Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
My copy of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1976: not so new, really) defines obscene as (1) "disgusting to the senses; repulsive" and (2) "abhorrent to morality or virtue; specif: designed to incite lust or depravity." Definitions such as this serve a useful purpose only when there is agreement on what…
An Overview Here begins a series of studies in the Abomination of Desolation, or Desolating Sacrilege. This month and next I shall set out an overview of what I regard as the best interpretation of the phenomenon. Later essays will look at it in more detail. (The original form of…
29. There are three things that are stately in their march, Even four that are stately when they walk: 30. The lion is mighty among beasts And does not turn back before any, 31. The strutting cock, The male goat, And a king with his army around him. 32. If…
We have seen that it is likely that the Artaxerxes of Ezra-Nehemiah is the same as Darius the Great. If this solution be correct, and I think it is, possibly there is another problem in Ezra that can be resolved by it. In Ezra 4:6 we are told that "in…
Czech novelist Milan Kundera, though hardly a household name in the English-speaking world, has achieved a certain notoriety in America in recent years, largely on the strength of the English translation and film version of his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 1 The Unbearable Lightness of Being — the…
24. Four things are small on the earth, But they are exceedingly wise; 25. The ants are not a strong folk, But they prepare their food in the summer; 26. The coneys are not a mighty folk, Yet they make their houses in the rocks; 27. The locusts have no…
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Drawing on the work of Christopher Page ( The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years ), Wilken ( The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity , 152-3 ) points out that musical notation and the musical staff was an invention of early medieval monks. He…
Ephrem the Syrian’s hymns were celebrated East and West, and Robert Wilken notes ( The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity , 148 ) that one of his contributions was to compose “hymns especially for women to sing.” Describing this, the Syrian Christian Jacob of Sarug pointed to…
Yesterday, I heard a highly stimulating sermon on gnat theology (Exodus 8:16-18) from my friend, Pastor David Deutsch of Grace Reformed Church in Camarillo, California. Gnats arise from dust; dust is cursed, a symbol of death. From that association, David drew the inference that gnats on man and beast is…
W. Allen Orr reviews Thomas Nagel’s recent Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False in the NYRB . Orr sums up Nagel’s assault on neo-Darwinian reductionism this way: “Nagel insists that the mind-body problem ‘is not just a local problem’ but ‘invades our…
Scott Moonen sent along a report on studies that indicate that babies already respond to language in utero . “”Forty infants, about 30 hours old and an even mix of girls and boys, were studied in Tacoma and Stockholm, Sweden.” The findings: “Babies only hours old are able to differentiate…
Lev Shestov ( All Things are Possible , 64) observes that it is a “school axiom” that “logical skepticism refutes itself, since the denial of the possibility of positive knowledge is already an affirmation.” Shestov doesn’t think this works: For starters, “skepticism is not bound to be logical, for it…
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