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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Desmond points out that an origin but be both one and more than one: “even if we want to say that the origin of coming to be possesses some kind of ‘unity’ with itself, this ‘unity’ cannot be univocal. Why so? Because, such a univocal unity would be hard to…
William Desmond ( Being and the Between ) points out that humans continue to experience a “surge of mind’s self-transcendence” in the face of skeptical arguments from empiricists and idealists. Metaphysics won’t stay down, and the attempt to keep it down is a self-defeating attempt to suppress the wonder at…
Milton describes the hoards of fallen angels as scattered, fallen leaves: “thick as Autumnal leaves.” What does this mean? What’s the point of comparison? Is it merely: There are lots of fallen angels, just as there are lots of fallen leaves in your yard? The repetition of “fallen” in the…
Milton describes Satan’s spear as “equal which the tallest Pine / Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast / of some great Ammiral.” In his translation of the Iliad , Pope describes the death of Sarpedon: “as some mountain Oak, or Poplar tall / or pine (fit mast for…
Hollander quotes this evocative passage from Thoreau, who describes the sound of distant church bells: “The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the…
Hollander quotes the final sentence of “The Dead”: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” The chiasm of “falling faintly” and “faintly falling” makes it feel…
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