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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Brian Vickers taught and researched English literature at Zurich for several decades. He is an impressive literary scholar and historian who has written on Shakespeare, rhetoric, tragedy, edited Bacon and others, and produced a nice shelf full of deeply researched books. He also seems to have run out of things…
Postmillennialists like to point out that leaven doesn’t always represent evil or corruption, which is true enough. But it’s hard to avoid the fact that leaven often does represent evil. That might form some of the background to Jesus’ parable of the leaven. David Garland writes: “The parable is not…
“Sowing” is a common image in the prophets for Israel ’s return from exile. But Matthew 13:38 says that the field is not the land but the “world.” So, I think the sowing is the scattering of the seed of Israel at the time of the exile. Israel is scattered…
Typically, the parable of the tares and wheat has been understood as a description of church history. Jesus is the owner sowing the field, the devil sows tares into the church (like Judas), and for that reason the church remains a “mixed multitude” until the end of the age. The…
Athanasius again: As a musician brings out “a single tune as the result, so also the Wisdom of God, handling the Universe as a lyre . . . produces well and fittingly, as the result, the unity of the universe and of its order, himself remaining unmoved with the Father…
Classical theology is often charged with dealing in static timeless categories, and there is no doubt something to this in some writers. But, not all by any means. In his account of sin, Athanasius says that sin has momentum because of the nature of the soul. The soul is “mobile”…
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