Defilement and Purification: A Reflection on Sin and Salvation and Hebrews 10.11-25

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My midweek post this week introduced the complicated issue of sacrifice in Christianity, focusing especially on the substitutionary models of Christ's death that have dominated Western Christian theology for the past millennium. These models assume that Jesus was punished for our sins, in order to assuage God's anger and thereby fulfill the Jewish sacrificial system. … Continue reading Defilement and Purification: A Reflection on Sin and Salvation and Hebrews 10.11-25

Law-Breaking and …?

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This series exploring different biblical metaphors for sin and salvation would be incomplete without looking at the understanding of sin that most readily comes to mind for most of us: sin as infraction, rule-breaking or trespass. This approach understands sin as crossing agreed-upon boundaries. What makes this image interesting theologically is that it doesn't have … Continue reading Law-Breaking and …?

Alienation and Communion

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This series has attempted to normalize 'sin' (without minimizing it) by looking at some of the many ways the idea of sin and its positive counterpart, salvation, are described in the Bible. Each of the images offers a different perspective on what it is that has gone wrong with the human experiment, and therefore a … Continue reading Alienation and Communion

Hunger and Feeding: A Reflection on Halloween and All Saints Day, Isaiah 25, and Sin and Salvation

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Today, or I should say more properly tonight, is Halloween, the celebration of all that is macabre and ghoulish. It's hard to think of Halloween without envisioning ghosts, with all their associations of unfinished business, and unfilled longing. I'm reminded once again of the Buddhist notion of the 'hungry ghosts', an existential state where those … Continue reading Hunger and Feeding: A Reflection on Halloween and All Saints Day, Isaiah 25, and Sin and Salvation