state chu...

The Nature of Doctrine
with Peter Leithart

The Nature of Doctrine ____If you enjoyed this video, please SUBSCRIBE, LIKE, and hit the bell on the video so you can be notified when new content is released. Also, we would love...