Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev & the Capitalist West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990). Reviewed by Peter J. Leithart. The subtitle of this massive volume gives a good idea of its major theme. Martin, the…
The Abomination of Desolation: PART 1 The Abomination of Desolation: PART 2 What I intend to do in this series of studies is this: First, in the present essay we shall survey the occurrences of the Abomination of Desolation in the Bible in a cursory way, in order to get…
We previously surveyed what is meant by the abomination of desolation . We suggested that it refers to sacrilegious acts performed by the religious leaders of Israel, captained by their High Priest, right in front of God’s face in the Temple. Later studies in this series will provide evidence for…
Throughout history, the Christian Church has had to guard against the heresy of gnosticism. Gnosticism is not an ordinary heresy, because it does not manifest itself as a set of defined beliefs. Rather, gnosticism is a tendency, a tendency to replace the historic facts of Christianity with philosophical ideas. Gnosticism…
In Rite Reasons Nos. 9-12, I discussed the errors of Roman Catholicism, Anglo-Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. I have had several requests to comment further on the so-called Seventh Ecumenical Council, held at Nicaea in A.D. 787. That Council ordered the excommunication of anyone who rejects the veneration of icons. 1…
The drink offering or libation ( nesek ) is mentioned in only three places in the book of Leviticus. When the sheaf of the firstfruits was waved before the Lord, a grain offering was to be burned, along with "its libation, a fourth of a hin of wine [approx. one…
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Laurence Moore's Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans is a study of American religion that is not considered “mainstream” or “mainline”—Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Christian Science, Fundamentalists, Black churches. The goal is not to fill in a gap. The goal is to challenge the assumption that the “mainline” should function…
After John introduces the new scene – “I saw another sign in the heaven, great and marvelous” – the sign is described with two clauses (Revelation 15:1). The first is, woodenly translated, “angels seven having plagues seven the last”; and the second it “in them finished the passion of God.”…
Both Old and New Testaments, writes David Martin ( Pentecostalism , 12) include principles that “by persistent extension and deepening . . . can divest systems of authority of their justification and turn law into a matter of inward judgement and sincerity rather than external observance.” “Rend your heart and…
Greek myths valorize blindness. Tiresias is a blind seer, and when Oedipus finally “sees,” he becomes Tiresias, digging out his eyes with Jocasta's brooches. The bard who sings of the Trojan War in the Odyssey is, like Homer himself, blind. For the Greeks, the sightless are the true seers. Scripture…
The saints playing harps and singing on the fiery firmament are there because they are victorious over three enemies: the beast, the image of the beast, and the number of the beast's name (Revelation 15:2). When we look back at how those three are presented earlier in Revelation, we realize…
Girard's theory of scapegoating as the great virtue of explaining how the death of Jesus can remake human society. By refusing to acknowledge sin, Jesus becomes the innocent scapegoat, and thereby exposes the scapegoat mechanism for what it is. That exposure is the good news, and undoes the perverse dynamics…
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