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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Motyl offers several responses to Ferguson’s advocacy of liberal empire as a way of spreading democratic institutions, capitalist economies, freedom, and Western culture. First, he notes that liberal empires that promote free trade and democracy might be tied to a particular historical moment: “it is an unwarranted leap in logic…
Alexander Motyl attempts to discern the definition of empire implicit in Niall Ferguson’s Empire : “ As Ferguson does not even bother to define the concept, at most we can surmise from his discussion of British and American power that empire entails ‘actually ruling a colony’ by means of ‘colonial…
INTRODUCTION Jesus’ curses against the scribes and Pharisees climax in a lament over the doomed city of Jerusalem . He has tried to gather her to Himself, but she has refused. Like Yahweh in the days of Ezekiel (chs. 8-11), Jesus abandons the temple (Matthew 24:1). THE TEXT “Woe to…
James says that true religion consists in “visiting widows and orphans in their distress” (James 1:27). We don’t get the point if we think of “visit” in our first sense of “pay a call.” In Christ, God has “visited and redeemed His people” (Luke 1:68), and the dayspring from on…
Nathan Kerr ( Christ, History, Apocalyptic ) explains Yoder’s notion of Jesus’ “independence” by saying that Jesus “lives, concretely and in history, a life-story that is entirely free from and irreducible to any pre-given ‘historical’ coordinates, any general or ‘meta’ principle that might serve to range the complexities and contingencies…
Jesus’ image of the Pharisees as “white-washed graves” is multi-dimensional. First, there is the obvious contrast between the apparently pure outside (white) and the inside (bones and uncleanness). In context, the Pharisees have become filled with corpses by devouring other Jews. They are cannibals, insatiable as the grave. Second, as…
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