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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Apringius Latin Commentaries on Revelation (Ancient Christian Texts) , 25-6) offers a fascinating numerological interpretation of Jesus’ declaration that He is Alpha and Omega. The numerical value of Omega is 800, and so is the Greek word peristera , “dove.” Alpha adds a 1 to this, and thus Jesus’ self-description…
From Irenaeus on, the vast majority of patristic and medieval commentators have claimed that Revelation was written during the reign of Domitian in the mid-90s AD. There have been a few dissidents, the most famous of which was Epiphanius of Salamis (fifth century), who may reflect an independent tradition in…
Julianus Pomerius, who directed a school in sixth-century Gaul, emphasized straightforward, unadorned preaching. “A teacher of the Church should not parade an elaborate style,” he writes in his The Contemplative Life , “lest he seem not to want to edify the Church of God but to reveal what great learning…
With my views on baptism again subject to scrutiny, I take a moment to summarize what I’ve written on the subject. There is nothing new here. It is what I wrote in my dissertation, The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism , in my book, The Baptized Body…
As Stephen recounts the history of Israel to his persecutors, he refers in passing to several chronological details. Abraham’s descendants were slaves for 400 years (Acts 7:6), God appeared to Moses after 40 years of sojourn in Midian (7:30), and another 40 years passed with Israel in the wilderness (7:36).…
In a 2006 article in Studies in Philology , Sean Benson explores Shakespeare’s use of hawking imagery in romantic relations. Shakespeare “employs the gendered discourse of hawking language in order to make the interspecific leap from the falconer’s training of his female hawk to a husband’s training of his wife.…
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