Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What is below is fairly self-explanatory. This is an exchange I had with a local liberal clergyman on the subject of abortion. The circumstances of the debate are included in the text itself. I initially e-mailed this out to a list of clergy in our city after a local (and…
The seemingly humdrum parts of the Bible often hide overlooked wisdom. Take, for example, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their stories aren't exactly the most gripping or memorable. They are far less concrete than, say, the story of the Exodus. No one in Ezra is stricken blind or devoured…
For most of the past century, philosophical perspectives on life in the western world have been overtly grim and pessimistic. The optimism of the Enlightenment, generated by confidence in the scientific method and the potential of an increasingly civilized humanity to redress the evils of the world, was shattered by…
Chiastic structures are found all over the Bible, and in recent decades commentators have become more adept at spotting them. But identifying these literary structures is only part of the challenge. There remains the challenge of understanding what they mean. Part of the answer is found in the recognition that…
Part 1 can be found HERE . Clearly, more than just getting worship right is important in changing the world, but since worship is the central act of God’s people, performed on the first day of the week at the center of the world before the very face of God,…
“Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed.” ( Luke 11:27 ) Arguing for Christian morality in a secular society is difficult. A culture which accepts evolutionary dogma has no intellectual place — or inherent desire — for absolute morality, since it believes morality…
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S arah Eekhoff Zylstra reports in Christianity Today on efforts to change laws concerning church construction in Egypt: “Current laws, which have been in place since 1856, require Christians to get the consent of the local Muslim community—and the country’s president—before building a church.” At times, “Christians were required to…
D arian Leader notes in What Is Madness? that the various theories of madness that have been developed over the past fifty years are “more or less unknown outside a very narrow professional field” (2). That research has been undertaken within a psychoanalytic framework, and is barely known even to…
Haiku is the most mockable poetic form. It seems easy, and a lot of bad haiku gets written. The best haiku exemplifies the nature of poetry, which I have described as a “ concentrated excess of language .” Reading a well-constructive haiku is like viewing a scene in a flash…
A s Rhodri Lewis points out , the evidence that Hamlet is young is overwhelming: “Claudius counsels Hamlet that his enduring display of grief for his father is ‘unmanly,' a term whose persuasive force depends on Hamlet aspiring to, rather than already having attained, the condition of manliness; Laertes thinks…
E ach day the sun rises and sets. Each year, the sun does the same, ascending during the spring to its zenith in the summer solstice and then descending again to its nadir in the winter solstice. As Jean Hani points out ( Symbolism of the Christian Temple , 73-4),…
T he Reformers read Revelation as a prophetic outline of history, and so identified the beast and harlot with the Catholic church of their time. In response, Catholics developed “preterist” and “futurist” readings of the book, which viewed the Apocalypse as a prophecy of fulfilled events of the distant past,…
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