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

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Biblical Studies

Gold, Silver, & Precious Stones

[This essay was originally published in 1988. Given the situation that our new national socialists are getting the world into, I thought it might be useful to reprint it here. – JBJordan] The Bible has quite a bit to say about gold, silver, and precious stones, and the Bible always…

by James B. JordanMay 19, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

The Pastoral Function

I wrote this elsewhere and was encouraged to put it here. It is a comment on what a pastor is. Today, this is not very well understood, and God’s people suffer because of it. There are four professions: medicine, education, law, and religion. Each of these, when done at a…

by James B. JordanMay 17, 2009
Biblical Horizons

The Virgin Tomb: The Womb of the New Birth

James Jordan recently pointed out in private conversation how appropriate it is, in John’s Gospel, that Nicodemus is present both to ask Jesus about being born again, and to see Jesus re-enter the womb of the mother. Nicodemus rhetorically asks, “How can a man be born when he is old?…

by Mark HorneMay 8, 2009
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Romans

Romans 7

This is a problematic and much discussed passage. I’ve been discussing it in another forum, and have decided to move it here and present some very preliminary observations about it. One large question is this: Who is the speaker here and what is his situation? Traditionally, the speaker is seen…

by James B. JordanApril 19, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

Good New Sci-Fi

1. The current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction includes a good fantasy novella by John C. Wright, who since his conversion has been writing Christianly. This is a fine fantasy with nods to C. S. Lewis and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and probably Gene Wolfe as well.…

by James B. JordanApril 15, 2009
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American Culture

The Name of Jesus

“It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it cost to speak this name is perhaps connected to some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent within it. Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is…

by Richard BledsoeMarch 20, 2009

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Love (III)

John Drury begins his book on George Herbert, Music At Midnight , with Herbert's “Love (III)”: Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I…

October 1, 2015

Self-Surprise

“I surprised myself,” says the woman who courageously fights off a mugger, the wife caught in an affair, the student who pipes up to disagree with the celebrity professor, the father dismayed by his rage at an unruly child. It’s such a common expression that we fail to see how…

October 1, 2015

Jesus and the Professional Theologians

On the Sabbath after the last day of the Feast of Booths, Jesus has an intense debate with Jewish leaders in Herod’s temple, climaxing with Jesus’ declaration, “Before Abraham was, I am.” The Jews have recently been eager to execute an adulteress. Now they’ve found a new target, a blasphemer,…

October 1, 2015

Sacrifice and Worship After Stoicheia

Let me begin with two starting points, too rapidly explained and defended. First: It is clear from the New Testament’s handful of uses of the phrase that ta stoicheia tou kosmou are connected with the regulations of the Torah. During her childhood (Galatians 4:3), Paul says, Israel was enslaved to…

September 30, 2015

Unseemly Members

It has been common in the Christian West, particularly in the modern era, to define the image of God in terms of rationality or some other intellectual capacity. Confronted by a madman, Christians will no doubt say “Oh, they’re human too,” but by this definition they are clearly defective humans.…

September 30, 2015

Premodern Condition

In The Premodern Condition , Bruce Holsinger examines the influence of medieval studies on some of the major figures in the 1960s French avant garde . By “medieval studies,” he means both scholarship on the Middle Ages (Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, the Annales school, Denis de Rougement’s Love in the…

September 30, 2015

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