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31-03-0213
Hermeneutics

Apocalyptic Eyes

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…

by Toby SumpterNovember 4, 2014
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Theopolis News

New Name, New Look

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…

by TheopolisNovember 4, 2014
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Atonement

Not Fearing the Devil

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…

by Peter LeithartOctober 13, 2014
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Leviticus

The Meaning of Sacrifice

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…

by Peter LeithartOctober 8, 2014
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Leviticus

Praxemics

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…

by Peter LeithartOctober 6, 2014
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Leviticus

Jugation and Hierarchy

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…

by Peter LeithartOctober 1, 2014

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Clever Drudge

Drudge couldn’t care a whit for Hillary Clinton, but his increasingly provocative headlines (most recently, “Diss-Off”) for a story on how Obama never considered Hillary as a veep candidate can have only one result: To get Hillary’s supporters, already cool toward Obama, hopping mad.

August 22, 2008

Enlightenment and elementary principles

Kant regards positive religions or ecclesiastical faiths (including Christianity) as temporary moral crutches that we can shed as we approach the pure natural religion of reason. Christianity’s institutions, sacraments, dogmas, are the stoicheia leading us to enlightenment. Here we see the problematics of Christian sacramental theology, going back at least…

August 22, 2008
Philosophy

Changing past and realism

Weberman returns to Danto to advance his argument. He notes that Danto shies away from saying that past events change, and suggests that he did this in order to remain a realist about past events; Danto held that “past events are what they are in a mind-independent way.” He insists…

August 19, 2008
Philosophy

Nonfixity of past

In an article in the Review of Metaphysics (1997), David Weberman argues for the “nonfixity of the historical past.” He starts from Arthur Danto’s argument that historical inquiry and writing cannot be a reconstruction available to an “ideal chronicler” who knows everything that happens the moment it happens and sets…

August 19, 2008

Union card

E. Miner wrote, that “the ability to declare typology absent is a kind of proof of sound modern critical method.” Which translated means, Skepticism about typology is the union card of serious biblical scholarship.

August 19, 2008

Brick Hermeneutics

A. K. A. Adam offers a useful critique of what he calls “brick hermeneutics.” Taking a cue from George Herriman’s early 20th-century comic strip Krazy Kat, he describes brick hermeneutics as follows: “Most of our discourses take for granted the premise that we communicate by infusing ‘meaning’ into some expression,…

August 19, 2008

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