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American Politics

Obama as Fool

It is clear now that Barack Obama is a fool. This was clear to anyone with Biblical wisdom during the campaign, but it is now becoming clear to everyone. The following analysis of this narcissist is invaluable: http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections These rather radical comments are also worth considering: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=9668 What is telling…

by James B. JordanMarch 4, 2009
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Biblical Studies

Rainbow Coalition

I was asked to provide comments on the rainbow in the Bible. Here are some for starters: 1. God puts his warbow in the sky for HIM to see and remember the covenant. 2. In Revelation 4-5, this warbow is around His throne, so He sees it all the time.…

by James B. JordanMarch 3, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

Marriage By Faith

We are about to enter a new era of world history. How will it come? The last time it came, it came by means of God conquering the impossible and overcoming barriers that were superhuman. That is how God does it every time He does a new thing. The last…

by Richard BledsoeFebruary 15, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

What Happens if the Church Does Not Sing the Imprecatory Psalms?

What happens if the church doesn’t sing the Imprecatory Psalms? We don’t like them. They are mean and nasty, and the one outstanding virtue inculcated in our public schools and universities (as Allan Bloom noted more than twenty years ago in his observations of American college students) is “niceness.” But…

by Richard BledsoeFebruary 10, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

Objectivity and Schizophrenia

The whole of the modern world is still an outworking of Augsburg and Westphalia. It is now a world incapable of marriage, intimacy, and relationship. The whole of the modern world is terribly, terribly wounded. It gives rise to children who have a variety of dysfunctions. Some of them are…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 21, 2009
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Anxiety

Marriage and Betrayal

Perhaps the most fearful of all possibilities in the world is the possibility of betrayal on the part of someone who is in a “position of trust.” This, unfortunately, is the first block in what ought to be the foundation of every marriage in the world. Every woman has a…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 15, 2009

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Hypocrisy and Motive

W hen Jesus condemns hypocrisy, argues Oliver O'Donovan ( Desire of Nations , 109–10), He is speaking of conformity to “public expectation.” O'Donovan suggests that the sense is captured by the word “performance.” Jesus is not speaking of motives in the modern sense of the word: “A motive, as we…

April 7, 2017
Slavery

Abolition

W hy didn't the apostles move more quickly to protest and attempt to abolish slavery? There are various answers to that, but Oliver O'Donovan's gets to the heart of the issue: The church “believed that Christ had abolished it” ( Desire of Nations , 185). Of course, the church had…

April 7, 2017

Kulturkampf

P hilip Rieff notes, “That word [ Kulturkampf ] first appeared in common German use in the early 1870s during the struggle of the National Liberal political party to disarm by law the moral/educational authority, and political punditry, of a triumphalist Roman Catholic hierarchy, revitalized as it then was by…

April 6, 2017

Fences and Neighbors

K. Luria examines the Sacred Boundaries (xxvii–xxxxi) of early modern France, in an effort to correct extremes of historiography. Some have argued that sacred boundaries between religious groups led to violence; other historians have pointed to continuous interaction between Catholics and Protestants. Both are right. Symbolic boundaries separated Catholic and…

April 6, 2017

Building the Confessional State

A 1989 article by Wolfgang Reinhard on the relationships among the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and early modern state-building is an excellent brief summary of the relationship between Reformation and post-Reformation “confessionalization” and the formation of modern states and national identities. The Reformers' turn to the state was in the first instance…

April 5, 2017

What Solomon Made

O verall, the Chronicler's account of Solomon's temple construction (2 Chronicles 3:1-5:1) is arranged chiastically: A. Solomon begins to build, 3:1-2 B. What Solomon made, 3:3-4:10 C. What Huram-abi made, 4:11-17 B’. What Solomon made, 4:18-22 A’. Solomon completes ( shalam ) work, 5:1 The long section in B is…

April 4, 2017

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