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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An addendum to my post at firstthings.com today: There’s a generational issue that the aging leaders of the religious right needs to be addressed in a serious way. Most of my students and younger colleagues do not identify in any way with the old religious right. They are anti-abortion and…
According to the Chronicler, Hezekiah is a new David. He “did right in the sight of Yahweh, according to all that his father David had done” (2 Chronicles 29:2). Like David in 1 Chronicles, Hezekiah organizes the priesthood and Levitical choir to reconsecrate the temple (2 Chronicles 29:3-36) and gathers…
Next door at the main First Things site, I offer my reflections on the import of Tuesday’s election: www.firstthings.com.
“John Calvin was no monastic.” Matthew Myer Boulton states the obvious ( Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology , 28). Calvin is a critic of the monasticism of his time, and even criticizes the withdrawal of monks in earlier, better times. What’s not…
Matthew Myer Boulton argues that the reforms in worship inaugurated by Calvin were intended to establish a worship that “was in the first place a matter of verbal, catechetical, intellectual engagement with God’s word revealed in Scripture and expounded from the pulpit” ( Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation,…
In a review of Richard Sherlock’s Nature’s End: The Theological Meaning of the New Genetics (Religion and Contemporary Culture) in Touchstone , J. Daryl Charles responds to Sherlock’s claim that in both Thomas and Calvin “natural law in any of its forms is ultimately an inadequate moral guide.” The Calvinist…
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