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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RJ Snell is aware of what he calls the “Protestant Prejudice” against natural law, and, though himself an advocate of natural law, admits that Protestants lodge “reasonable and sensible objections” against theoretical models of natural law ( The Perspective of Love , 12). Snell, though, argues that these Protestant objections…
Oliver Harris begins his TLS review of Theodore Ziolkowski’s Lure of the Arcane by pondering why two million people went out to buy Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol the first week it was out: “If those who rushed to consume this tale of ancient mysteries and secret societies were not buying…
In a National Interest review of Evan Osnos’s Age of Ambition , Dan Bluemnthal writes that “neither money, nor nationalism is satisfying the Chinese urge for the good life.” He quotes Haruki Murakami’s observation that nationalism is like “cheap liquor” whose effects don’t last. Blumenthal suggests that “There is a…
In his contribution to Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions , Noel Robertson argues that “Archaeology and epic poetry both fix on climate change as a fundamental cause of the Mycenaean collapse.” As the climate cooled and became wetter, the population shifted east, adopted warmer types of clothing, abandoned…
Bernard Suits ( The Grasshopper , 24) begins his effort to define the nature of games by distinguishing games and play from work, defined as technical activity that aims to achieve an end in the most efficient way possible. Distinguishing the two is more difficult that it might appear, and…
David leads the ark procession into Jerusalem wearing a linen ephod (1 Samuel 6). He offers sacrifices after every six paces, gets the ark into a tent, and when it’s all done he blesses the people. He functions in this rite as a royal priest, the chief “layman” in Israel.…
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