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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Socrates claimed that the aim of philosophers was “to practice for dying and death,” and this means that the philosopher must be eager for death all his life and face his eventual death as with equanimity. Preparation for death involves dying before death, and this is a process of purification…
“Ritual” wasn’t a hooray term in early Protestantism. Catholics had their rituals and ceremoniousness, and Protestants had little interest. Yet it was a Scot, and a professor of divinity, Robertson Smith, who first focused scholarly attention on the phenomenon. As Jan Bremmer points out in his contribution to Ansichten griechischer…
Jonathan Arnold’s Sacred Music in Secular Society poses a question and offers an answer. Sacred music is popular: Witness the sales of chant albums, the popularity of the Tallis Scholars, the Sixteen, and other groups.The question is why music composed for liturgy or with liturgical interests, music once used in…
US Army Captain Benjamin Summers warns against hero-inflation in a piece in the Washington Post : “Many veterans deserve high praise for their heroism, but others of us do not. Infantrymen who put their lives on the line for a mission, aircrews who flew into harm’s way to evacuate the…
Abraham is the first man in the Bible who is called a “prophet” (Genesis 20:7). A prophet, Abraham Heschel pointed out, is a member of Yahweh’s council, an officer of the court who listens in on the proceedings and has the privilege of the floor. Fittingly, Abraham is called “prophet”…
My friends at Romans Road Media have posted a brief essay of mine on the penetration of Christianity into Germanic literature. While you’re there, check out some of the educational resources, especially the video courses on Old Western Culture taught by Wes Calihan.
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