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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Mesopotamian temples were sometimes made of bricks, and, according to M. J. Geller (a contribution to Figurative Language in the Ancient Near East ), great care was taken with the first brick, the “auspicious brick.” Geller writes, “When a temple was not built of stone (the usual practice) but of…
In his study of Ritual and Cult at Ugarit , Dennis Pardee discusses the similarities and differences between Ugaritic and Israelite cult. One of the “most striking set of similarities,” he says, “is provided by those terms that are either etymologically related to corresponding Hebrew terms.” The two languages use…
In 2008, William Deresiewicz published an article in The American Scholar on “ The Disadvantages of Elite Education .” Drawing on his years of study and graduate teaching at Columbia and his time at Yale, he argued that his education had made him incapable of carrying on a conversation with…
Frank Vertosick’s Mind: A Unified Theory of Intelligence is out there. He argues that living things are all intelligence, going so far as to suggest that “amoebas may be the smartest things on the planet” and claims that life is intelligence at the molecular level.” In short, “all living things—even…
B.W. Powe’s Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye is a sassy book about two of Canada’s greatest intellectuals, McLuhan the orator and rhetorician and popular guru, Frye the media-shy theorist of literary archetypes. Powe deals with their relationship as colleagues at the University of Toronto, as well as describing their direct…
Flood stories are widespread in the ancient world, and many studies compare the Babylonian account with the best known account, that of Noah in Genesis. Y.S. Chen’s The Primeval Flood Catastrophe , a revision of the author’s DPhil dissertation, looks at flood traditions from another angle, attempting to trace the…
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