Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For many people the date October 31 is significant not only for being the Eve of All Saints (All Hallows Eve, Halloween) but as the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. These theses were a list of…
It has become routine in October for some Christian schools to send out letters warning parents about the evils of Halloween, and it has become equally routine for me to be asked questions about this matter. "Halloween" is simply a contraction for All Hallows’ Eve. The word "hallow" means "saint,"…
The following is an excerpt from Peter Leithart's forthcoming two-volume commentary on Revelation (T&T Clark). Y ou must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings,” a voice tells John (Rev. 10:11). Then someone gives him a “reed like a rod” and instructs him to measure (11:1).…
Josiah is an ideal Davidic king in many ways. He not only “did right,” but he “walked in the ways of his father David” and “did not turn aside to the right or to the left” (2 Chronicles 34:2). At the age of 16, he began to seek Yahweh, and…
One of the best discussions of Augustine’s views on time comes from Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music, and Time (ch. 3). Following Paul Ricoeur, Begbie claims that Augustine’s distentio “is conceived as the three-fold present, and the threefold present as distentio . The distentio consists in the non-coincidence of the mind’s…
This has always been the position of the Christian Church, and from an historical perspective the present situation in evangelicalism is appalling. The early liturgies of the Church, which are still used in Episcopal and Lutheran worship, are laced with psalm phrases. The early hymns, such as the Te Deum…
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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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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