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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Horizons

Gordon Wenham on Ritual

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,…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 27, 1995
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Biblical Horizons

A Postscript to the Meyers Thesis

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…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 27, 1995
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Baptism

Sacramental Efficacy

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.…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 26, 1995
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Exodus

Mansions in the Sky, The Meaning of the Tabernacle

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…

by James B. JordanJanuary 7, 1995
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Revelation

The Angels of Revelation

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…

by James B. JordanJanuary 7, 1995
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Biblical Horizons

Triune Revelation and Through New Eyes Volume 2

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…

by James B. JordanJanuary 7, 1995

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Love (III)

John Drury begins his book on George Herbert, Music At Midnight , with Herbert's “Love (III)”: Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I…

October 1, 2015

Self-Surprise

“I surprised myself,” says the woman who courageously fights off a mugger, the wife caught in an affair, the student who pipes up to disagree with the celebrity professor, the father dismayed by his rage at an unruly child. It’s such a common expression that we fail to see how…

October 1, 2015

Jesus and the Professional Theologians

On the Sabbath after the last day of the Feast of Booths, Jesus has an intense debate with Jewish leaders in Herod’s temple, climaxing with Jesus’ declaration, “Before Abraham was, I am.” The Jews have recently been eager to execute an adulteress. Now they’ve found a new target, a blasphemer,…

October 1, 2015

Sacrifice and Worship After Stoicheia

Let me begin with two starting points, too rapidly explained and defended. First: It is clear from the New Testament’s handful of uses of the phrase that ta stoicheia tou kosmou are connected with the regulations of the Torah. During her childhood (Galatians 4:3), Paul says, Israel was enslaved to…

September 30, 2015

Unseemly Members

It has been common in the Christian West, particularly in the modern era, to define the image of God in terms of rationality or some other intellectual capacity. Confronted by a madman, Christians will no doubt say “Oh, they’re human too,” but by this definition they are clearly defective humans.…

September 30, 2015

Premodern Condition

In The Premodern Condition , Bruce Holsinger examines the influence of medieval studies on some of the major figures in the 1960s French avant garde . By “medieval studies,” he means both scholarship on the Middle Ages (Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, the Annales school, Denis de Rougement’s Love in the…

September 30, 2015

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