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Writing

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

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Biblical Chronology

Meredith G. Kline Strikes Back, Part 2

In our first essay we looked at Kline’s flawed exegesis of Genesis 2:5 as it relates to Day 3 of creation. Now we turn to Kline’s new argument against a chronological reading of Genesis 1, as found, again, in "Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony," Perspectives on Science and…

by James B. JordanMarch 29, 1997
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Hermeneutics

Bathsheba: The Real Story

One of the advantages of paying very close attention to the details in the Bible, especially chronological and genealogical details, is that they can shed light on situations that don’t seem to make much sense apart from them. One such situation is that of Bathsheba. It appears that Bathsheba willingly…

by James B. JordanMarch 28, 1997
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Church Calendar

Is the Church Year Biblical? | A Parking Lot Parable

Once upon a time, Jeff Meyers and Tony Rollins–old friends who had not seen each other for a few years–met in the parking lot of a neighborhood church. They were dropping off their pre-school children at the church for Mother’s Day Out. They were such conscientious and helpful fathers. As…

by Jeff MeyersMarch 20, 1997
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Daniel

The Allegory of Susanna

Years ago, when I was at the briefly-existing Geneva Divinity School, I taught a course in the Apocrypha. One thing that struck me at that time is that two of the stories are almost certainly religious allegories (as well as moral tales): Judith and Susanna. Since "Susanna" means "Lily," this…

by James B. JordanFebruary 28, 1997
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Biblical Horizons

A Blossom of Yahweh’s Field

Peter’s essay inspires me to write up some similar thoughts about the flower of the field. Rightly does Peter associate the almond with Yahweh’s garden, because the Garden of Eden is symbolically positioned as parallel to the Holy Place of the Tabernacle and Temple. To wit: Since Aaron’s rod blossomed…

by James B. JordanFebruary 28, 1997
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Biblical Chronology

Meredith G. Kline Strikes Back, Part 1

We have had occasion to discuss the views of Meredith G. Kline previously in these newsletters, and now it is time to do so again. Kline teaches at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and also at the Westminster Theological Seminaries (Philadelphia and San Diego). He is the author of some interesting insights…

by James B. JordanFebruary 28, 1997

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Science

Myths of Science

Galileo Goes To Jail , a 2009 collection of essays edited by Ronald Numbers, examines 25 myths of science and religion. The essays aren't defenses of religion by any means; they instead aim at complicating the received scientific triumphalism and set records straight. Maurice A. Finocchiaro tackles myth #8, that…

February 23, 2018

The Sin of Tolerance

The late Billy Graham from a 1 959 issue of Christianity Today . 1959!! One of the pet words of this age is "tolerance." It is a good word, but we have tried to stretch it over too great an area of life. We have applied it too often where…

February 23, 2018

Modernity as Aspiration

"Modernity," writes Jason A. Josephson-Storm, "is first and foremost the sign of a rupture . . . a device for positing significant historical breaks" ( The Myth of Disenchantment , 7). By designating something as "modern," we associate it with novelty, up-to-dateness, "the current." But modernity is also a spatial…

February 23, 2018

Imago Dei

Frances Young ( God's Presence , 173-4) offers this summary of the post-Nicene consensus concerning the image of God in man: "Athanasius and the Cappadocians, those who fashioned the notion of theopoiesis / theosis and recognized that it implied Nicene orthodoxy, were those who had a sense of the interrelationship…

February 23, 2018
Philosophy

Philosophic Wonder

Everyone wonders - children, “savages,” men and women at one another. Philosophers wonder too, Rosenzweig says ( Understanding the Sick and the Healthy ), but they respond to wonder differently from the rest of us. The rest of us are “adrift on the river Life, borne on, wonderment and all.”…

February 23, 2018

Nominal Sociology

Sociologists, Rosenstock-Huessy charges, often formulate their theories in this fashion: "an obscure Force A and a Relation B . . . affect Mr Y." Sociologists "pretend that their science address a nameless world" ( In the Cross of Reality , 4). No such nameless world exists: "X and Y are…

February 23, 2018

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