Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
After the identification of the recipients of his letter at the beginning of Revelation, John gives a benediction that resembles the benedictions of the Pauline letters. He pronounces grace/favor and peace, grace and favor that lead to peace, grace that leads to fullness and harmony that is the biblical definition…
Throughout the latter half of 1-2 Samuel, Saul and David are locked in hand-to-hand combat. It seems an unequal contest. All the heavy artillery is on Saul's side. To understand the full scope of the conflict, we need to back up to the beginning of the book. Prior to Saul's…
Last week, I lectured at Ostrog Academy in Ostrog, Ukraine, and at a pastors' conference in Kyiv. The latter was co-sponsored by Trinity House and the Alliance of Reformed Churches in Ukraine. I offer my impressions of Ukraine this morning at Firstthings.com .
Why do I bristle when I see someone with white wires hanging from his ears, flipping through what must be a million songs downloaded onto his iPod? No doubt, it’s the threat of the new. I've only recently begun carrying a cell phone, and now I hear tell of compact…
Judah is in terrible shape (Isaiah 57). Yahweh told Israel to worship Him only at the temple, but the people worship on every hill and under every green and leafy tree. He commanded them to worship Him alone, but they are devoted to many gods. Worshipers set up their beds…
Like any great writer, the Lord foreshadows late happenings in early happenings. Like many greater writers, the Lord ends where he begins, returning to a glorified Edenic city-sanctuary at the end of his cosmic story. The Lord writes with history, real people and events, not merely with words. But His…
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Conservatives often point to the 60s as the hinge point in the history of sexual morality. They mean the 1960s. As Faramerz Dabhoiwala shows in his Origins of Sex , the sexual revolution has much deeper roots, in the 1660s and 1760s as much as in the 1960s. Dabhoiwala places…
Christians and traditionalists often condemn homosexual activity as “unnatural” behavior. The apostle Paul uses precisely this term. What does it mean? If it is taken to mean that there is no homosexual behavior in the natural world, then the claim is manifestly untrue. As James Neill points out in The…
“Music,” writes Roger Scruton ( Soul of the World , 175) “addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world” and thus “requires us to respond to a subjectivity that lies beyond the world of objects, in a space of its own.” It’s one of the intimations of a…
At the heart of Scruton’s Soul of the World is a plea for a “cognitive dualism” that he sets in opposition to all “nothing but” reductionisms - music is nothing but sounds, painting nothing but pigments on canvas, the world nothing but matter in motion, humans thought nothing but neurons…
The sacred is Janus-faced, writes Roger Scruton in Soul of the World (15): “Sacred objects, words, animals, ceremonies, places all seem to stand at the horizon of our world, looking out to that which is not of this world, because it belongs in the sphere of the divine, and looking…
Keith Darden writes in Foreign Affairs that the main problem in Ukraine is not Russia but Ukraine. It’s dangerous to ignore the fact that Russia is exploiting divisions that have existed in Ukraine for a long time: “inattention to Ukraine’s internal demons reflects a dangerous misreading of current events; the…
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