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Writing

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

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Art

Glorifications Versus Debasement

Because of sin, the arts sometimes do not serve to glorify but to debase. Sinful men make their environments ugly, and create ugly art to “enhance” their ugly words. But since all men are still God’s images, no men are able to live with such ugliness all the time. Thus,…

by James B. JordanMay 25, 1994
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Art

Words and Glory

Arts and literature reviews in most evangelical Christian publications generally approach their subjects in terms of ideology. We are told whether or not the film or book is acceptable in terms of morals, sexual graphicness, and theological accuracy. While there is definitely a place for such reviews, I fear that…

by James B. JordanMay 25, 1994
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Biblical Horizons

Broadening Our View of the Trinity

We speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The early Church tended to speak of Him as Father, Word, and Spirit. In this short essay, I want to suggest some other ways to think of the Trinity, ways that I have found pastorally helpful in my own life…

by James B. JordanMay 5, 1994
Biblical Studies

Thousands of Generations

I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and guard My commandments (Ex. 20:5-6). The Second Word forbids acts of ceremonial…

by James B. JordanMay 5, 1994
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Biblical Chronology

The Chronology of the Pentateuch (Part 3)

8. The Table of Nations If we assume births every two years, and about 30 years between generations (cp. Gen. 11:12-24), we can come up with an approximate series of dates for the generations recorded in Genesis 10. We shall assume that all three of Noah’s sons had their firstborn…

by James B. JordanMay 5, 1994
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Biblical Studies

The Eighth Month

Zechariah’s first prophecy (Zech. 1:1-6) was delivered in the eighth month of the second year of Darius. The notation of this date serves a number of purposes. Most obviously, it relates Zechariah’s prophecies to those of Haggai. By the time Zechariah delivered his first prophecy, Haggai had already chided the…

by Peter LeithartApril 23, 1994

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Science

Time Reborn

From the NYTBR review, it seems that Lee Smolin is aiming to stretch the boundaries of the orthodoxy of physics in his latest, Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe . He thinks that the present has been left out of a physics that…

May 5, 2013

Predatory Sex

In her conversion account, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith , Rosario Butterfield describes a talk she gave at Geneva College about sexual sin. She concluded that the Christian students who listened to her didn’t realize what sexual sin was all about. Even…

May 5, 2013

Flesh and blood

Tyconius adopts a relentlessly ecclesiocentric reading of Revelation. Every positive symbol, it seems, is just one more way of describing the church. Heaven, angels, stars, mountains, and everything else, it seems, means “one and the same thing,” one of his favorite phrases. It creates some odd interpretations, to say the…

May 2, 2013

Unveiling

Revelation is supposed to be an apocalypse,” an unveiling. If so, why is it so obscure at so many places? Good question, and we get a partial answer by following the flow of the book as a whole. Once we get past chapter 17, with its obscure references to kings…

May 2, 2013

Roman adoption

In a wide-ranging and pungent critique of the theology of today’s adoption movement, Cumberland Law School’s David Smolin points out the differences between Roman and modern American adoption. Roman adoptions occurred among the upper classes, did not necessarily involve orphans, were usually a way of elevating an already upper class…

May 2, 2013

666

Bede offers several explanations of the number 666 in his Bede: Commentary on Revelation . The number is the number of the Greek word “Titan,” a “giant,” because “it is thought that Antichrist will usurp this name, as if he excelled all in power, boasting that he is the one…

May 1, 2013

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