Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Some of the key ways Biblical writers draw attention to important details in their stories are by the use of key words, repetition, and structural devices like chiasms and parallel constructions. The Bible sounds different, even odd, to us sometimes because of the use of these and similar literary conventions.…
It is pretty standard in conservative Christian circles to condemn unbelief for pretensions of “autonomy.” Cornelius Van Til famously (at least among those of us who knows who he is) said that “There is no alternative but that of theonomy and autonomy.” Greg Bahnsen appealed to this quotation by labeling…
Jesus was the greatest teacher who ever taught — the Light of the World, whose pure Truth brought sight to the blind (John 9). Almost no one — even those who speak openly against Him — disputes His reputation as a wise and good teacher of the way of love.…
It is clear that the events in Esther are an integral part of the history of the formation of the Restoration Covenant Era. Amalek attacks. Amalek is spoiled. The spoils are used to build the Temple, in the sense that the crude Temple of Zerubbabel can now be glorified with…
It is not coincidental that John Calvin speaks most strongly in defense of vernacular language just after his defense of singing in church. "From this also it plainly appears that public prayers must be couched not in Greek among the Latins, nor in Latin among the French or English, as…
In A Voyage Around the World , George Anson recounts the effects of scurvy upon an unfortunate man: But a most extraordinary circumstance, and what would be scarcely credible upon any single evidence, is, that the scars of wounds which had been for many years healed, were forced open again…
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The macro-structures of The Fairie Queene become clear if we look at a single book in detail. Book 1 is a good place to start. It is the story of Holiness, focused on the Redcrosse Knight and Una. Redcrosse is called upon to rescue the parents of a damsal in…
John Podhoretz ( Weekly Standard , March 2) admits that he giggled his way through Fifty Shades of Grey . The movie. He doesn't seem in a giggly mood about the novels, which he describes as “the worst books I have every read all the way through.” But Podhoretz spots…
Theodore Vial's Liturgy Wars is a rich and detailed account of the struggle over the change in the baptismal rite in 19th-century Zurich. He picks the knot of this culture war, unraveling the political, theological, and ritual dimensions of the the battle between liberalizing and conserving forces. Vial's aims go…
Chris Jenks argues in Subculture that “postmodernism’s critical imperative recommending the end of grand narratives is an invitation to dispense with the power/knowledge, truth and authority on which society, and, in many senses, the social bond, of yesterday were established” (3). One of the key theoretical tools has been an…
Brian Howell's In the Eyes of God is a substantial contribution to the discussion of theological language and to our understanding of the workings of biblical anthropomorphism. His approach rests on the “three legs” of “the biblical depiction of the divine-human relationship, divine Speech Acts, and context-sensitive metaphorical interpretation” (57).…
David Hawkes's TLS review of Marisa Cull's Shakespeare's Princes of Wales sums up the influence of Wales on Elizabethan England, and on England's Bard in particular: “The Bard (the very term has a specifically Welsh provenance) had a Welsh grandmother, Alys Griffin. The man who taught him his ‘small Latin,'…
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