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…
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“The religion of our time,” says the writer known as Bronze Age Pervert , “is the unquestioned and absolute worship of human equality.” That may not be the religion, but it’s certainly one of them, and one that threatens to dissolve the moral and social distinctions and hierarchies on which…
Paul is a biblical theologian, and Romans 9—11 is among the bibliest section in any of Paul’s epistles. As noted by N.T. Wright (whose Paul and the Faithfulness of God I follow throughout), nearly forty percent of the text is taken up with quotations from Scripture, a higher concentration than…
Romans isn’t an ordo salutis with eschatological (chapters 9—11) and practical (Romans 12—15) appendixes. When we read Romans as a mini-systematic theology, we’re liable to read even chapters 9—11 as a theological treatise about predestination or divine sovereignty, supported by biblical citations. That gets things backwards. Paul isn’t using Scripture…
David Bentley Hart responds below to my rejoinder . Read this article on the "literal sense" in pre-modern exegesis. There is no rule regarding which fathers thought which stories only myths and which not. As for my historical-critical flourishes, I never attributed them to the fathers. You asked me whether…
Thanks to David Bentley Hart for responding to my critique of his book, and for the bracing clarity of his response. I think we now know where we stand. I hope I achieve similar clarity below, as I briefly sketch a few lines of rejoinder. 1) Of course, the Old…
Romans 8:1-4 follows on the anguished dilemma of Romans 7: Who can deliver from the body of death? Not the law, as Paul has shown. Torah intensifies the predicament, dividing even the faithful Israelite into a schizophrenic who inwardly delights in the law but cannot get his body to comply.…
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