Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Creationism is debated widely in the US, especially when it comes to teaching creation as an alternative theory of origins in public schools. Every few months, there’s another poll showing that many Americans still believe Ussher’s claim that the world was created around 4000 BC, which always elicits a contemptuous…
Walker Percy died in 1990, but his six published novels and his collections of essays are more relevant than when he wrote them. Percy was an American Dostoevsky, and that was no accident. “The European novels,” he says in a 1974 interview, “are more philosophical, more novels of ideas.” Dostoevsky,…
The Spirit is God’s agent for renewing the creation, for restoring bonds between nations, for knitting together people into the body of Christ. The Spirit is the renewer of the world, and the bond of all relations. That means that if you want your family to be knit together, if…
In their basic physical sense , the verbs translated as "persecute" in the Bible mean “chase” or “pursue,” and that fits the context quite naturally. As Pharaoh “pursued” (LXX, dioko ; Heb. radaph ) Israel into the wilderness, for example, so the dragon chases the woman back to her place…
Seng-Kong Tan’s Fullness Received and Returned is a densely argued, thoroughly researched, contextually sensitive study of participation in the soteriology of Jonathan Edwards. Along the way, Tan deals with many of the central themes in Edwards’s theology. As with many recent studies of Edwards, Tan’s monograph demonstrates both Edwards’s creativity…
The title of James Joyce’s first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man indicates that it is a bildungsroman , a story of formation that describes the formative experiences of a poet who aspires to artistic greatness. The education described is Joyce’s own. The novel recounts the failing…
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Naturalistic explanations of nature’s existence are impossible, David Hart contends ( The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss , 96), because “nature . . . is that which by definition already exists.” Nature’s explanation thus inevitably and “logically” must lie “beyond the system of causes that nature comprises; it is,…
The great change in the modern world picture was not the abandonment of the Aristotelian and Ptolmaic cosmology. That, argues David Hart ( The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss , 58-9) was only a ripple on the surface. The really big change came in the idea of causation: “The…
The nations will be saved. They will come to the light (Isaiah 60:3). How? We can work backward through Isaiah. They come into the light that shines from Israel. That light is the light of Yahweh Himself dwelling among and shining through His translucent people. Israel becomes that light after…
“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of Yahweh has risen ( zarach ) upon you,” Isaiah announces (60:1). It’s a rich statement. Yahweh’s glory is said to “rise” in Deuteronomy 33:2, as the Lord moves from Sinai to Seir with his 10,000 holy ones shining with…
Psalm 37 is a wisdom Psalm that assures Israel that Yahweh will not let the wicked flourish forever. The faithful should persevere in seemingly fruitless faithfulness because the wicked who spring up like grass will also wither like grass. Part of this assurance is that the Lord will rescue His…
The NYTBR reviewer of Martin Gardner’s Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner recounts some of Gardner’s many pranks. “Once, a houseguest left behind a single glove at the home of Gardners friend Bob Murray. Murray went to several local department stores until he found a pair of gloves that…
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