Paul brought a totally different perspective. How could any man, knowing his limbs consecrated to the Lord, think to entwine them with those of a whore, mingle his sweat with hers, become one flesh with her? But Paul, by proclaiming the body ‘a temple of the Holy Spirit’, was not merely casting as sacrilege attitudes … Read more
Nero was like some figure sprung from tragedy, he killed his mother; he kicked his pregnant wife to death; he was married, dressed as a woman, to a man. Such it was to live as a hero of myth. Along its edge, Rome’s brothels were staffed with whores ranging from the cheapest street-walkers to the … Read more
Paul lived among people who revered only the best. But Paul announced that God had chosen the foolish to shame the wise and the weak to shame the strong. In a world that took for granted the hierarchy of human chattels and their owners, he insisted that the distinctions between slave and free, now that … Read more
When God praised Job as blameless and upright; a man who fears God and shuns evil, the Satan responded mockingly that it is easy for the prosperous to be good. But if you take away everything man has, he will curse you. God accepted the wager and delivered Job into Satan’s hands. Job’s children were … Read more
For the Jews, who were humiliated by conquerors, a problem was raised. If God was good, why would he allow such things to happen? Jewish scholars arrived at a somber explanation: the entire history of humanity was one of disobedience to God. Making man and woman, he had given them a garden named Eden to … Read more
As Holland studied Roman or Spartan culture, and its brutality, he noticed that it exuded a morality that was not his. Christian influence on Western civilization is so profound that it has come to be hidden from view. The Romans might have the rule of the world; the Greeks might have their philosophy; the Persians … Read more
By enduring the most agonizing fate imaginable, he had conquered death itself. ‘Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. The utter strangeness of all this, for … Read more