Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Imagine driving up to Canada and stopping at a restaurant to get a bite to eat. While you’re sitting at the table, an enthusiastic young man comes over to you and says in an excited voice, "Are you an American?" You reply, "Yes, I am." "Wonderful! I have so little…
1 O Lord Almighty, God of our fathers, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and of their righteous posterity; 2 You who have made heaven and earth with all their order; 3 who have shackled the sea by Your word ofcommand, who have confined the deep and sealed it with…
Part 1: 1When King Astyages was laid with his fathers, Cyrus the Persian received his kingdom. 2 And Daniel was a companion of the king, and was the most honored of his friends. 3Now the Babylonians had an idol called Bel, and every day they spent on it twelve bushels…
This debate has been going on for some time. But with few exceptions, almost all explanations of Presbyterian church polity claim that a “church” (meaning a single local congregation) must be ruled by “a plurality of elders” of whom one may happen to teach and work full-time doing so. This…
I hope that those who are advocating reading more of the ancient, "classical" literature of the ancient, "classical" world, are also promoting the Apocrypha. I’m afraid that many Christians don’t realize what great literature much of the Apocrypha is. It is not, of course, inspired by God, and perhaps because…
PRESBYTERIANISM is a term referring to a system of government in the Church. It is commonly contrasted with Congregationalism and Episcopalianism. Presbyter is a Greek word that is translated as “elder” in our English New Testaments. Thus, Presbyterianism is commonly defined as “rule by elders.” This is a misleading definition.…
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Julian Young offers a neat summary of the Arthur Schopenhauer (the "first European Buddhist") at the TLS . Schopenhauer's philosophy can be pinpointed by contrast with two better-known thinkers. Against Hegel's fantastic " Bildungsroman , a story of the ever-increasing realization of 'reason' in human affairs," Schopenhauer offered a thoroughgoing,…
"How is it possible," asks Terry Teachout , "that a man who made his conducting debut when Grover Cleveland was president should still be sufficiently well known and revered that most of his recordings remain in print to this day?" Teachout thinks that Harvey Sachs's Toscanini: Musician of Conscience comes…
The first published book of Jorge Luis Borges, the great Argentinian poet and short-story writer, was Fervor de Buenos Aires . Borges later wrote, “ Fervor de Buenos Aires foreshadows everything I would do afterward.” It was a slapdash production, Borges claimed in his autobiography: “The book was actually printed…
John Colmer observes in his study of E.M. Forster that Forster's novels transpose Christian terms into a secular key: "a whole set of religious terms - salvation, grace, conversion, transfiguration - become assimilated into an essentially secular vision. . . . Men now seek their happiness on this earth not…
Richard Florida's 2002 Rise of the Creative Class was a manifesto for urban hipness. As Joseph Bottum sums up the book , Florida argued that "cities thrive when these creative types are allowed to build the creative economy. Their tolerance for alternative lifestyles and their acceptance of unconventional housing broke…
"Medieval tolerance" sounds like an oxymoron. Everyone knows the medievals were in tolerant. Everyone knows that tolerance was invented in the modern world. Everyone who knows such things is wrong. Istvan Bejczy demonstrates in a 1997 essay that medieval thinkers had a well-developed concept of tolerance. He goes further than…
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