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 a 1999 article in the Journal of Church and State , John Witte, Jr. offers a neat typology of forms of religious establishment. “Institutional” establishment involved the diversion of tax funds to support the clergy and religious activity. This form of establishment existed in a number of states into…
In his Symbols: Public and Private (Symbol, Myth & Ritual) (387), Raymond Firth mentions an English case that illustrates the constriction of giving in modern societies: “A record of an English laws case some twenty years ago notes a challenge to a man’s legacy of 1000 pounds to the vicar…
A friend asked me to clarify some comments I made about capitalism in my First Things piece last Friday. Thinking there may be wider interest in the question, I offer a revised version of my answer to him. As a starting point, let me clarify that the term “capitalism” here…
The New York Review of Books review of Daniel Mendelsohn’s Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture (New York Review Collections) , the reviewer summarizes Mendelsohn’s comparison of Avatar and Wizard of Oz . Dorothy awakens at the end, Mendelsohn writes, “with all that she has…
An essay at the San Francisco Egotist describes technologically-driven changes in advertising. What used to be a process of days or a week is not a process of hours. The shift is not, the author points out, confined to advertising: “Our technology whizzes along at the velocity of a speeding…
John 1: The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Moses ascended Mount Sinai and entered Yahweh’s cloud, and when he came out his face radiated the glory of the cloud.…
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