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 May 28 TLS , Peter Brooks reviews Francois Cusset’s French Theory , a study of the American reception of post-structuralism after 1966. The review provides a precis of the story, and includes a number of intriguing insights into the process: First, it is ironic and amusing that the…
Today, Wendy Doniger writes in the May 21 TLS , “Tantra has become an Orientalist wet dream, a transgressive, weird, sexy, dangerous world. Many people refer to the Kamasutra , or even The Joy of Sex , as Tantric.” It was not always so. Doniger is reviewing David Gordon White’s…
Writing in the Bible Review for June 2004, one Dan Clanton suggests that our perceptions of Delilah and the Samson/Delilah story arise more from art than from Scripture. He particularly contrasts the biblical account with the opera of Saint-Saens. According to Clanton’s reading of the biblical story, “Samson is a…
The editorial in TNR has a couple of insightful things to say about Reagan. It commends his obsession with communism, and says that, though he did not bring down communism, “he defied it into its final collapse” and “embarrassed his enemy into oblivion.” The most thoughtful comment is about Reagan’s…
Psalm 71:19-20 shows the connection between the righteousness of God and the resurrection of the dead. The Psalmist praises God for His righteousness that reaches to the heavens, a righteousness manifested in the “great things” God has done (v 19). Verse 20 follows with a description of one of the…
The following is a review I wrote and had posted on a now-defunct web site. The review was written before Against Christianity , which is the hypothetical book referred to in the review. Barry A. Harvey, Another City: An Ecclesiological Primer for a Post-Christian World (Christian Mission and Modern Culture;…
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