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…
Showing page 273 of 309
Showing page 24 of 43
L ike many Renaissance writers, Shakespeare is obsessed with mutability, with the vaporous quality of human life. Nothing remains forever. Kingdoms rise and fall. Monuments erode and decay. People grow old and die. This is one of the regular themes of Shakespeare's sonnets, focused in part on the beauty of…
I n Ecclesiastes 9, Solomon urges, “Go, eat your bread in happiness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for God has already approved your works.” Joy comes from knowing that God accepts and approves what we do, and, implicitly, accepts and approves us . God finds something in…
F or years, I've highlighted the triple structure of Merchant of Venice : Three romances, three plots (casket, bond, ring), three caskets. But then I've forced that triple structure into a dual setting—Belmont and Venice. But the geography of the play is triple too: Shylock's home is a third space.…
B uzzfeed has posted a transcript of a 2014 talk that Trump strategist Steve Bannon gave to a meeting of the Human Dignity Institute, an effort to promote Christian faith in European politics. Bannon's main target is “crony capitalism,” which was most obviously manifest in the bailout of the banks…
C arl Trueman’s review of The End of Protestantism was published in the December 2016 issue of First Things . It’s a fair but critical review, and gives much fuel for further discussion. Here I respond to two main points. First and most extensively: Carl says that I am “unpersuasive”…
I n his history of American lighthouses ( Brilliant Beacons ), Eric Jay Dolin describes mid-19th century conflicts over the American lighthouse system. It sounds familiar—conflicts between those who wanted to rationalize and those who preferred the ramshackle system already in place; conflicts between technological innovation and traditional methods; conflicts…
Showing page 229 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
