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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Charles Hodge challenged the abolitionist view that slavery was always sinful so effectively that his essay was included in the pro-slavery compendium Cotton is King . Mark Noll points out that the editor deleted Hodges dire prophecies about the future of American slavery (this in 1835): “The South . .…
Yahweh places words in the mouths of prophets through His Spirit. Sometimes, though, the words that He places there are spoken back to Him. Inspired by the Spirit, the prophet becomes part of an internal conversation within Yahweh. Hence: Yahweh, Spirit, and Prophet = Father, Spirit, Son.
INTRODUCTION Proverbs 24:10-20 continues, structurally speaking, in the same pattern as the 22:22-24:9. Instead of the two-line Proverbs we find elsewhere, these are small paragraphs, at least four lines long. 24:10-20 returns again and again to situations of distress, attack, battle, and the success of enemies. Verse 10 talks about…
After the flood, Noah releases a dove, which finds no rest ( manoach ; Gen 8:9). The ark finds rest ( nuach ) on Ararat (8:4). It is one of a dozen puns on the name of Noah in the flood story. Centuries later, the ark of the covenant (not…
Matthew begins and ends with scenes of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. In chapters 1-2, the Mary and Joseph are his parents; in chapter 27, there’s Joseph of Arimathea and Mary has doubled into Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary.” The first story is a story of life, the second a…
Barnes writes, “when Christians were executed by imperial order under Decius and Valerian, crowds still openly jeered at martyrs and their sympathizers. In the ‘Great Persecution,’ however, evidence of similar hostility is almost entirely lacking; by the last decades of the third century, the Christian church had become an established…
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