Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Flying scrolls. Red horses. Beasts coming out of the sea. Winged women. The list goes on. Apocalyptic literature in the Bible is like a cross between science fiction and Marvel comics. And the Bible has a fair bit of this sort of thing. Daniel sees visions in Babylon, Zechariah sees…
Trinity House Institute has taken a new name, the Theopolis Institute. This striking new name expresses our unique vision and mission and captures the unified purpose behind all our specific programs and activities. We still have Bible, liturgy, and culture in our tagline. We still offer the same courses on…
Adam Kotsko offers a socio-political variation on the Christus Victor atonement theory in his 2010 study, The Politics of Redemption: The Social Logic of Salvation . He does this by explaining "the devil" in terms of the Hegelian concept of "objective spirit," Geist . As Kotsko puts it, Geist "refers…
Two factors keep Nahtali Meshel from discussing the meaning of sacrifice until late in his The "Grammar" of Sacrifice . The first has to do with the texts he draws from: "P says little about the meaning of its rituals" (174). The other has to do with the grammatical theory…
Chapter 5 of Naphtali Meshel's The "Grammar" of Sacrifice focuses on "praxemics," the physical actions of sacrificial ritual. Praxemes are constituted by six elements: an "atomact," an elementary physical act or gesture; an actor; an object that is acted up; a target for the action and often for the object…
Two chapters of Naphtali Meshel’s The “Grammar” of Sacrifice cover what he calls “jugation” and “hierarchies.” The first involves the addition of other materials to an animal offering. Jugates include wine, cereal, and oil that are added to the animals (zoemes) that are offered in sacrifice. Some jugates are coordinated…
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Emery points out that Thomas’ Trinitarian account of creation makes the Word the art of God: “The Word is . . . the reason of creatures from a double point of view, that of exemplar causality (the expression, the conception of creatures) and that of efficient causality (the accomplishment of…
According to Gilles Emery, Aquinas provides a Trinitarian account of creation. The processions within the being of God are the uncreated exemplars of the acts of creation. Emery (in a contribution to The Theology of Thomas Aquinas ): “In God, procession signified the essential communication of the fullness of divinity:…
Anna Wilson has a stimulating essay on the rise of biography after the conversion of Constantine, the Vita Constantini of Eusebius being the leading model. The rise of biography manifests the change in the fortunes of the church, as bios replaced martyrion as the leading subject of Christian biographical writing.…
An anonymous homily of the late 4th century: “Scripture has taken the Sabbath to mean rest . . . . So also the Lord having wrought the consummation, having suffered on Friday and finished his works for the restoration of fallen man, rests the seventh day and abides in the…
Barnes notes an incident recorded by Sozomen that represents the typical relationship between church and emperor under Constantine. Basil of Ancyra, along with a number of other bishops, was deposed by the Council of Constantinople in 360. It was alleged that Basil”gave orders to the civil authorities to sentence clergy…
Gibbon wrote that “the distinction of the spiritual and temporal powers, which had never been imposed on the free spirit of Greece and Rome, was introduced and confirmed by the legal establishment of Christianity” with the result that “a secret conflict between the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions embarrassed the operations…
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