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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Many writers of the English Enlightenment attempted to formulate an original monotheistic “natural religion” that could be contrasted with the “positive religion” of Christianity. Priests suppressed the true natural religion that was maintained in secret by philosophers until they could teach it openly. The form of this historical account is…
In 1517, Ulrich von Hutton published a German translation of Lorenzo Valla’s demonstration that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. Luther read it early and said in a 1520 letter, “Good heavens! what darkness and wickedness is at Rome. I am in such a fit that I scarcely doubt…
What makes the Spirit Holy? Holy in Scripture means “claimed by indwelling glory.” The tabernacle is consecrated as holy space by the indwelling glory of Yahweh. Saints are those claimed by the indwelling of the Spirit. The Spirit is Holy because the Spirit is claimed, by Father and Son. He…
The Donation of Constantine includes a reference to the legend that Constantine was cured of leprosy by Pope Sylvester sometime in the 310s, and then baptized. Constantine is recorded as saying “on the first day after receiving the mystery of the holy baptism, and after the cure of my body…
Emery says that for Aquinas the diversity of creation is founded in the personal plurality of the divine relations: “One cannot emphasize more forcefully the positive value of the multiplicity of creature; Saint Thomas does not conceive of plurality as a decline from unity, but to the contrary, as a…
Thomas’ Trinitarian account of creation has not only a Christological but a pneumatological dimension, Emery argues. Thomas’ Augustinian pneumatology is rooted in his recognition that within the “God who loves himself,” there is a God who is loved and a love that is God. Especially in his later work, he…
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