Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
It seems to be old news, but I was unaware of it until recently. Australian academics argued that mothers should be allowed to terminate the life of a newborn child. [i] Why would they promote such an idea? Because before the child is born it is not always possible to…
This is the second of two essays introducing Pascal’s Wager. Click HERE for Part 1. In “The Pop Star and the Mathematician” I gave an overview of the apologetic approach commonly called Pascal’s Wager. In that Wager, 17 th -century French mathematician Blaise Pascal argued that the choice between Christian…
This is the first of two essays aiming to introduce the reader to Pascal’s Wager. The second will address criticisms of the Wager. In the early 1990s, a perennially popular British pop star was interviewed on British television about his very public evangelical Christian faith. “What if,” the reporter asked…
Matthew 13 is about secrets. In this chapter, Jesus teaches eight parables and tells the disciples that they reveal the secrets of the kingdom (13:11). And much like Samson who both tells riddles and is himself a riddle that the reader must solve, so Jesus not only tells secrets but…
Click HERE for part One. THE TEXT AS TABERNACLE Creation – Initiation – Genesis (1 Samuel 17:1-11) The gathered armies not only remind the reader of Ebal and Gerizim, but also of the very reason that Israel was established (Creation) , set apart from the other nations by the circumcision…
What to do with Job’s Final “Friend,” Elihu Elihu is a strange character, at least in the sense of how and where he appears in the book of Job. Why does he not appear with the other three “friends?” Does his argument differ from any of the first three who…
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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…
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