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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Horizons

2001: A Space Odyssey

In the November 1993 issue of Open Book Peter Leithart commented briefly on gnosticism. The film 2001 is a great specimen of gnosticism, and is worth viewing as a Sunday School project for an adult class. The author of the basic story was Arthur C. Clarke, an old-school science fiction…

by James B. JordanJanuary 6, 1994
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Biblical Horizons

Two Films by Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier movies display a strongly moral, even Christian, point of view, and certainly can be enjoyed by Christian viewers. His later works, such as Psycho , The Birds , and his television series, are not as clearly moral in tone. In these later efforts, Hitchcock brought humorous or…

by James B. JordanJanuary 6, 1994
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Leviticus

Cult and Communication

“What art thou, thou idol ceremony?” asked Henry V during his midnight rounds of the English camp near Agincourt. His answer was that ceremony was both nothing and everything. It was nothing in the sense that it offered no guarantee that the king would be fit for office. Contrary to…

by Peter LeithartDecember 20, 1993
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Biblical Studies

Which Sacred Writings?

You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them; and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All…

by Peter LeithartDecember 20, 1993
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Biblical Horizons

The Production of the New Testament Canon: A Revisionist Suggestion

My research has led me to the conviction that there are three major periods of Biblical history, which lead to a fourth. These are the Ages of the Father, the Word, and the Spirit. The First Age, that of the Father, is recorded in the book of Genesis. It focuses…

by James B. JordanDecember 6, 1993
Exodus

Egypt in Biblical History

Both Bible history and the current consensus chronology of the ancient world are tied up intimately with Egyptian history and chronology. Thus, as we broaden Biblical Chronology beyond the matter of adding up numbers and try to integrate Biblical chronology with the ancient world, the place to start would seem…

by James B. JordanDecember 6, 1993

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Holy Spirit

Near the end of his fifth oration, Gregory flies off into an ecstatic review of the Spirit’s work and titles.  It is in some ways standard pneumatology, but the overwhelming rhetorical flood has never been surpassed. “Christ is born; the Spirit is His Forerunner. He is baptized; the Spirit bears…

November 10, 2009

Contrasted being

Gregory’s fifth oration again: Human nature “has a unity which is only conceivable in thought; and the individuals are parted from one another very far indeed, both by time and by dispositions and by power.  For we are not only compound beings, but also contrasted beings, both with one another…

November 10, 2009

Adam, Eve, Seth

From Gregory’s fifth oration, defending the divinity and consubstantiality of the Spirit: “What was Adam?  A creature of God.  What then was Eve?  A fragment of the creature.  And what was Seth?  The begotten of both.  Does it then seem to you that Creature and Fragment and Begotten are the…

November 10, 2009
Philosophy

Antifoundationalism

In the second of his “theological orations,” Gregory Nazianzen catalogs the impenetrable mysteries of creation: “How is it,” he asks, “that the earth stands solid and unswerving?  On what is it supported?  What is it that props it up, and on what does that rest?” And then: “For indeed reason…

November 10, 2009

Graced nature

Cunningham again, arguing that a creation made by a loving Creator cannot be pure nature: “Traditionally, God’s long-term ‘involvement’ with an care for the world has been emphasized through the theological category of grace .  In creating the world, God wills into existence something radically other-than-God; but the world’s ‘otherness’…

November 10, 2009

Retroactive Causality

In his brilliant, flawed These Three are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology (Challenges in Contemporary Theology) , David Cunningham notes how the doctrine of the Trinity implies retroactive causality: “At first, we might assume that a father precedes his son, both logically and temporally; but this is an illusion.…

November 10, 2009

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