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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In her contribution to Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages , Beverly Mayne Kienzle summarizes Hildegard of Bingen's understanding of heaven and of the new Jerusalem. For Hildegard, “Jerusalem represents the vision of peace and salvation, the final resting place for those who perform good works in this life.” She…
In a 1998 article in VT, Giancarlo Biguzzi argues that John describes two different forms of idolatry in the book of Revelation. The first is the traditional idolatry of idols; the second is the beast idolatry that is the focus of the book. John “speaks explicitly of that given to…
“Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” The comparisons are not random, argues Aldo Regalado in Bending Steel : “By measuring Superman’s powers against those of the bullet, the train, and the skyscraper, these phrases offer clues that…
In a recent article, Loren Stuckenbruck makes this striking comment about the heavenly worship of Revelation 4: “John’s vision of a ‘Christ-less' worship in chapter 4 is so different from chapter 5; indeed, it is different from the visions described in the rest of the book in which Jesus plays…
The last time we had a Rodin revival was during the 1960s, writes Jed Perl. He seemed to capture the revolutionary 60s “ambiguous, contradictory, and conflicted” relation to tradition. Rodin is enjoying something of a revival again today, and Perl thinks it is for much the same reasons.” Despite his…
Near the end of her book on The Heavenly Book Motif , Leslie Baynes notes the “negative attitude about writing that Plato’s Socrates expresses in the Phaedrus ” is absent from early Christianity. For early Christians, “Words are ephemeral and disappear as soon as they are spoken, but writing remains.…
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