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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Running through the four elements, Smart celebrates the air: For the AIR. is purified by prayer which is made aloud and with all our might. For loud prayer is good for weak lungs and for a vitiated throat. For SOUND is propagated in the spirit and in all directions. For…
More Smart: For FRICTION is inevitable because the Universe is FULL of God’s works. For the PERPETUAL MOTION is in all the works of Almighty GOD. For it is not so in the engines of man, which are made of dead materials, neither indeed can be.
More from Christopher Smart: For the feast of TRUMPETS should be kept up, that being the most direct and acceptable of all instruments. For the TRUMPET of God is a blessed intelligence and so are all the instruments in HEAVEN. For GOD the father Almighty plays upon the HARP of…
INTRODUCTION 2 John is written into a crisis situation. As Jesus predicted, antichrists have “gone into the world” (v. 7), deceiving those who are not on guard. John writes to warn about the deceivers, and to tell the church how to respond to them. THE TEXT “The Elder, to the…
1 John 5:21: Little children, guard yourselves from idols. John tells us that those who are begotten of God are not dominated by sin, and that the one begotten of God keeps him from the evil one. It’s not clear here who is doing the guarding. Is the “Begotten One”…
1 John 5:13: “These things I have written to those who believe into the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.” We are all born into the world bearing the name of Adam, with his heritage and his destiny. Baptism…
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