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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Horizons

Gordon Wenham on Ritual

In a brief article entitled, “The Theology of Old Testament Sacrifice," Gordon Wenham, expanding on a comment about ritual from anthropologist Monica Wilson, states: We resort to ritual when we want to express our deepest feelings. Consider the rituals used in greeting people in our society: a nod, a handshake,…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 27, 1995
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Biblical Horizons

A Postscript to the Meyers Thesis

Everyone here in Cambridge is talking about sacrifice. My supervisor, Dr. John Milbank, is working on a book on gift in which he is dealing with recent literature on sacrifice. The graduate seminar in Systematics during Michaelmas Term focused on the theme of sacrifice. The first presenter was Dr. Ian…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 27, 1995
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Baptism

Sacramental Efficacy

Protestant-Catholic debates about the sacraments have usually taken the form of debates about sacramental efficacy. Protestants claim that Catholics believe that sacraments work ex opere operato , virtually a magical view of the sacraments. A priest goes through the motions and says the hocus-pocus and "presto!" the sacraments confer grace.…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 26, 1995
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Exodus

Mansions in the Sky, The Meaning of the Tabernacle

When Israel came out of Egypt, she was a collection of tribes descended from the Tribe of Abraham. Tribalism drops out of history into the "world" by looking back to ancestors and by orienting to the spirits that govern the world. The world must not be manipulated, because to do…

by James B. JordanJanuary 7, 1995
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Revelation

The Angels of Revelation

Angels are the mediators of the Old Creation, as Eugenio Corsini has rightly pointed out in his commentary, The Apocalypse. For this reason, argues Corsini, the book of Revelation must have to do with the final end of the Old Creation order, which he associates with the work of Jesus…

by James B. JordanJanuary 7, 1995
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Biblical Horizons

Triune Revelation and Through New Eyes Volume 2

Our procedure in "Through New Eyes Volume 2" thus far has been to lay out the general overview of history and its meaning as the Bible presents it. My hope is to fill this out in four major sections, corresponding to the four ages and the four testaments in the…

by James B. JordanJanuary 7, 1995

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Philosophy

Descartes’s Double Self

In his history of modern Western views of the self ( The Idea of the Self , Cambridge 2005), Jerrold Seigel offers what he believes is a fresh interpretation of the implications Descartes’s cogito . He asks, Who is the subject, the “I,” implied by the cogito and the sum…

August 12, 2006
Philosophy

Descartes’s Double Self

In his history of modern Western views of the self ( The Idea of the Self , Cambridge 2005), Jerrold Seigel offers what he believes is a fresh interpretation of the implications Descartes’s cogito . He asks, Who is the subject, the “I,” implied by the cogito and the sum…

August 12, 2006
History

Reaching back

Bruce Holsinger shows that “postmodern” theory reaches back beyond the modern period to find resources for anti-modern critique in the medieval world. Early modern thinkers made a similar move: Stephen McKnight notes (in a Mars Hill Audio interview) that early modern scientists like Francis Bacons claimed to be recovering an…

August 12, 2006
History

Descartes’s ambitions

Descartes’s original title for Discourse on Method was “Project for a Science that Can Raise our Nature to its Highest Degree of Perfection.” And for a number of years he worked on a treatise in which he “resolved to explain all the phenomena of nature, that is all of physics”…

August 12, 2006
History

Descartes’s ambitions

Descartes’s original title for Discourse on Method was “Project for a Science that Can Raise our Nature to its Highest Degree of Perfection.” And for a number of years he worked on a treatise in which he “resolved to explain all the phenomena of nature, that is all of physics”…

August 12, 2006
Theology

Not Quite Postmodern

In his very fine, lucid book, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? (Baker 2006), James KA Smith notes that many postmodern theologies, especially influenced by Derrida’s apophaticism, are anti-dogmatic: “postmodern religious faith eschews knowledge and therefore also eschews the particularity of dogma and doctrine. In other words, according to this line of…

August 11, 2006

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