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Writing

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Art

Toward a Biblical Definition of Obscenity

My copy of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1976: not so new, really) defines obscene as (1) "disgusting to the senses; repulsive" and (2) "abhorrent to morality or virtue; specif: designed to incite lust or depravity." Definitions such as this serve a useful purpose only when there is agreement on what…

by Peter LeithartMay 30, 1991
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Biblical Studies

The Abomination of Desolation, Part 1

An Overview Here begins a series of studies in the Abomination of Desolation, or Desolating Sacrilege. This month and next I shall set out an overview of what I regard as the best interpretation of the phenomenon. Later essays will look at it in more detail. (The original form of…

by James B. JordanMay 22, 1991
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Biblical Studies

Advice From a Sojourner, Part 12

29. There are three things that are stately in their march, Even four that are stately when they walk: 30. The lion is mighty among beasts And does not turn back before any, 31. The strutting cock, The male goat, And a king with his army around him. 32. If…

by James B. JordanMay 22, 1991
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Biblical Studies

The Chronology of Ezra & Nehemiah, Part 4

We have seen that it is likely that the Artaxerxes of Ezra-Nehemiah is the same as Darius the Great. If this solution be correct, and I think it is, possibly there is another problem in Ezra that can be resolved by it. In Ezra 4:6 we are told that "in…

by James B. JordanMay 22, 1991
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Biblical Horizons

The Weight of Being

Czech novelist Milan Kundera, though hardly a household name in the English-speaking world, has achieved a certain notoriety in America in recent years, largely on the strength of the English translation and film version of his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 1 The Unbearable Lightness of Being — the…

by Peter LeithartMay 6, 1991
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Proverbs

Advice From a Sojourner, Part 11

24. Four things are small on the earth, But they are exceedingly wise; 25. The ants are not a strong folk, But they prepare their food in the summer; 26. The coneys are not a mighty folk, Yet they make their houses in the rocks; 27. The locusts have no…

by James B. JordanApril 22, 1991

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Mass v. Manners

C atherine Pickstock claims that the rejection of liturgy is central to modernity. Having refused the integrations of liturgy, modernity forges various forms of pseudo-liturgy, pale substitutes to accomplish what the liturgy once did in Western society. One of these pseudo-liturgies is civility: “Once the common ritual basis in which…

February 24, 2017

China - Guardian of Western Civ

D avid Goldman compares “transgressors” Milo Yiannopoulos and Yuja Wang . Milo's transgressiveness is his essence; Wang, a thirty-year-old Chinese pianist, plays the Western repertoire, her transgressiveness evident in her habit of performing in micro-dresses and revealing evening gowns. (Goldman wrote this just before Milo's public humiliation.) Despite her Asian…

February 24, 2017

Weak Nationalism?

P ete Spiliakos makes the counter-intuitive point that Trump's nationalism will fail politically unless it can become more nationalist: Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again' slogan is, paradoxically, insufficiently nationalist. MAGA leaves out African Americans for whom America was not noticeably greater in the past—when, for instance, blacks were prevented from…

February 24, 2017

Adamic Israel

1 Chronicles 27:25–31 lists the officials in charge of David's stores and lands. Twelve men are named and each has an area of responsibility: 1. Azmaveth, king's treasuries, v. 25a 2. Jonathan, treasuries in the field, v. 25b 3. Ezri, supervisor of field workers, v. 26 4. Sheim, vineyards, v.…

February 23, 2017

Typology, Toleration, and the Metaphysics of Hospitality

I n an article on “Liturgy, Art and Politics,” Catherine Pickstock argues that the liturgy holds together universal and particular in a unique way. It does this in part because it “extends the liturgical tension between the ideal and the real to an extreme, and yet still holds the polarities…

February 23, 2017

Zwingli, Matter, Mind

I n her meticulous and revealing study of The Eucharist in the Reformation , Lee Palmer Wandel argues that Luther and Zwingli divided at Marburg because their respective positions were incommensurate, incomprehensible each to the other. Specifically, they “divided over the nature of Christ's body,” but that point of division…

February 22, 2017

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