Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I grew up in the 1950s. This was before the "Sixties" and the democratization, informalization, and general cheapening of the church and her worship. Ministers were Father Donovan, Pastor Eckhart, Reverend MacPherson, Mister (Episcopal) Parker, and Brother Smith. Liturgical speech was high language, sounding kind of like the King James…
Metaphor exerts a surprisingly powerful influence within our thinking. Although it is easily dismissed as little more than a figure of speech, when we attend more closely to the ways in which we use it, metaphor’s importance swiftly becomes more apparent. Although many of our metaphors have become quite invisible…
What is a tree, scientifically speaking? A mere googling gives the following answer: “a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.” We can increase detail by describing its family, genus, species and…
The majority of Western evangelical Christians rarely, if ever, fast as a form of spiritual discipline. In our culture, fasting is more connected with dieting than worship, the other side of our deeply ambiguous fascination with food. Food is everywhere. We eat more than ever before, at greater speed, and…
A Grammar of Creation An understanding of the visual-musical language of the Bible must begin with Genesis 1. This is fortunate, because when explaining biblical types to academics, as opposed to children, one is repeatedly forced to start from scratch. From birth, a healthy child is attuned to rhythm and…
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have…
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In the UK, they’ve got something called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. CS Lewis called it: There really is an N.I.C.E.
Research for a book project has forced me to read excerpts - as little as possible - of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code . It makes for painful reading, and not only because of Brown’s stupid historical claims. The prose is bad, painfully bad. To read the book is to…
When the “young men” of Bethel mock Elisha, he calls out two bears that kill forty-two of them (2 Kings 2:24). Later in 2 Kings, Jehu slaughters forty-two relatives of Ahaziah of Judah during his purge of the house of Ahab (2 Kings 10:14). What’s up with that? The young…
Is another man’s government administration. The abstract to a 1981 Annales article on clientage in the late Roman empire by Paul Veyne: “In Fourth-century Rome, official posts were purchased from their holders. For officials, who were the equals of the curials and the ‘barons’ (as the ‘simple soldiers’ ought to…
Richard John Neuhaus was an irreplaceable man. Few public intellectuals ever have expressed themselves with the same warmth, wit, and verve, and few have had the range of experience, interest and insight. How many inner city pastors could also mount a withering attack on Richard Rorty? We will have to…
INTRODUCTION Jesus has taught His disciples they must become eunuchs ( 19:12 ) and children ( 19:14 ) for the sake of His kingdom. Now, through His encounter with the rich young ruler, He tells them they must also be ready to renounce wealth for His sake. As always, though,…
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