Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Every attempt to understand the Christian sacraments makes use of comparisons or analogies with other rituals, events, or customs. Calvin and those who followed him, for example, spoke of the sacraments as “seals,” and compared them to the “seal of approval” that an official impresses on a document. Thinking about…
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out in his essay "Hitler and Israel, or On Prayer" (available for $2.00 from Biblical Horizons ) that it is God’s word "No!" that establishes in a culture the distinction between the Creator and the creature. The Bible repeatedly says "No!" to every human attempt to…
If you missed Gattaca at the movie theaters, you can probably check it out from your local video store now. And you should. This is one of those relatively rare thought-provoking movies that can stand being watched with brain in gear more than once. It is also poetic, sensitive, visually…
Part 4: The Nephilim Factor Western Civilization partakes of what I call "the Nephilim Factor." The Enoch Factor means that the pagans get there first. This is both a blessing and a danger. As a blessing, it means that they work out techniques of dominion over the lower creation that…
The Worship Service Then the one speaking with me took me by the hair and lifted me into the air in the middle of the great room. And as I watched, I saw people entering the room to the sound of the great bells outside. Then entered from all four…
Part 3: Philosophy (continued) If we realize that human beings are the images of God, and that man hates God, then we realize that all non-Christian political philosophy is founded on a fundamental hatred of other human beings, a hatred manifest in contempt. Rome, like Enoch, was founded on the…
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"Stay, you are so fair." That is the sentence that Mephistopheles tempts Faust to utter in Goethe's poem. To wish to remain in one moment is to abandon the restlessness of human experience. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse takes the opposing tack: "Making of the moment something permanent" is the…
"That the kiss is the icon of intimacy is so obvious it is in danger of becoming a cliché," writes Ziyad Marar ( Intimacy , 33). "How many romantic films end, or at least peak, with that image? The orchestra swells, the hearts melt in one long embrace. Just as…
Nathan Mitchell (writing in the Oxford History of Christian Worship , 324) denies that Zwingli taught a "mere symbolist" according to which the Supper "simply served to remind believers of the great benefits bestowed on them through Christ's passion and death." Zwingli wasn't a symbolist "in any modern sense." Mitchell…
Beverly Gaventa ( The Child in the Bible ) points to the role of speech in Romans. Perverse speech is one of the key symptoms of the world of sin; by the cross and resurrection, Jesus has redeemed speech. She points to the inclusio around chapters 1-3: "the indictment itself…
How did the American federal government expand its power and reach? World War I is often cited as a turning point, but Christopher Capozzola's Uncle Sam Wants You shows that this expansion wasn't just a federal project. New forms of political obligations were enforced by local, unofficial forms of force…
Some years ago, I gave a quiz to college-bound high school students. Take it yourself: Finish the following sentences or phrases : With great power . . . . Hasta la vista . . . . Do the . . . (Dew) Shaken, not . . . . Space, the…
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