Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Every attempt to understand the Christian sacraments makes use of comparisons or analogies with other rituals, events, or customs. Calvin and those who followed him, for example, spoke of the sacraments as “seals,” and compared them to the “seal of approval” that an official impresses on a document. Thinking about…
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out in his essay "Hitler and Israel, or On Prayer" (available for $2.00 from Biblical Horizons ) that it is God’s word "No!" that establishes in a culture the distinction between the Creator and the creature. The Bible repeatedly says "No!" to every human attempt to…
If you missed Gattaca at the movie theaters, you can probably check it out from your local video store now. And you should. This is one of those relatively rare thought-provoking movies that can stand being watched with brain in gear more than once. It is also poetic, sensitive, visually…
Part 4: The Nephilim Factor Western Civilization partakes of what I call "the Nephilim Factor." The Enoch Factor means that the pagans get there first. This is both a blessing and a danger. As a blessing, it means that they work out techniques of dominion over the lower creation that…
The Worship Service Then the one speaking with me took me by the hair and lifted me into the air in the middle of the great room. And as I watched, I saw people entering the room to the sound of the great bells outside. Then entered from all four…
Part 3: Philosophy (continued) If we realize that human beings are the images of God, and that man hates God, then we realize that all non-Christian political philosophy is founded on a fundamental hatred of other human beings, a hatred manifest in contempt. Rome, like Enoch, was founded on the…
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With characteristic gleeful verve, Rodney Stark assaults secularization theory in his Triumph of Christianity . Secularization theory revived, he says, a charge brought against religious pluralism by “monopoly religions: that disputes among religious groups undermine the credibility of all” (357). But people kept being religious, even in pluralistic settings. Secularization…
Latin America was supposed to become Protestant by now. In one of the major non-developments of the past quarter-century, it didn’t. Catholics didn’t take predictions of a Protestant Latin America lightly, and responded with renewal efforts of their own. Rodney Stark ( Triumph of Christianity ) highlights the role of…
Carlotta Gall spent 12 years in Afghanistan, and spent much of her time investigating the sources of the Taliban resurgence. She traced it back to Pakistan, and discovered that the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) was secretly supportive of both the Taliban and al Quaeda. Gall writes , “The Pakistani government,…
Gall again, reporting on Pakistan’s cozy relationship with bin Laden: She found evidence of “regular correspondence between Bin Laden and a string of militant leaders who must have known he was living in Pakistan, including Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a pro-Kashmiri group that has also been active…
Jesus searches the entrails and hearts of His people (Revelation 2:23), but then judges everyone “according to your deeds” ( erga ). Why does He need the internal inspection when he’s going to judge by behavior in the last instance? That question highlights what might be called one dimension of…
Carol Wilson’s For I Was Hungry and You Gave Me Food is a well-researched and illuminating piece of social-scientific scholarship on the New Testament. Picking up on recent work that places Matthew’s gospel in a Greco-Roman imperial context (e.g., Warren Carter), Wilson focuses narrowly on access to food. How did…
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