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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Andrew Robinson ( God and the World of Signs ) cannot prove that C.S. Peirce drew inspiration for his semiotic pattern of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness from Trinitarian theology. But Robinson is struck by the parallels between Peircean semiotics and Trinitarian theology. For starters, he points to similarities between Athanasius'…
John Stuart Mill hoped (in Jason Brennan's summary) "that getting people involved in politics would make them smarter, more concerned about the common good, better educated, and nobler. He hoped getting a factory worker to think about politics would be like getting a fish to discover there’s a world outside…
Several essays in the book, Believer’s Baptism , observe the inconsistencies in paedobaptist defenses of infant baptism. In the introduction, editors Thomas Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright focus on the issue of apostasy. If the warning passages in, say, Hebrews are real threats to people within the covenant community, then…
Gatherings of the ancient Athenian citizen assembly began with the sacrifice of a pig and the sprinkling of blood to consecrate a sacred space. When a Roman emperor wanted to discover the future, he sacrificed an animal and dispatched a specialist to read the entrails. It’s been a long time…
A few passages from premodern allegorical readings of the Song of Songs. The first set comes from the Jewish commentator Shlomo Yitzchaki, known as Rashi; the second from Nicholas of Lyra. Of "Solomon" in the Song, Rashi writes: "Every Solomon (for they were at a loss to explain why Scripture…
The Chronicler recounts Joash's reign over several chapters, from 2 Chronicles 22:10 through the end of chapter 24. The text is chiastically structured: A. Conspiracy to coronate Joash, 22:20-23:11 B. Death of Athaliah, 23:12-15 C. Covenant renewal, 23:16-21 C'. Joash repairs the house, 24:1-14 B'. Death of Jehoiada and Zechariah,…
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