Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…
Sermons are rarely more tiresome than when they strive for relevance. Drawing from the latest headlines transforms the preacher into a one-man MacLaughlin Group, a Crossfire without the cross though perhaps with some of the fire, and leave the congregation thinking, "If I wanted Meet the Press, I could have…
Part One: The Old Testament “Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the drunkard is from the Devil” Increase Mather in Wo to Drunkards (1673). 1. The “wine”…
28. These are the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away into exile: in the 7th year 3023 Jews. 29. In the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar 832 persons from Jerusalem. 30. In the 23rd year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile 745 Jewish people; there were 4600…
Revelation 21:24 says, concerning the light shining from the New Jerusalem, "and the nations will walk by her light, and the kings of the land will bring their glory into her." Similarly, Revelation 22:2 says, concerning the Tree of Life, that "the leaves of the tree were for the healing…
Jeremiah and the Beginning of Jehoiakim’s Reign Now comes Jeremiah, at the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, with similar words (Jeremiah 26). Harken to God’s law, he said, or else God will destroy the Temple the same way He sent the Philistines to tear down the Tabernacle at Shiloh (Jeremiah 26:6;…
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Natural law arguments often conclude that every human being can know, without the help of revelation, that there is some deity, an ultimate reality, an absolute. Paul says that human beings know “about God” from creation, but also that they “knew God ” (Romans 1:19, 21)—that is, from creation they…
My latest First Things column sparked some reflections on apocalyptic politics from the Economist’s Erasmus columnist. He moves my observations about apocalyptic philosophy to apocalyptic politics. It comes up in all sorts of places. “Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seemed obsessed with eschatology to a degree that irritated the country’s…
Roger Cohen is tired of Twitter bashers: “It’s not easy, being of a certain generation, to avoid the dinner conversation that veers into a lament about the short attention spans, constant device distraction, sad superficiality and online exhibitionism of a younger generation geared to life in 140 characters or less.…
“Work is charismatic,” writes Craig Keen in After Crucifixion (80-1). Keen elaborates in a beautiful passage: “What we are given to work upon precedes us, a gift sent our way the first five days of creation, the days when the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters, before our…
Progress, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy points out ( Christian Future ), was originally a plural term. “ Les progres ” was Condorcet’s phrase. What he had in mind were improvements, new gadgets and machines and gizmos. The singular form of the term came from early Christianity and referred to the spiritual improvement…
Sciences today often occupy ruts, separated from each other, each as incomprehensible to non-specialists as languages were at the tower of Babel, and separated too from the larger currents of culture. But it is a myth, Rosenstock-Huessy says ( Christian Future ), to believe that “sciences can advance without regard…
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