Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What is below is fairly self-explanatory. This is an exchange I had with a local liberal clergyman on the subject of abortion. The circumstances of the debate are included in the text itself. I initially e-mailed this out to a list of clergy in our city after a local (and…
The seemingly humdrum parts of the Bible often hide overlooked wisdom. Take, for example, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their stories aren't exactly the most gripping or memorable. They are far less concrete than, say, the story of the Exodus. No one in Ezra is stricken blind or devoured…
For most of the past century, philosophical perspectives on life in the western world have been overtly grim and pessimistic. The optimism of the Enlightenment, generated by confidence in the scientific method and the potential of an increasingly civilized humanity to redress the evils of the world, was shattered by…
Chiastic structures are found all over the Bible, and in recent decades commentators have become more adept at spotting them. But identifying these literary structures is only part of the challenge. There remains the challenge of understanding what they mean. Part of the answer is found in the recognition that…
Part 1 can be found HERE . Clearly, more than just getting worship right is important in changing the world, but since worship is the central act of God’s people, performed on the first day of the week at the center of the world before the very face of God,…
“Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed.” ( Luke 11:27 ) Arguing for Christian morality in a secular society is difficult. A culture which accepts evolutionary dogma has no intellectual place — or inherent desire — for absolute morality, since it believes morality…
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L ook at a wall, suggests Matthew Crawford ( The World Beyond Your Head ). What color is it? You probably have an answer, a simple one, but when you force yourself to look closely you can see all sorts of variations. The paint is uneven; the old color shows…
P rior to the 1830s, argues JCD Clark ( The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 ), British political debate was carried on with denominational idioms. Political divides were denominational divides. Political and denominational issues overlapped and intertwined. Political networks, on both sides of the Atlantic, followed denominational pathways. As Clark puts…
I n Revelation, martyrs sing before martyrdom and after martyrdom (Revelation 14-15). Their martyr songs are the war songs of the Lamb, the triumphal chants of those who overcome because they, like the Lamb, do not love life even to death. It doesn't happen only in Revelation. In his comments…
S ummarizing themes from his Love, Sex, and Tragedy , Simon Goldhill highlights the difference between ancient Greek conceptions of eros and Christian and post-Christian conceptions of romantic love. Even the most famous lovers of Greek antiquity, he writes, don’t express themselves with the little nothings that are normal among…
I n a TLS review of several new books on Kierkegaard, Will Rees comments on the therapeutic cruelty of Kierkegaard’s writing. In Sickness Unto Death , “Anti-Climacus explains how, far from an inheritance of birth, the ‘self’ is in fact a vocation – something that one must forge in a…
D evoney Looser says that Jane Austen’s juvenilia is an exercise in burlesque . Not the strip-tease variety, but not so far from that either: “Where a parody sets out to mimic conventions and make us laugh, a burlesque relies ‘on an extravagant incongruity between a subject and its treatment.’…
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