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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Peter Lombard argued (Book 1, distinction 17 of the Sentences ) that the Spirit is both the love by which God loves us and the origin of the love by which we love Him: “the Holy Spirit is the Love [amor] of the Father and the Son, by which They…
In another chapter of the same book, Larsen argues that British secularization promoted by Dissenters within England, and on specifically theological grounds. According to the “Protestant Dissenters’ Catechism” (published 1772, by Samuel Palmer), a church is “a congregation, or voluntary soceity of Christians, who meet together to attend gospel ordinances…
In his book Contested Christianity (Baylor, 2004), Wheaton historian Timothy Larsen examines the reception of DF Strauss’s Life of Jesus in England. He suggests that only Darwin’s Origin of Species rivals Strauss’s book as a challenge to orthodoxy in Victorian England. Yet, the book’s impact had less to do with…
In response to my comments about the “road to Rome” charge, Eric Enlow of Handong International Law School writes: “I would connect sacramentalism with the road to Rome for an empirical reason. The individuals that I have known who have been most interested in sacramentalism have converted to Roman Catholicism.…
INTRODUCTION Manasseh undergoes a demonic “repentance”: Verse 3 says “he turned, he built,” using the Hebrew verb that normally designates repentance (“turn”). He “repents” of Hezekiah’s reforms. Because of this, the Lord determines to repeat in Jerusalem what he did in Shiloh (v. 12; cf. 1 Samuel 3:11; Jeremiah 19:3).…
2 Kings 20:8-11: Now Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord the third day? And Isaiah said, This shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord…
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