Everyone who knows Lord Acton knows his most famous claim, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The context is less well-known. That sentence appears in a letter, written on April 5, 1887, to Mandell Creighton. Acton had written a critical . . . . Continue Reading »
INTRODUCTION The Spirit is the “Paraclete,” a Greek word often translated as “comforter.” But the Spirit doesn’t just soothe us. When the Comforter comes, He comes to convict (John 16:8-11). The Spirit is the Spirit of discipline. THE TEXT “These . . . . Continue Reading »
J. Budziszewski’s The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction is about the best and most accessible defenses of natural law one could hope for. At the micro level, J. Bud’s arguments, rejoinders, and observations are sharp, often witty. . . . . Continue Reading »
A number of scholars in the past few decades have studied the parallels between the Song of Songs and Egyptian “love poetry.” These parallels are questionable, but even if we assume they are there, it doesn’t prove the case that several of these scholars want to make - . . . . Continue Reading »
Does the church have a finished, changeless confession? No. Will it ever? No. Because the Head of the Church is a living Lord, and being alive means having the capacity to surprise (Jenson). As the living Lord, Jesus speaks through and to His church according to her . . . . Continue Reading »
PROVERBS 28:22 Though this verse uses different terminology from Proverbs 28:20, it overlaps with that previous proverb. In both cases, there are observations about the relationship between wealth and hastiness. Verse 20 indicates that the one who makes haste to become rich, who chases . . . . Continue Reading »
Kingsmill again. She argues that the anti-mystical trend in Song of Songs interpretation has deprived “the Hebrew Bible of its most sublime expression of the nature of God’s love” and thus left “a void into which the spirit of Marcion has inevitably stepped, with . . . . Continue Reading »
Kingsmill ( The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in Biblical Intertextuality (Oxford Theological Monographs) ) notes that, like Esther, the Song of Songs has no “fully explicit reference to God,” but wisely adds “it has always been the way of poets to avoid explicit . . . . Continue Reading »
Several scholars have written about the interpretation and influence of the Song of Songs during the Middle Ages (Ann Matter, Ann Astell, Denys Turner). So far as I know, no one has done it for the modern world. Edmee Kingsmill’s The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in . . . . Continue Reading »
In one chapter of his delightful Life of Pi , Yann Martel gives a robust defense of zoos, and a funny critique of the notion that animals consider zoos to be prisons from which they long to escape. From the first pages of the novel, Pi, the narrator, has connected zoology and religion (his . . . . Continue Reading »
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