Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
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,…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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Jacob Taubes ( The Political Theology of Paul (Cultural Memory in the Present) ) says that theology departments should install some windows so they can see across the hall and the quad to other departments. He knows the complaint goes both ways: “in Berlin you can just feel it, the…
Me genoito ! Paul says (Galatians 2:17) to the question above. But how does the issue even come up? Why would anyone begin to think Christ is a deacon of sin? The logic becomes clearer (though not crystal) when we take note of the syntax of Galatians 2:15-17. Verse 16…
Things must be used in accord with their nature, argues Karol Wojtyla in Love and Responsibility . Human persons are rational and volitional, and thus “using” them as mere means to an end “does violence to the very essence of the other” (27). But then what of employers trying to…
In an essay in The Interpretation Of Cultures (Basic Books Classics) , Geertz sorts through the problems of defining “man.” He doesn’t want to erase difference in abstract universality, nor fall into relativism. Most attempts to define man he finds unsatisfying: The effort to construct an archetype is only an…
It’s happening. The New York Times reports on the plans of the Conservative Victory Project, a group of what I called “Good Republicans” who want to root out the Bad: “The effort would put a new twist on the Republican-vs.-Republican warfare that has consumed the party’s primary races in recent…
I’ve spent the last few weeks watching the Canadian series Slings & Arrows: The Complete Collection , which ran from 2003-2006. The series centers on the managers and actors at the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival. Erstwhile Hamlet and former asylum resident Geoffrey Tennant (played by Paul Gross) is creative director;…
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