Category: Misc.

Reuben Archer Torrey (1856-1928) is a revered figure among conservative evangelicals with good memories. He was Dwight L. Moody’s right hand man, a world-travelling evangelist, the first dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, and the inspiration behind the honors program where we work, which is of course named for him. You can find…

Pope Benedict XVI has been calling on Christians to pray for peace in the middle east, and adds that believers should “pray also for the terrorists, because they do not know that they are doing evil not just to their neighbor, but, first of all, to themselves.” Pray for terrorists? Pray for anything but swift…

“Preexistence” is an awkward word. It looks like it needs a hyphen (pre-existence) or a diaeresis (preëxistence). Plus, the “pre” in preexistence begs to be clarified: Insurance Agent: Do you have any pre-existing conditions? Patient: Yes. Wait. I have a condition, and it exists. Insurance Agent: So does it preexist? Patient: Well, if it preexists,…

New Testament scholar Leon Morris died earlier this week at age 92. In Morris’ obituary, Peter Adam says: He wrote over fifty books of theology and biblical commentary which have sold nearly two million copies worldwide and been translated into many languages. … He was well-known throughout the Christian world as a careful, conservative biblical…

The military newspaper Stars and Stripes reports that a new religion has been born in Iraq. A whole new religion! It is called Americantology. Invented by a Marine deployed in Fallujah (Company C, 1st Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment), this religion’s chief symbol is the American flag, its only priest wears a civil war cap (blue:…

Here’s a sneak peek at a book review I wrote for a future issue of Cultural Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture.The summer 06 issue is just out. Hassle your library to subscribe! This book, Sigurd Bergmann’s Creation Set Free, is interesting, but I can only recommend it in the qualified ways I…

In case you haven’t been notified yet, let me be the first to break the news. Ranch style houses are cool! I mean officially cool, complete with their own trend being analyzed by news stories, two different hip magazines documenting their coolness, and great big books filled with pictures of them. It’s safe to say…

The new issue (Summer 06) of Cultural Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture is now available. If you haven’t seen this journal, check it out: it’s new, so ask your school library to pick it up. Editor Paul Louis Metzger and his team bring together articles that carry on “a biblically informed, Christ-centered…

All of us here at Middlebrow are spending the next couple of weeks working with Emmaus Forum, a summer program for Christian high school students. For this group, I temporarily remove my theologian hat and put on an artistic beret, introducing students to the world of the visual arts, lecturing on art appreciation, and leading…

On July 10 in 1509, John Calvin was born. Why not celebrate with a birthday party? I am always astonished at the amount of anti-Calvin sentiment abroad in the world. I myself am a Wesleyan theologian, so there are a few key areas –maybe about 5– where I come into disagreement with Calvin. But that…

I can’t account for why this passage made me laugh so hard that my eyes teared up. It’s just funny. It’s from an early chapter in Robert Southey’s (1774-1843) sprawling and unclassifiable book The Doctor. The narrator, trying to fall asleep, tries one trick after another: I put my arms out of bed. I turned…