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According to a well-known Puritan adage from Joseph Hall, "God loveth adverbs; and cares not how good, but how well." It may well be true that the Almighty loves adverbs, but if Lynne Truss is to be believed, then God would have to be passionate also about proper punctuation. In her surprise bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves, British author Truss launches a frontal assault on the English world's increasing sloppiness when it comes to precision of linguistic expression. The book's…

In 2 Corinthians 6:6 the apostle mentions the motives of his zeal for the cause of Christ: "By goodness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned." Goodness indicates general benevolence and readiness to sacrifice; of these we find among worldly people many examples that make us ashamed. Then come the stimulating and animating influences of the Holy Spirit; lastly, Love unfeigned which is the true, real, and divine Love.In his hymn of eternal Love the apostle gives us an exquisite…

With this issue Roy Anker rotates off Perspectives' team of co-editors, and the bearer of the above by-line rotates on. Nothing personal: it's Board policy, and a good one. Leanne Van Dyk and David Timmer, the rest of the current troika, will follow in due time, to be replaced by players to be named later. Perspectives is a journalistic trade built entirely on draft choices, with seven-figure contracts filled in only to the right of the decimal point and with…

Those who are familiar with "the AAR" (shorthand for the 9,000-person annual joint meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature) know that it offers a fascinating pastiche of tones and colors. Eastern Orthodox sisters in habit walk side by side with French postmodern theorists of religion arrayed all in black; wearers of British tweed stand across from colorful Southern Baptist teachers and preachers. One's tried and true sense of theological fashion gets stretched by…

"At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly." "While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God." This is the gospel--the good news--of justification in Christ. We have spent many hours thinking hard together about the subtleties of what justification in Christ entails. It is time to ask: Have we begun to understand this gospel? Do we believe it?"While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God." If we are not amazed by these words then we are fooling…

In November of 1950, Uncle Sam pointed his long bony finger at my father and ordered this able-bodied U.S. citizen to do his military duty. And so Robert Jack Hoolsema packed his bags and set off to do his part in the confusing mess that was the Korean War. He marched into a maze of uncertainties. Even the question of what would constitute victory was unclear: would restoring the 38th parallel as the North-South border prove satisfactory for both sides?…

America owes part of its national identity to powerful myths that arose out of its early history. Some of these myths are attached to founding "fathers," others to the experience of nation building.Perhaps the most powerful myth is the one that developed out of the frontier experience of an emerging nation. Manifest destiny is how historians label it, a belief that the settlement and taming of this vast, largely uninhabited land by European colonialists was divinely ordained. Here's how the…