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31-03-0213
Hermeneutics

Apocalyptic Eyes

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…

by Toby SumpterNovember 4, 2014
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Theopolis News

New Name, New Look

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…

by TheopolisNovember 4, 2014
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Atonement

Not Fearing the Devil

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…

by Peter LeithartOctober 13, 2014
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Leviticus

The Meaning of Sacrifice

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…

by Peter LeithartOctober 8, 2014
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Leviticus

Praxemics

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…

by Peter LeithartOctober 6, 2014
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Leviticus

Jugation and Hierarchy

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…

by Peter LeithartOctober 1, 2014

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Protest and its Limits

N o American needs to be told that it’s been a tumultuous, often bewildering, political season. Democrats were rocked from the left by an aging socialist; the GOP has been taken over by a politically inexperienced showman. Clearly, the natives are restless. About what? What do Trump supporters want? What…

October 11, 2016

The Amen of Action

Y ahweh promises David an enduring house. David doesn’t take it for granted, but immediately asks the Lord to keep His word (1 Chronicles 17:23). Given a promise of God, David doesn’t merely wait for it to be fulfilled. He turns the promise to prayer. The prayer has a neat…

October 10, 2016
Science

Nature Without Us

I n his The Territories of Science and Religion , Peter Harrison gives examples of the shift that took place in the understanding of the natural world. It was a shift from a “symbolic” understanding of the natural world to a utilitarian and mathematical one. He lists some titles that…

October 7, 2016

Ranking Arnie

H ow do you rank the best golfers? Tallying up the wins doesn’t tell the whole story. The quality of the competition matters, as do the number of golfers in a tournament. Using a variety of complicated metrics, the Economist ranked the late Arnold Palmer among the greats of golf…

October 7, 2016

Christianity’s Lost World

W riting in Christianity Today , Timothy C. Morgan reports on an archeological discovery in Kazakhstan, a few dozen miles from the border with China: “A team of archaeologists uncovered seven Christian gravestones late this summer in the ancient Silk Road city of Ilyn Balik near the Kazakhstan-China border. The…

October 7, 2016

On the Uses of Tardigrades

J ohn Crowe of the University of California, Davis, may not have built molecular engines, but he’s been up to some cool stuff over the past forty years. He’s been working with “water bears,” more technically “tardigrades,” described in a profile of the scientist a “speck-sized organisms that can dry…

October 7, 2016

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