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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“How can a man be born again when he is old?  Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb?” Nicodemus’ way of putting the question sounds childish; but it’s a common question.  My life is a mess, and what’s done cannot be undone.  Then along comes Jesus mocking…
Carroll again: He explains that much recent film criticism takes its cues from the effort to maximize aesthetic satisfaction.  This is evident in the respect given to “transgressive” films that overturn “what are called the codes of Hollywood filmmaking”: “Within the context of recent film criticism, it is appropriate to…
Noel Carroll argues that anti-intentionalist structuralist criticism aims to maximize aesthetic enjoyment, at the expense of all other purposes of art and literature.  This, he argues, “has a very ‘consumerist’ ring to it.  In Buberesque lingo, it reduces our relation to the text to an I/it relationship.”  By contrast, Carroll…
In case you got bogged down and missed the plot, Thornton Wilder helpfully summarizes what he describes as Joyce’s “Night Book”: “We overhear and oversee [the hero] in bed above his tavern at the edge of Dublin.  His conscience is trying him for some obscure misdemeanors committed - or perhaps…
In his treatise Contra Gentiles , Athanasius reproduces an argument from the Phaedrus that provides the immortality of the soul.  Anything that has to be moved by something else is mortal and finite; whatever moves of itself is immortal, and immortally mobile.  What is most fully mobile is what is…
Adorno sees disinterestedness as a necessary stage in the development of aesthetic experience, but says that it has to be transcended by a recognition of the “interest inherent in disinterestedness.” Disinterestedness applies only to certain kinds of works, he says.  Try reading Kafka and remaining in disinterested contemplation: Kafka’s novels…
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