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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Horizons

Gordon Wenham on Ritual

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,…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 27, 1995
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Biblical Horizons

A Postscript to the Meyers Thesis

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…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 27, 1995
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Baptism

Sacramental Efficacy

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.…

by Peter LeithartJanuary 26, 1995
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Exodus

Mansions in the Sky, The Meaning of the Tabernacle

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…

by James B. JordanJanuary 7, 1995
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Revelation

The Angels of Revelation

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…

by James B. JordanJanuary 7, 1995
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Biblical Horizons

Triune Revelation and Through New Eyes Volume 2

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…

by James B. JordanJanuary 7, 1995

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Jealous Mammon

Many have observed the connections between consumerism and abortion. It’s an ancient insight. The prophet Micah charged that Zion had been built with blood and Jerusalem with violent injustice (Micah 4:10). He immediately followed with a charge against Judah’s leaders: Judges accept bribes, priests teach for money; prophets please the…

March 3, 2014

Social Animal

It was much better for God to create humanity from one individual than from several, Augustine argues ( City of God , 12.21). Noting the difference between the creation of animals from the ground and the creation of Eve from Adam, Augustine notes, “as to the other animals, He created…

March 3, 2014

Herbert’s Accessibility

“What kind of an appeal does this have for a reader - especially one from a post-Christian society like our own-who does not share Herbert’s theological premisses?” asks Stephen Prickett in his TLS review of John Drury’s Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert . Coleridge already…

March 3, 2014

Porn and Empire

Augustine discerns an inner connection between imperium and pornography. Imperium is the political form of the libido dominandi . Pornography is the sexual form of the same libido . Both imperium and porn reduce human persons to bodies to be manipulated for the manipulator’s pleasure. Decadence is built into imperium…

March 3, 2014

Israel among the Nations

In 1907, Ira M. Price, a member of the original faculty of the University of Chicago and professor of ancient languages and literatures from 1892-1925, concluded a discussion of the parallels between Genesis and other ANE documents with this observation ( The Monuments and the Old Testament ): “How .…

March 3, 2014

Anxious Age

Jody Bottum’s new An Anxious Age is as idiosyncratic, quirky, eloquent, and insightful as its author. Bottum offers a spiritual reading of contemporary America, starting from the insight that American culture has been re-enchanted, our “metaphysical realm . . . repopulated with social and political ideas elevated to the status…

March 3, 2014

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