Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Gambling The Bible nowhere condemns gambling, and so we need to be careful in our assessment of it. Let me begin by making a strong case against gambling. Then I will surprise most readers by pointing out that gambling may not always be sinful. The reader should bear in mind…
Tim Powers, The Stress of Her Regard (Ace Books, 1991). Reviewed by Jeffrey Meyers. Tim Power’s latest novel is now available in paperback. The story is set in early nineteenth century England and Italy, in the world of the poets John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron. Michael Crawford, a…
A close supporter of Biblical Horizons asks whether it is proper and wise to get involved in all the boycotts that Christians are being asked to observe today. She raises the point that Paul’s advice about eating meat sacrificed to idols seems relevant to the discussion. I think she is…
Solomon began to build the Temple of the Lord in the fourth year of his reign, which was 480 years after Israel came out of Egypt, the year A.M. 2993 (1 Kings 6:1). Seven years later, in the year A.M. 3000, the Temple building was finished (1 Kings 6:38). The…
Several months back, a candidate for ordination was being examined for entrance into the Presbytery of which I am a member. The candidate had a good deal of trouble with the exam on the sacraments, stumbling badly as he tried to define the "nature of the sacrament." Apparently in an…
Exploring the influence of televangelism on American religion in his book, The Struggle for America’s Soul , Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow presents a typical, though hypothetical, case study: Mabel Miller. Mabel lives alone, thousands of miles from her family. She grew up in a Baptist Church, but now, approaching 65,…
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Derrida believes the idea of a “gift” is contradictory. As David Hart summarizes, for Derrida, even if the gift is given with no expectation of tangible return, it still cannot be truly a gift, because the gift elicits recognition of the giver, and even the intention to give requires a…
Derrida believes the idea of a “gift” is contradictory. As David Hart summarizes, for Derrida, even if the gift is given with no expectation of tangible return, it still cannot be truly a gift, because the gift elicits recognition of the giver, and even the intention to give requires a…
Hart argues that the beauty of creation should not be seen as competing with the beauty of God; sensible things do not in themselves distract from God, but rather our corrupt desires reduces the things of the world to “inert property” alone draws the sensible world away from God. He…
Hart argues that the beauty of creation should not be seen as competing with the beauty of God; sensible things do not in themselves distract from God, but rather our corrupt desires reduces the things of the world to “inert property” alone draws the sensible world away from God. He…
O K, I can’t stop writing down remarks from Hart, so here’s another: Nicolas of Cusa remarks that eternal wisdom is tasted in everything savored, eternal pleasure felt in all things pleasurable, eternal beauty beheld in all that is beautiful, and eternal desire experienced in everything desired ( Idiota de…
Here are some more excerpts from David Bentley Hart’s remarkable Beauty of the Infinite . “The Bible . . . depicts creation at once as a kind of deliberative invention (‘Let us make . . . ’) and, consequently, as a kind of play, a kind of artistry for the…
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