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Writing

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Colossians

The Principalities and Powers, (Part 1)

Paul contends that with the death of Christ on the Cross, there was an overcoming of the Principalities and the Powers (Col. 2:15). A great deal has been written on this subject over the last 60 years. 1 What was for a long time either ignored, or regarded by liberal…

by Richard BledsoeMarch 22, 2018
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John

The True Temple & The True Sacrifice

The Gospel reading for the third Sunday in Lent this year (John 2:13-22) was enclosed by two verses (13 and 23) each of which mentions Jerusalem, the city where God chose to place His Name and habitation, and the Passover, the festival which, above all others, speaks of the Lamb…

by Arthur KayMarch 20, 2018
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Course Recap

Course Recap: "Theology of the Sexes" with Alastair Roberts

The 2018 Theopolis Easter term course on the theology of the sexes was a resounding success. Visiting instructor Dr. Alastair Roberts (PhD, Durham) laid out a rich biblical theology of sexuality, before addressing a variety of philosophical, political, and ethical issues. Roberts stressed that our questions about sex and gender,…

by Peter LeithartMarch 19, 2018
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Culture

Why We Should Jettison the “Strong Female Character,” Part III

Click HERE for part 1 of this series, and HERE for part 2. The recurring characterization problems with such Strong Female Characters arise in no small measure from the struggle to show that men and women are interchangeable and can compete and cooperate with each other on the same terms.…

by Alastair RobertsMarch 15, 2018
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Culture

Why We Should Jettison the “Strong Female Character," (Part 2)

The Rise of the Action Heroine Click HERE for part 1 of this series. Partly as a result of this everywoman heroine trend, partly in order to be more inclusive in traditionally male dominated genres, partly in order to push back against stereotypes, partly in order to legitimate eye candy…

by Alastair RobertsMarch 13, 2018
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Politics

Lamech’s Patsy: The Human Cost of State Hypocrisy

I was in prison and you came to me. (Matthew 25:36) From the New York Times: U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Indeed, the United States…

by Mike BullMarch 8, 2018

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Giving All To God

It is well known that Greeks rarely offered holocaust sacrifices - sacrifices in which the entire animal is offered to the gods by being consumed in the fire. the most common sacrifice was the thysia , which always culminated with a meal. Alongside the rare holocausts were the equally rare…

March 8, 2014

Auden’s Secrets

When I spot an essay entitled “The Secret Auden,” I get nervous. When it’s in the New York Review of Books , I get nervouser. Edward Mendelson’s recent piece on Auden does refer to Auden’s homosexuality, but the focus of the piece is elsewhere: Auden’s dirty little secret is that…

March 8, 2014

Pure Gift?

Is the olah , the “whole burnt offering,” a “pure gift, as Moshe Halbertal has it in On Sacrifice (14)? It seems so: The entire animal is burned, no meat remains for the worshiper, there is no evident benefit given in return for the total devotion of an animal to…

March 8, 2014

The Gift of Efficacy

Blood atones. That’s rooted in the created fact that life is in the blood, but in the Bible this doesn’t mean that blood is a kind of magical moral detergent. How then can it atone? It atones because God has “given” it for atonement: “I have given [blood] to you…

March 7, 2014

Atonement and Re-creation

Stephen A. Geller offers an intriguing reading of the day of atonement rituals. He points out that, for all the attention given to the scapegoat, one of the unique features of this day’s rites, it is not said that the scapegoat atones for sin. What puts the kafar into Yom…

March 7, 2014

Atonement by blood

Why, Stephen A. Geller asks, does “P” consider blood a necessary agent for achieving forgiveness and the re-creation that is atonement? He answers by noting the sequence of Leviticus 16-17, which moves from the bloody cleansing and reestablishment of the sanctuary to the command that butchering be done in the…

March 7, 2014

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