Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the 48th year, the third month, and the fourteenth night, while I slept in my bed, I was taken in vision to Xanadu and set upon a high hill. Looking to the west, I saw a large building, surrounded with gardens and fountains, walks and gravestones, and a bell…
‘Tis the season to be informed–sometimes in gentleness, often with vigor–by a variety of Christians (and others) 1 claiming that it is wrong to celebrate Christmas. I have no desire to force anyone to celebrate Christmas against their will. Indeed, it would be insulting to the high holiday to pretend…
Part 2: The Enoch Factor Back in Open Book 21 we discussed "The Enoch Factor." Because that was several years ago (May 1994) and many people have begun reading this letter since that time, we shall return to the subject here and expand what we wrote at that time. After…
Day 6. The sixth day provides the creation of land animals and of humanity. As we saw above, the second day spills over to the first half of the third day, for only at that point did God say that it was good. Similarly, it seems that the fifth day…
During the past two decades, the "quest of the historical Jesus" has entered a new phase. The first incarnation of the quest was rudely shaken by the publication of Albert Schweitzer’s classic Quest of the Historical Jesus , easily the most devastating and funniest work of New Testament scholarship ever…
At the 1997 Biblical Horizons Summer Conference, the Rev. Jeffrey Meyers presented a series of remarkable lectures on the gospel of Mark. Among his many insightful comments, he suggested that the second gospel continues where the first gospel ends; Matthew ends with Jesus saying "Go" (Matthew 28:19), and Mark’s shows…
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“Parochial Christianity,” writes Mark Greengrass ( Christendom Destroyed ), “was more than a religious experience. It was a set of rights to benefices which were the key to monopoly revenues (the tithe, collected in various forms) in which patrons, collators and clergymen all had interests. And behind every parish church…
Robinson Crusoe suffers enormous hardship before he ever gets to his island, and the hardship seems disproportionate to the wrong he commits. Is running off to sea against his father's wishes such an enormity? In his classic study of Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography , GA Starr explains that Robinson “defies…
Howard Zehr makes clear in his Little Book of Restorative Justice that “restorative justice” isn't a panacea. It doesn't pretend to replace the the legal system, nor is it necessarily opposed to retribution (12-13). Primarily, restorative justice is an effort to put the principle actors back at the center of…
RJ Snell's Acedia is about acedia. But before he gets to his extended analysis of that vice, he offers a superb, brilliantly brief, ontology and anthropology, drawing on the resources of Trinitarian theology and the book of Genesis. Among other things, Snell emphasizes the gift that is human work, a…
John sees one like a son of man on a cloud, holding a sickle (Revelation 14:14). We assume that He's traveling down to reap the harvest, but is that correct? The original for this son-cloud combination if Daniel 7:13, where it is clear that the Son of Man comes up…
D avid Goldman ( It's Not the End of the World, It's Just the End of You ) argues that “modern art is ideological, as its proponents are the first to admit. It was the ideologues, namely the critics, who made the reputation of the abstract impressionists, the most famous…
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