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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Milbank charges that modern theology is characterized by false humility. Barth agreed with respect to Christology. In the name of a humble refusal to penetrate the veil of mystery around the incarnation, modern theologians have often renounced “beforehand all serious and responsible inquiry for the truth and every attempt to…
Barth ( CD 1.2) defends the church father’s from Herder’s charges of intellectualism and scholasticism. He sees two objections in Herder’s complaint: a “formal” objection to the meticulousness of patristic Christology, and a “material” objection that the fathers’ categories, especially that of “nature,” turned the incarnation and salvation into a…
When we read that ancient tyrants hired magicians to perform haruspicy with the entrails of dismembered infants, we immediately discount the record as propaganda. We know without needing to investigate that similar accusations against Jews in the Middle Ages had become a topos of anti-religious rhetoric. I’m not saying we…
Siloam was a pool (John 9), but Siloam also had a towner (Luke 13:4). That enhances the Edenic setting of the story of the man born blind in John 9. He is not only sent to wash in the water, he is sent to wash in the water by the…
Hamann suggests that the fear of God is what energizes: “When one considers how much strength, presence of mind, and speed, off which we are otherwise incapable, the fear of an extraordinary danger inspires in us: then one can understand why a Christian is so superior to the natural, secure…
Hamann hoped for a natural theology that would lead not to “the God of naked reason” but to “the God of Holy Scripture, who would show us that all [nature’s] treasures are nothing but an allegory, a mythological painting of heavenly systems - just as all historical events are the…
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