Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Imagine driving up to Canada and stopping at a restaurant to get a bite to eat. While you’re sitting at the table, an enthusiastic young man comes over to you and says in an excited voice, "Are you an American?" You reply, "Yes, I am." "Wonderful! I have so little…
1 O Lord Almighty, God of our fathers, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and of their righteous posterity; 2 You who have made heaven and earth with all their order; 3 who have shackled the sea by Your word ofcommand, who have confined the deep and sealed it with…
Part 1: 1When King Astyages was laid with his fathers, Cyrus the Persian received his kingdom. 2 And Daniel was a companion of the king, and was the most honored of his friends. 3Now the Babylonians had an idol called Bel, and every day they spent on it twelve bushels…
This debate has been going on for some time. But with few exceptions, almost all explanations of Presbyterian church polity claim that a “church” (meaning a single local congregation) must be ruled by “a plurality of elders” of whom one may happen to teach and work full-time doing so. This…
I hope that those who are advocating reading more of the ancient, "classical" literature of the ancient, "classical" world, are also promoting the Apocrypha. I’m afraid that many Christians don’t realize what great literature much of the Apocrypha is. It is not, of course, inspired by God, and perhaps because…
PRESBYTERIANISM is a term referring to a system of government in the Church. It is commonly contrasted with Congregationalism and Episcopalianism. Presbyter is a Greek word that is translated as “elder” in our English New Testaments. Thus, Presbyterianism is commonly defined as “rule by elders.” This is a misleading definition.…
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With characteristic gleeful verve, Rodney Stark assaults secularization theory in his Triumph of Christianity . Secularization theory revived, he says, a charge brought against religious pluralism by “monopoly religions: that disputes among religious groups undermine the credibility of all” (357). But people kept being religious, even in pluralistic settings. Secularization…
Latin America was supposed to become Protestant by now. In one of the major non-developments of the past quarter-century, it didn’t. Catholics didn’t take predictions of a Protestant Latin America lightly, and responded with renewal efforts of their own. Rodney Stark ( Triumph of Christianity ) highlights the role of…
Carlotta Gall spent 12 years in Afghanistan, and spent much of her time investigating the sources of the Taliban resurgence. She traced it back to Pakistan, and discovered that the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) was secretly supportive of both the Taliban and al Quaeda. Gall writes , “The Pakistani government,…
Gall again, reporting on Pakistan’s cozy relationship with bin Laden: She found evidence of “regular correspondence between Bin Laden and a string of militant leaders who must have known he was living in Pakistan, including Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a pro-Kashmiri group that has also been active…
Jesus searches the entrails and hearts of His people (Revelation 2:23), but then judges everyone “according to your deeds” ( erga ). Why does He need the internal inspection when he’s going to judge by behavior in the last instance? That question highlights what might be called one dimension of…
Carol Wilson’s For I Was Hungry and You Gave Me Food is a well-researched and illuminating piece of social-scientific scholarship on the New Testament. Picking up on recent work that places Matthew’s gospel in a Greco-Roman imperial context (e.g., Warren Carter), Wilson focuses narrowly on access to food. How did…
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