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…
Showing page 167 of 309
Showing page 38 of 43
Eucharistic meditation, January 4: Haggai’s prophecy encourages the people of Israel to devote themselves to building the house of the Lord, in spite of opposition and the hostility of the nations. Among the judgments the Lord brings is a drought which leads to a famine: there is no dew, and…
Exhortation for January 4: Sexual immorality has marked all non-Christian civilizations. Leviticus 18 gives a laundry list of sexual sins ?Eincest, adultery, sodomy, bestiality?Eand ends with this exhortation: “Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you…
Does Paul have to deal with Jews who are confident that they are performing the law rightly, and believe that they have something to boast about before God because of their performance? Yes, of course. He’s dealing with Pharisees, of the kind that Jesus satirized in his parable, who boasted…
What are the issues for Paul? To oversimplify, but I hope helpfully: Much traditional treatment of Romans and other letters assumes that Paul is mainly concerned with individual soteriology, while recent Pauline scholarship emphasizes that Paul is concerned about the plight of Israel and the purposes of God among the…
What are the issues for Paul? To oversimplify, but I hope helpfully: Much traditional treatment of Romans and other letters assumes that Paul is mainly concerned with individual soteriology, while recent Pauline scholarship emphasizes that Paul is concerned about the plight of Israel and the purposes of God among the…
What is Paul trying to prove in Romans 1:18-3:20? Here are a few, non-exhaustive, suggestions: 1) He is trying to close “every mouth” and demonstrate that “all the world” is “accountable to God,” and guilty before Him. It is sometimes said in recent Pauline scholarship that this is not a…
Showing page 2143 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
