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,…
Showing page 294 of 309
Showing page 4 of 43
Each week, we kneel to confess our own sins and then go on to pray for the universal church, the nations, and the world. It’s obvious why we confess our sins. We are seeking forgiveness and cleansing. We are praying for one another as we pray together. The prayer for…
Prayer, Rosenstock-Huessy says, is “doubtful, agitated, despairing, searching.” Prayer desperately seeks answers. When prayer cools into a “residue,” it’s called “research”: “If research is real, it still has the dignity of prayer, although it is the last and most cooled-off phase of genuine prayer.” This cooling process is evident in…
Rosenstock-Huessy notes that the ancient world observed a division of labor with regard to speech: “Women are expected to contribute wild, passionate, inarticulate shouts of blind feeling. Men are expected to build on this natural stratum the structure of high and articulate speech . . . . Women and children…
Historical Jesus studies, Rosenstock-Huessy claims, attempt to reduce the four gospels to a single unified story, turning the gospels into “material for our reconstruction of the life of Jesus from all the material.” Or, historical Jesus studies attempt to place Jesus among the ancients: “He belonged with antiquity. He was…
It has become popular to describe the gospels as biographies, but Rosenstock-Huessy pre-challenged this trend (no doubt reacting to the lives-of-Jesus movement of the 18th and 19th centuries). Ancient biographies, he claims were actually “thanatographies,” while “the story of Jesus makes sense only when his death begins and antecedes our…
Christopher Smart wrote Jubilate Agno while confined in a madhouse. He would have said, no doubt, he found his sanity there. Newtonians, they are the madmen: For Newton’s notion of colours is ALOGOS unphilosophical. For the colours are spiritual . . . . NOW that colour is spiritual appears inasmuch…
Showing page 1721 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
