The InVerse Theology Project

Many Christians found it impossible to adjust to the growing focus on buildings and personalities that began to characterize the Church in the fourth century. They fled to the deserts or the walls of monastic foundations to be free of what they considered the distractions and drift of churches throughout the Roman Empire. Their efforts may have suited a few, but they continued to drive wedges into...

These days, mention the word “church” and what people think of is a building. We say that we “go” to church, clearly indicating that we consider church a destination rather than a living body, the very body of Christ. We fail to see how limiting this idea can be, because we have drifted so far from God’s original plan for His churches. Here is Part 3 of our blank verse essay, Absimilation, entitle...

Christians today like innovation. All things new. New is the wave of the future, so we like to believe. But God calls us to hold on to old truths, old ways, and, yes, old words.

It’s likely that, should a believer from the first century manage to arrive in one of our churches, he would not recognize it as such. The Church today has drifted from the model we see in the New Testament, and we are unaware and unconcerned. But we cannot deny that the churches in this country are in a state of decline, and this situation bodes ill, not only for the churches, but for our nation...

John 2.23-3.21 And many people, when they saw what He had done while He was in Jerusalem for Passover, believed that He must be the Son of God, as He had said to them, and trusted in His Name. But Jesus knew their hearts. He knew the motives of all men and needed no one to advise or to explain to Him the heart of any man. Thus, to commit to them He would not do.

The primary reason to take up reading and studying both poetry and theology is that these can show us paths for journeying with Jesus through our lives. Poetry and theology can point us to Jesus, inviting us to consider Him in ways that can make His Presence with us more real and continuous.

To many readers, poetry represents a kind of mysticism. We know the poet is trying to say something, but we’re not quite sure what it is. Perhaps he’s just inviting us to have some sort of inward and personal encounter with his words, to lead us in making our own poem out of the lines, images, structure, form, and all the rest he supplies?

We have seen that among the aspects of a work of literature which identify it as poetry are a certain employment of form, rhythm, rhyme, and image.

The heavy lifting of poetry is by the images poets choose to convey meaning and experience, together with the rhyme schemes they adopt to add musicality to the verse. Images can be of various kinds, as also can rhymes. Images and rhyme are the muscle and flesh of a poem. Images come into play when poets use one thing to stand for another. Images are primarily of two sorts, metaphors and similes, w...

We need to say a bit more about the role of meter and line and how they contribute to making verse an art form. Meter and line provide the skeleton and sinews of a poem. They give shape and rhythm to the words that hang on them stanza after stanza. The more regular they are, the more the poem “feels” like a poem. Much of contemporary poetry has thrown off all requirements of regular structure and...

Undoubtedly, a sizeable majority of people today, including most Christians, would answer the question above, “Not I.” It’s hard enough to get people to read these days, much less to read verse. So estranged is the reading public from any diet of poetry that, not that long ago, one of our leading poets published an important book bearing the title, Can Poetry Matter?

Of course, all theology is spiritual because its object is to know God, Who is a most pure Spirit. So whether we’re doing work in Biblical, creational, historical, systematic, or practical theology, we are doing spiritual theological work.

The first believers in Thessalonica startled their neighbors with the dramatic difference believing in Jesus was making in their lives. It was clear to some of the people in that important Roman center that the “Christians”, as they had come to be called, were out of step with the rest of the community.

God is a God of order, not confusion. He expects His people to do all things decently and in order, to reflect His character to the world (1 Cor. 14.40).

We don’t have to read very far in Scripture to realize two things: First, the Bible contains a good bit of history. One could go so far as to argue that the Scriptures are nothing if not an historical account of a particular people covering a certain period. The second thing we notice is that God is intimately involved with this people throughout the course of their history; and He very often appe...

Theology is the disciplined pursuit of the knowledge of God and His glory. Creational theology, one of six primary disciplines in the regimen of theological studies, is beginning again to receive proper attention. By this discipline a believer, standing on the foundation of Scripture and Jesus Christ, may expect to discover the glory of God in created things and be enriched thereby in wondrous and...

In his treatise, On Christian Doctrine , Augustine (354-430 AD) argued that all study of Scripture is aimed at knowing, loving, and serving God.

We can't care for our soul if we don't know what it is.

First, work on improving your soul. Then you'll be ready to work at loving your neighbor.

Whatever happened to Jesus' emphasis on the oneness of all believers?

We bring to a close our all-too-brief survey of Charles Plummer's Lives of Irish Saints , to see what lessons await us there.

For me, experiencing the glory of God in the things of creation begins with hearing.

In John 2 Jesus shows His glory for the first time. He also shows His authority over those who make a mockery of God.

John Davies leads us to understand the state of the soul under the law of sin.

There is an "order of operations" for our work. It begins in the work of sanctification.