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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Eucharist has always been the center of the worship of the people of God. Abel worshiped Yahweh at an altar, which is to say, a table, and so did Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all Israel . That continued into the new covenant, where the Lord’s Supper instituted by Jesus…
Jesus says the Father seeks worshipers who worship in Spirit and in truth. We know that “spiritual worship” doesn’t mean immaterial, non-bodily worship. It couldn’t: Even if we sit as quietly as Quakers, we need our bodies to fill the chair. But what does it mean to worship in Spirit?…
Charles Krauthammer has a sharp analysis of the AIG bonus fiasco: “in the scheme of things, $165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone. If…
Schmemann again (from an appendix to For the Life of the World ): “To condemn a heresy is relatively easy. What is much more difficult is to detect the question it implies, and to give this question an adequate answer. Such, however, was always the Church’s dealing with ‘heresies’ -…
Schmemann anticipates Milbank: “Secularism - we must again and again stresss this - is a ‘stepchild’ of Christianity, as are, in the last analysis, all secular ideologies which today dominate the world - not, as it is claimed by the Western apostles of a Christian acceptance of secularism, a legitimate…
David VanDrunen of Westminster West offered an interesting Christological defense of iconoclasm in an article several years ago published in the International Journal of Systematic Theology . Christology, he argues, does not support the conclusion that we may make pictures of Jesus, but the opposite. Because Jesus is still the…
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