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,…
Showing page 294 of 309
Showing page 32 of 43
Mead says clock time and calendar time is time only “in a manner of speaking.” He also argues that clock and calendar time is not “absolute” but relative to one’s frame of reference. True that, as my kids say: “Monday” spells gloom within the framework of a certain organization of…
George Herbert Mead focused his thought on temporality (especially in Philosophy of the Present ), and particularly on “time in” events and roles rather than time as a background of events. Time in the strictest sense is the moment of present emergence that reflects into the past and changes its…
Nobel chemist Ilya Prigogine’s work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility, Barbara Adam argues, not only challenged particular scientific laws but the classical notion of a scientific law. In classical physics, to arrive at a law was to arrive at a timeless substructure of natural reality. Adam summarizes the…
Barbara Adam says that the time of clocks is “an idea in practice,” and elaborates: “as a material expression of a particular understanding of the natural world, in which time is conceptualised through motion without change, as a spatial quantity which is infinitely divisible into units, which can be numerically…
Since Lewis Mumford and Max Weber, historians and sociologists have recognized the importance of the Benedictine monastery in the development of time-keeping, scheduling, and Western notions of time in general. Zerubavel notes that in developing their regulated common life, the Benedictines deliberately broke with the natural and temporal rhythms of…
We’re used to thinking of privacy in terms of protected spaces, and often hear comments about how isolated individuals and families are in modern society. A guy opens his garage door remotely so his Lexus can slip into the garage, and the door is closed before he’s out of the…
Showing page 1503 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
