Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
And through the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were done among the people. And they were all with one accord in Solomon's Porch. Yet none of the rest dared join them, but the people esteemed them highly. Acts 5:12-13 When Grandma needed healing, her children knew the…
Like certain kinds of music, the unchanging rhythm of Aquinas's Summa gets into your bones. Read a few sections and it begins to run through your head. You start drumming your fingers, humming, swaying gently to the rhythm of Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, Videtur-Sed Contra-Responsio, “It seems-On the contrary-I answer.” The only…
And Arpachshad lived thirty-five years, and became the father of Shelah . . . And Shelah lived thirty years, and became the father of Eber . . . and Eber lived thirty-four years and became the father of Peleg . . . and Peleg lived thirty years, and became the…
Of course, the title should be something like, “The Fall of the Angel Who Came to be Satan,” but that and other more accurate titles are too cumbersome. The question is: who is Satan, and when and how did he become “Satan” (Adversary, Accuser) and the “devil” (slanderer)? By my…
In The Oddness of the Feast of Booths , we saw that the Feast of Booths is a commemoration of the first encampment of Israel at Sukkoth (Booths) in Exodus 12:37, almost certainly the first celebration of the week of Unleavened Bread after the first Passover. The Feast of Booths…
This piece was originally published in 1989. 1. The Blessed Hope "Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus." Titus 2:13 I was recently asked how I as a postmillennialist would preach on "The Blessed Hope." This is often…
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English fairs in earlier centuries displayed wares and displays from all over the world. At one there was an animal described as “a noble creature, which much resembled a Wild Hairy man” whose main skill was to doff his hat and show “his respects to the Company, and smoaks a…
Much of the moral and political import of Shakespeare’s Henry V is left to the audience’s or reader’s judgment. Is Henry a “pig” or is he the mirror of Christian kings? Is his invasion of France fair or foul? Shakespeare doesn’t show his hand, or not much; and one is…
George Barnam notes the careful structure of Act 5 of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus: “Shakespeare had used this scene structurally to build the tension toward the climactic moment when Volumnia should appeal to her son and prevail. Three appeals are made to Marcius, and Shakespeare’s presentation of them matches in structure the…
A reader wrote to respond to my suggestion that high culture is “sacred” and pop culture “profane,” citing the example of sports. Here’s my response: A football game often is a quasi-religious experience, but I’m not sure we use the same language to describe it. If someone slashed da Vinci’s…
In their “cultural history” of English drama, Simon Shepherd and Peter Womack summarize the argument of Glynne Wickham concerning the divorce of stage and sacred: “The English stage - so the argument runs - was predominantly a religious one until Elizabethan Protestantism forced a separation between theatre and the central…
As Marsden describes it, the growth of neoclassical literary sensibilities developed in part in reaction to the chaos and disorder of the English civil war - following in this regard the development of late 17th century political theory. Orderliness, definiteness, clarity became virtues, while ambiguity, double entendres, and inconclusiveness became…
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