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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In his TLS review of Kathryn Walls’s study of the symbolism of Una in Spenser’s Faerie Queene ( God’s Only Daughter ), Bart van Es compares Walls’s book to that of John Dixon, a sixteenth century farmer who annotated his copy of Spenser: “Like Dixon, Walls takes the Bible and…
When John enters heaven (Revelation 4), He sees the Enthronement as a precious stone, a stone glowing with light, a stone that sparkles like a star, and He is surrounded with a rainbow that is also described as a precious stone. Specifically, the stone is the emerald. This is the…
In his Caused to Believe , William Bonney follows up suggestions from Charles Giblin regarding the structure of John’s prologue and the structural connections between the prologue and the gospel. Giblin finds what he calls an X-Y pattern in the prologue: “The X of this pattern encompasses verses 1–13. The…
In the latest issue of the International Journal of Systematic Theology , the redoubtable and hyper-productive Matthew Levering probes Augustine’s arguments (in de Trinitate ) for concluding that the Spirit is “love” and “gift.” As Levering points out, the identifications are not straightforwardly asserted anywhere in Scripture, yet Augustine makes…
God’s throne in heaven, like Sinai, flashes with lightning, crashes with thunder (Revelation 4:5). Those throne phenomena are repeated at crucial seams in the book of Revelation, with additions. After the seventh seal, an angel throws fire to earth, which reproduces the heavenly throne on earth (8:5)—thunder, sounds, lightning, with…
Christians walk into church through a door. All of them can come in. There’s no restricted access. Inside, there’s a lectern with a Bible, a table with food, a pastor in white. In some churches, the aroma of incense fills the air. It’s the holy place; in fact, the most…
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