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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“Being lonely is a lot more worrying for your health than obesity,” writes Philippa Perry . She draws on research by John Cacioppo that shows that for the elderly “Feeling isolated from others can disrupt sleep, raise blood pressure, lower immunity, increase depression, lower overall subjective wellbeing and increase the…
Stephen Finlan ( The Background and Contents of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors ) thinks that Paul mixes his metaphors: “Paul indicates that salvation is not free: ‘you were bought with a price’ (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23). Here, the Christian gets a new owner: Christ. The death of Jesus functioned as…
Jacob Milgrom argued that the notion that Yahweh was appeased by sacrificial aromas is rare, and that the notion that Yahweh fed on sacrificial food was found only in “rare linguistic fossils” ( Leviticus 1-16 , 250). Finlan ( Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors , 30) rightly protests: “Forty-two instances of…
Before assessing the Best Picture nominees at TNR , David Thomson reminds us what the Best Picture award is: “First of all, remind yourself that ‘Best Picture’ is not a certificate of value passed down by God. It is a construct, and a con, dreamed up by the American Academy…
Reviewing Colin Burrow’s Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity in the TLS , Michael Silk refers to Dante’s debt to Virgil, and then observes: “There is surely no counterpart to this in the case of Shakespeare - though one might perhaps consider it (Burrow himself doesn’t quite) in connection with Seneca.” He…
Tim Crane points out in his TLS review of John Caputo’s Truth that “Aristotelian” ideas of truth are in no way incompatible with the insight that there is a plurality of perspectives on truth: “to believe in truth in this [Aristotelian] sense is not to believe that there is only…
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