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American Politics

How To Change the Supreme Court

Appalling as it is, the decision of the United States Supreme Court regarding marriage cannot come as much of a surprise to reformation minded Christians. At the same time, this event is a warning from which we might learn. It is parallel to the attack of AIDS in the homosexual…

by James B. JordanJuly 8, 2015
putin
Europe

Gay West and Straight East?

Should we trust Vladimir Putin, we could come to believe that the West is a gay paradise whereas Russia strongly defends traditional and even Christian morality. Similar conclusion could be drawn from polls, which say that the European Union and America are the parts of the world where the acceptance…

by Bogumil JarmulakJuly 7, 2015
street
City

Jane Jacobs: The Jane Austen of Economics

In 1974, Steven Goldberg published one of the books that radical feminists have since assiduously tried not to remember has ever been published: The Inevitability of Patriarchy . As David Gutmann said in a Commentary review: “Goldberg’s virtues as a scholar and a logician are formidable. . . .[He is]…

by Richard BledsoeJuly 7, 2015
stonewall
American Culture

A Pastoral Letter from Louisville

Since Friday’s SCOTUS decision in Obergefell v. Hodges , social media have been inundated with rainbows, tweets, quips, and essays both celebrating and decrying our new culture that has been officially codified in these United States. With a strong LGBT community in our city, we, no doubt, will see a…

by Bill SmithJuly 6, 2015
moses
Biblical Law

The Death Penalty in the Mosaic Law

During the course of recent debates among Evangelicals concerning same-sex marriage, critics of the traditional Christian position that homosexual acts and desires are sinful and unnatural have often pointed to Leviticus 20:13, where "he who lies with a man as with a woman" is condemned to death. In the following…

by Peter LeithartJuly 3, 2015
david-goliath-2
Homosexuality

When Obergefell Falls

We are being taunted. The giant’s name is Obergefell ; he is a six-fingered descendent of the Anakim. He has come out onto the battlefield arrayed in his impressive armor. He wears the media elites like a helmet of brass, and on his chest, he wears the deep pockets of…

by Toby SumpterJuly 2, 2015

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Intention and sense

Does the intention of the author determine the sense? There are problems with saying Yes, particularly when “intention” is assumed to be the mental state of the author, which is unrecoverable. There are also problems with saying No, because that seems to introduce (as ED Hirsch argues) a hermeneutical free-for-all.…

March 29, 2007

Tragic hermeneutics

In an article in Theology Today (1980), David Steinmetz quotes Benjamin’s Jowett’s essay on the interpretation of Scripture (1859), which insists on a single meaning in a text - the meaning intended by the author and understood by the original audience. Steinmetz admits that critical scholarship has moved on since…

March 29, 2007

Victorious righteousness

Dahood takes “righteous” in Psalm 118:15, 19 as “victory.” The joyful shouting is heard from the tents of the victorious, and the gates are the gates of victory. He cites Isaiah 41:2 and 49:24 as other texts where this nuance of ZDK comes to the fore. The meaning could be:…

March 29, 2007

More notes on Psalm 118

More notes, taken from or inspired by Michael Dahood’s Anchor Bible commentary. 1) Dahood makes good sense of the entire Psalm by assuming that it moves from a place of battle and victory (vv. 5-14), to the victory celebration in the tents of the war camp (vv. 15-18), and then…

March 29, 2007
Literature

Auden on Austen

With his usual critical insight, Auden captured Austen’s knowingness in a poem about Byron: You could not shock her more than she shocks me; Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass. It makes me most uncomfortable to see An English spinster of the middle class Describe the amorous effects of…

March 28, 2007

Be the river

Gregory the Great again: “he that treats of sacred writ should follow the way of a river, for if a river, as it flows along its channel, meets with open valleys on its side, into these it immediately turns the course of its current, and when they are copiously supplised,…

March 28, 2007

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