Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on…
A hundred years ago, William Warley signed a contract to buy a house in Louisville, Kentucky from Charles Buchanan, a white man. Before closing the sale, Warley, who was black, learned that the lot was subject to a city ordinance barring blacks from occupying the premises if most of the…
I concluded the first essay on this topic by saying that I would introduce three books about Shakespeare and the Bible, but I decided to introduce four instead. The three books become four are: Naseeb Shaheen, Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays (London: Associated University Presses, 1999) ; Hannibal Hamlin, The…
My children attend a classical Christian school, situated in the independent “free church” evangelical tradition. Over the past few years they have been growing in their acquaintance with the world of Homer, Plato, Virgil, and Livy. They enjoy it, and I envy it. The school is a great school. My…
The Prodigal Son parable (Luke 15) has been a favorite of liberal theologians for a couple of centuries. It seems to be a parable designed for liberal sensibilities: An indulgent, accepting Father; forgiveness extended without a cross; a surly older brother who might represent the "conservative" face of religion who…
“I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to…
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Drawing on the work of Christopher Page ( The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years ), Wilken ( The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity , 152-3 ) points out that musical notation and the musical staff was an invention of early medieval monks. He…
Ephrem the Syrian’s hymns were celebrated East and West, and Robert Wilken notes ( The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity , 148 ) that one of his contributions was to compose “hymns especially for women to sing.” Describing this, the Syrian Christian Jacob of Sarug pointed to…
Yesterday, I heard a highly stimulating sermon on gnat theology (Exodus 8:16-18) from my friend, Pastor David Deutsch of Grace Reformed Church in Camarillo, California. Gnats arise from dust; dust is cursed, a symbol of death. From that association, David drew the inference that gnats on man and beast is…
W. Allen Orr reviews Thomas Nagel’s recent Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False in the NYRB . Orr sums up Nagel’s assault on neo-Darwinian reductionism this way: “Nagel insists that the mind-body problem ‘is not just a local problem’ but ‘invades our…
Scott Moonen sent along a report on studies that indicate that babies already respond to language in utero . “”Forty infants, about 30 hours old and an even mix of girls and boys, were studied in Tacoma and Stockholm, Sweden.” The findings: “Babies only hours old are able to differentiate…
Lev Shestov ( All Things are Possible , 64) observes that it is a “school axiom” that “logical skepticism refutes itself, since the denial of the possibility of positive knowledge is already an affirmation.” Shestov doesn’t think this works: For starters, “skepticism is not bound to be logical, for it…
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