Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Because of sin, the arts sometimes do not serve to glorify but to debase. Sinful men make their environments ugly, and create ugly art to “enhance” their ugly words. But since all men are still God’s images, no men are able to live with such ugliness all the time. Thus,…
Arts and literature reviews in most evangelical Christian publications generally approach their subjects in terms of ideology. We are told whether or not the film or book is acceptable in terms of morals, sexual graphicness, and theological accuracy. While there is definitely a place for such reviews, I fear that…
We speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The early Church tended to speak of Him as Father, Word, and Spirit. In this short essay, I want to suggest some other ways to think of the Trinity, ways that I have found pastorally helpful in my own life…
I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and guard My commandments (Ex. 20:5-6). The Second Word forbids acts of ceremonial…
8. The Table of Nations If we assume births every two years, and about 30 years between generations (cp. Gen. 11:12-24), we can come up with an approximate series of dates for the generations recorded in Genesis 10. We shall assume that all three of Noah’s sons had their firstborn…
Zechariah’s first prophecy (Zech. 1:1-6) was delivered in the eighth month of the second year of Darius. The notation of this date serves a number of purposes. Most obviously, it relates Zechariah’s prophecies to those of Haggai. By the time Zechariah delivered his first prophecy, Haggai had already chided the…
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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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