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 crucial association in Paul’s reading of the Abraham story (Galatians 4) is the link between Hagar, Sinai, and slavery. It also seems to be the weakest link. Is it simply a geographic association? Could the association turn on a pun? Hagar is a “bondwoman,” paidiske in Greek (Galatians 4:22-23,…
When the fourth trumpet sounds, the sun, moon, and stars are plagued (Revelation 8:12). A third of the stars are darkened, and day and night ceases to “shine” for a third of the time (two four-hour periods of darkness). The fourth trumpet partially reverses the fourth day of creation, when…
In one of the many wonderful passages in his Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple , Matthew Levering points to the Abelardian dimensions of Thomas’s atonement theology: “for Aquinas, as for Abelard, the person who meditates upon Christ’s passion is able to ‘[know] thereby how much God loves him, and…
In response to a critique of Thomas Aquinas’s views on the law from Michael Wyschogrod, Matthew Levering argues ( Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple ) that “the Mosaic law . . . is still observed by Christians ” (his emphasis). Exactly right. And it gets better when Levering elaborates,…
We complain about speed a lot. Everything moves too fast to grasp or control. So we find ways to slow down - slow food stands against the McDonaldization of our diets. There’s even a World Institute for Slowness out there. But we don’t want everything to move slow, argues Lutz…
Martinus de Boer argues in his Galatians commentary that while “the expression ‘the works of the flesh’ . . . is reminiscent of the expression ‘works of the law,’” they are not equivalent. In fact, they aren’t grammatically parallel at all: “whereas the works of the law are the deeds…
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