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Biblical Horizons

Hymn Bark #5: Healing Bad Eschatology

1. Come, Ye Thankful People, Come. This hymn by Henry Alford is found in many hymnals, including Cantus Christi . Yet, the last stanza radically contradicts the theological perspective of the historic faith and of the editors of this hymnal. It is a witness to how we tend to bounce…

by James B. JordanSeptember 20, 2011
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Biblical Studies

Biblical Theology Basics: Part 7

This series of post were originally published at the Biblical Horizons blog. The entire paper can be downloaded HERE . 7. The Literary Shape of the Covenant As we have seen, there is a succession of covenants in the Bible, each more glorious than the previous, each absorbing and transfiguring…

by James B. JordanSeptember 16, 2011
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Biblical Studies

Biblical Theology Basics: Part 6

This series of post were originally published at the Biblical Horizons blog. The entire paper can be downloaded HERE . 6. Covenant Phases in the Bible Thus far we have spoken of only three phases in the history of the one covenant. We must now divide the third phase into…

by James B. JordanSeptember 8, 2011
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Biblical Studies

Biblical Theology Basics: Part 5

This series of post were originally published at the Biblical Horizons blog. The entire paper can be downloaded HERE . 5. Priest, King, and Prophet We can begin with the phrase “prophet, priest, and king.” This is the order normally heard from preachers and theologians. But it is not really…

by James B. JordanSeptember 3, 2011
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Biblical Horizons

Hymn Bark #4: "Christian, Dost Thou See Them' & "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say"

This is a fine hymn by John Mason Neale, based on an ancient Greek church hymn. The opening question is particularly powerful: “Christian, dost thou see them on the holy ground, how the powers of darkness compass thee around?” Yes, the devil strikes in the very church and her worship…

by James B. JordanSeptember 1, 2011
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Biblical Horizons

Hymn Bark #3: It Is Well With My Soul

This syrupy piece of marijuana-haze hymnody is found in the hymnals of churches that have substituted sentiment for orthodoxy and worship. Hence you don’t find it in older Presbyterian hymnals, but in the Trinity Hymnal. Nor do you find it in Episcopal and Lutheran hymnals until very recently in some…

by James B. JordanAugust 31, 2011

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Jacob Have I Loved

W illiam Johnstone points out in the first volume of his commentary on 1 & 2 Chronicles that the Chronicler's (C) list of the kings of Edom oddly repeats the phrase “then king so-and-so died and there reigned in his place” seven times. In part, this places greater stress on…

June 23, 2016

Jesus the Teacher

I f not unique, Robert Banks's Reenvisioning Theological Education is a rarity among studies of theological education in the amount of attention he devotes to biblical models of education and training. In reviewing recent literature on efforts to rethink seminary education, he notes again and again that little attention is…

June 23, 2016

Fulfilling Paganism

R obert Pogue Harrison ( The Dominion of the Dead ) spends several pages on Walter Pater's novel, Marius the Epicurean . A deathbed convert to Christianity, Marius is struck in his first encounter with the church by the continuities between Christianity and the oldest of Roman religions, the religion…

June 22, 2016

Ancient Memory

R emember the poor,” Paul told the Galatians. But what did that mean? Peter Brown ( The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity , 39-40) explains that “For early Christians, as for many other ancient persons, memory was far more than a passive storage space.…

June 22, 2016

Attention Deficit

A ccording to Lily Gurton-Wachter's Watchwords: Romanticism and the Poetics of Attention , “the first documentation of the disorder we now call Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” is found in “a medical text published in London in 1798.” Scottish physician Alexander Crichton described the “morbid alterations to which attention is subject”…

June 22, 2016

Can An Architect Save Us?

R obert Pogue Harrison calls the twentieth century “the fitful and prolonged continuation of a process that began in earnest a century earlier: the end of the Neolithic era” ( Dominion of the Dead , 31). One might think that we left the Neolithic a long time ago, but Harrison…

June 21, 2016

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