Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
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,…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
Showing page 273 of 309
Showing page 33 of 43
In a 2002 article, Lester Little notes the biblical inspiration for Carolingian Benedictine monasticism: “In inspiration, thought patterns, and rhetoric, this liturgical monasticism shared in a culture that was deeply indebted to the Old Testament. Models for the duties and prerogatives of the religious were found in the instructions given…
Charles Eisenstein offers this arresting description of the divine attributes of money in modern culture ( Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition , xiii-xv): “The one thing on the planet most closely resembling the . . . conception of the divine is money. It is…
In his Forsaken: The Trinity and the Cross, and Why It Matters , Thomas H. McCall cites some alarming statements about the logic of atonement from evangelical theologians, who claim that there is a “strife of attributes” in God: “Gregory Boyd and Paul Eddy describe this position as one that…
According to most ancient myths, the origin of the creation is violent violent. It must be so. Reality as we know it is in constant motion, a realm of constant change. But antique religions are quests for a place of stability. To get to that “rock of ages,” change has…
In his outline of theology proper in Christian Dogmatics, Volume 1 , Jenson describes the “usual god” of ancient religion: “The usual God, whose eternity is persistence of the beginning, has as his very honor among us that in him we are secure against the threats of the future. Ancient…
In their classic study of The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks (13), Detienne and Vernant describe how the distribution of meat from a sacrificed animal traces the boundaries and ranks of a social order: “The commensal meal begins with division. Two systems seem to compete, both in the carving…
Showing page 879 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
