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…
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Hope is one of the traditional “theological virtues” – faith, hope and love. Hebrews 11 defines faith as hope, and for Paul “hope,” like Victor and Faith, is another name for Jesus (1 Timothy 1:1). In our sermon text, Paul encourages hope by saying God is able to do “exceeding…
There’s a slight false step, in the midst of a very helpful point, in Bruce Ellis Benson’s superb Graven Ideologies : He has been explaining the “double transcendence” of Platonism - metaphysical (Truth’s being is beyong the sensible world) and epistemological (human beings can get beyond the sensible world to…
In his Teaching Company tapes on Bach and the Baroque (recommended), Robert Greenberg suggests an historical sequence that accounts for the development of German music: Music for singing, which in the period was largely church music, must take account of the language in which the music is sung. German is…
Is the “mystery of Christ” in Ephesians 3:4 a mystery about Christ or is Christ Himself the mystery? Let’s take the latter option - Christ Himself is the mystery (cf. Colossians 1:27). How does that connect with the way Paul unpacks the mystery in terms of Jew/Gentile union (v. 6)?…
NT Wright points out that the ascent and descent language in Ephesians 4:7-10 is reminiscent of Moses ascending Mount Sinai and then descending with the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Jesus ascends to heaven, and when He returns He does not bring the law of commandments on tablets of stone,…
Macbeth hopes that his one act of regicide will stop the flow of time - “if ‘twere done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.” But it can’t be done when it’s done; actions provoke reactions. He ends tragically because he cannot trammel up the consequence. Time…
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