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Writing

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

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Art

The Second Word IV: Implications

What About Catholics? (continued) Usually, such people are not seeking graven images, but rather their idolatry is of a broader character. They are seeking a home on earth. Scott Hahn’s book is called Rome Sweet Home . This is the essential sin, for there is no home on earth. The…

by James B. JordanDecember 7, 1994
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Biblical Studies

The Gospel and the Virtues

Reading the earliest Christian apologists is like watching a movie in which the hero has the means to demolish his opponents in his grasp but never realizes it. The apologists come across as men not altogether aware of the radical character of the gospel they defend. In response to charges…

by Peter LeithartNovember 23, 1994
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Biblical Studies

Suffer the Little Children

Then [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, ne`arim came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, "Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!" When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in…

by Peter LeithartNovember 23, 1994
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Biblical Chronology

Genesis 5 & 11: Chronological-Theological Reflections (Part 2)

Further Numerical Items of Interest Umberto Cassuto points out some other numerical factors in Genesis 5. 1 For one thing, he observes that every number in Genesis 5 is a multiple of 5, sometimes with the addition of 7. We have, in essence, made this point already. He also points…

by James B. JordanNovember 7, 1994
Biblical Horizons

The Second Word III: Exposition; Implications

Prostration God has designed the human body in a marvelous way, and Biblical religion is very physical. We believe in the resurrection of the body, against all pagan ideas of the immortality of the soul. We bury our bodies, not burning them. Human beings in their totality, including our bodies,…

by James B. JordanOctober 7, 1994
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Revelation

The Last Eight Visions of Revelation

Since Revelation is laid out in serieses of sevens, it is worth investigating to see if there is a series of seven after the seven libation-bowls of chapter 16. I believe there is, and it is the burden of this essay to expose it. The series of sevens, or heptamerous…

by James B. JordanOctober 7, 1994

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Limits Of Tolerance

Writing in the 1955, Walter Lippmann already discerned that the US was approaching the limits of toleration and facing a crisis of civil discourse. In his Essays on the Public Philosophy , he writes: "As we know from the variety and sharpness of schisms and sects in our time, we…

September 1, 2017

Temple of Song

If we wanted to remodel a church, we'd hire a general contractor as project manager, and he'd hire the various carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and other craftsmen to do the work. Not Josiah. When he sets out to repair the temple, he calls on the musicians . Commenting on 2 Chronicles…

September 1, 2017

Islamic Thanks

In his contribution to Spoken and Unspoken Thanks , Kevin Reinhart observes that "in English both 'thanks' and 'gratitude' belong to the domain of individual inner life and using them in a religious context mirrors our Western understanding of religion as interior and affective, as dispositional rather than operational" (116).…

September 1, 2017

No Private Worship

"The division . . . between 'corporate' and 'private' worship must be discarded," writes Alexander Schmemann in his Introduction to Liturgical Theology (24). He explains: "The purpose of worship is to constitute the Church, precisely to bring what is 'private' into the new life, to transform it into what belongs…

September 1, 2017

Freud and the Faith

Adam Gopnik reviews Frederick Crews's Freud in The New Yorker , and along the way to the review gives a brisk overview of the spread of Freudianism from Vienna to Hampstead to Berkeley, where Crews spent his career teaching. Crews was among the earliest Freudian literary scholars, but has devoted…

September 1, 2017

Medieval Impurities

For many Christians today, the purity rules of ancient Israel seem bizarre and opaque. We'd never think of trying to observe them. This "disenchantment" of purity is a sign of the power and success of the Reformation, because medieval Christians were still very much at home in the world of…

August 31, 2017

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