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Art

The Second Word V: On Images and Art, Part 3

The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

Patriarchal Dominion

The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…

by James B. JordanAugust 4, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

The Case Against Western Civilization, Part 6

Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…

by James B. JordanAugust 4, 1998
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Biblical Studies

Re-creation in the Ascension Offering

The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998
Biblical Horizons

The Framework Hypothesis: A Gnostic Heresy

Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998
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Art

The Second Word V: On Images and Art, Part 2

The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998

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Language of Food

In his Teaching Company lectures on Chaucer Seth Lerer notes the ethnic and class distinction between terms for game and animals and the terms for the food produced from the game. Deer, cow, lamb, pig are all Anglo-Saxon; venison, beef, mutton, and pork are all French. The language traces the…

November 12, 2004

Justification and the Gaze

A thought inspired by Oswald Bayer’s Living By Faith: Justification and Sanctification : The doctrine of justification has something ?EI know not what ?Eto say to the postmodern suspicion of “the objectifying gaze.” Justification is fundamentally about the gaze of God, about who is just in the “eyes of God”…

November 12, 2004

Trinitivium

Luther writes: “The Father in divine things is Grammatica, for he gives the Word and is the pure fountainhead from which, if one may so speak, floweth good, excellent, pure speech. Ths Son is Dialectica; for He giveth the arrangement whereby a thing should be set in good order of…

November 12, 2004

Translation, 1 Kings 11

Now the King Shlomoh loved women, Foreign ones, Many. And the daughter of Pharaoh. Moabiyyot Ammanoyyot Adomyyot Tzedniyyot Chittiyyot From the nations which Yahweh said to the sons of Israel, ?You shall not enter into them And they shall not enter into you. Truly they will turn away your heart…

November 11, 2004

Justification is the Beginning

Justification is not the end of a story, but the beginning. Consider Noah, who was righteous in his generations, and who was seen/judged righteous before Yahweh. To be justified is to be distinguished from the wicked generation. To be justified is to be preserved when the judgment falls. To be…

November 11, 2004
Theology

Sloth, or Whatever

November 11, 2004

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