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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Though the presence of Christ has been central to Eucharistic theology, Thomas O'Loughlin ( The Eucharist ) argues that in Tridentine Catholicism”the dominant thinking about the event of physical engagement with the Eucharist was imagined in terms of a sacred commodity. The priest ‘confected' the Eucharist, it was reserved for…
Early in his Forgiveness in Victorian Literature , Richard Gibson quotes Sarah Beckwith's observation that “promising and forgiving [are] acts of making community” (27). Gibson draws on Hannah Arendt's analysis to fill out the picture. Promises reduce the unpredictability of the future, while “forgiveness confronts the crisis of the past.…
Margaret Doody's Jane Austen's Names is a treasure chest. On the assumption that “an artist cannot do anything slovenly,” Doody explores the historical significance of the real place names that appear in Austen's novels, teases out the puns in the characters' names, suggests that Austen was sensitive to the ethnic…
Key terms of ancient philosophy are rare or entirely absent in the New Testament. Aristotle considered the study of causes ( aitia ) and principles ( archai ) to be the subject matter of first philosophy ( Metaphysics A.1,981b28), and he defines metaphysics as the study “of the things which…
Norberto Bobbio ( Left and Right ) claims that left and right are different because of their different evaluations of equality. He starts from the uncontroversial fact that people are equal in certain respects, unequal in others, and claims that “We can then correctly define as egalitarians those who ,…
John Rawls's notion of “difference principle” is an alternative to a meritocratic regime, but it is also different from equality of result. As Michael Sandell explains in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice , Rawls denies that the difference principle eliminates distinctions between persons. The difference principle aims at the…
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