Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the November 1993 issue of Open Book Peter Leithart commented briefly on gnosticism. The film 2001 is a great specimen of gnosticism, and is worth viewing as a Sunday School project for an adult class. The author of the basic story was Arthur C. Clarke, an old-school science fiction…
Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier movies display a strongly moral, even Christian, point of view, and certainly can be enjoyed by Christian viewers. His later works, such as Psycho , The Birds , and his television series, are not as clearly moral in tone. In these later efforts, Hitchcock brought humorous or…
“What art thou, thou idol ceremony?” asked Henry V during his midnight rounds of the English camp near Agincourt. His answer was that ceremony was both nothing and everything. It was nothing in the sense that it offered no guarantee that the king would be fit for office. Contrary to…
You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them; and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All…
My research has led me to the conviction that there are three major periods of Biblical history, which lead to a fourth. These are the Ages of the Father, the Word, and the Spirit. The First Age, that of the Father, is recorded in the book of Genesis. It focuses…
Both Bible history and the current consensus chronology of the ancient world are tied up intimately with Egyptian history and chronology. Thus, as we broaden Biblical Chronology beyond the matter of adding up numbers and try to integrate Biblical chronology with the ancient world, the place to start would seem…
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Rex Koivisto argues ( One Lord, One Faith , 155-6) that all churches have traditions, including supposedly Bible-only Evangelicals. All traditions can harden into harmful habits, but Koivisto thinks that this danger is particularly threatening among Evangelicals who claim to be free of tradition. “The danger . . . comes…
The debate over the marriage pledge has died down, but it shouldn't be dismissed. It still has a useful function, a clarifying function. Those who signed the marriage pledge were refusing to sign state marriage licenses. The point behind the pledge was to distinguish between what the law now calls…
Revelation is addressed to the church in a wilderness, a generation-long period between Jesus' exaltation and the fall of Jerusalem. Like Israel in the wilderness, the church needs to find sources of fresh, life-giving water. Fresh water is promised (7:17) and eventually given (21:5-6; 22:1, 17), but in between unpolluted…
Steve Pincus argues that 1688 marked the “first modern revolution. The Glorious Revolution couldn't have taken the form it did without the “series of ideological debates that informed and transformed conceptions of state, religion, and society” in the middle of the century (8). From these debates emerged a vision for…
Paul Griffiths ( Decreation ) argues that “quietism” about political interest and judgment is a sign here and now of the future quietus of heaven. “Quietism” doesn't mean a retreat from advocacy or passion. Citing Pascal, Griffiths lays out a version of political advocacy that renounces political calculations of a…
Elizabethan Puritans were regularly denounced as “Judaizers” by others in the English church. After all, they were interested in Hebrew, kept the Sabbath, exhibited what others regarded as a legalistic strain in their piety. During the Laudian ceremony controversy of the 1630s, however, Puritans turned the tables and accused the…
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