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Art

The Second Word V: On Images and Art, Part 3

The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

Patriarchal Dominion

The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…

by James B. JordanAugust 4, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

The Case Against Western Civilization, Part 6

Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…

by James B. JordanAugust 4, 1998
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Biblical Studies

Re-creation in the Ascension Offering

The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998
Biblical Horizons

The Framework Hypothesis: A Gnostic Heresy

Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998
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Art

The Second Word V: On Images and Art, Part 2

The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998

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Philosophy

Cinematic perception and Zeno’s arrow

Henri Bergson attempted to solve the paradox of Zeno’s arrow (which can never cover the infinite points between the bow and the target, and yet does) by calling attention to the implicit spatialization of time within the paradox. The space in which movement takes place is divisible, but the duration…

May 5, 2005
Philosophy

Cinematic perception and Zeno’s arrow

Henri Bergson attempted to solve the paradox of Zeno’s arrow (which can never cover the infinite points between the bow and the target, and yet does) by calling attention to the implicit spatialization of time within the paradox. The space in which movement takes place is divisible, but the duration…

May 5, 2005

Romans 8, continued

INTRODUCTION Paul is talking about the liberation of creation from bondage to decay and corruption into freedom. This raises the question of the time frame for the fulfillment of this prophecy. It is normally taken as a reference to the end of the world. The ?redemption of the body?E(v. 23)…

May 5, 2005

Osiander and the Reformed Tradition

Julie Canlis has a helpful article on Calvin’s response to Osiander in the International Journal of Systematic Theology (6:2 [2004]). A few points are worth highlighting: 1) She sees the response to Osiander as part of the reason why Reformed theologians tend to be skittish about talk of “participation.” Calvin,…

May 5, 2005

Justification and Reformation

In two older articles, Alister McGrath examines the sources for the Reformation doctrine of justification, covering ground also covered in his 2-volume Iustitia Dei. The first article, published in the Harvard Theological Review in 1982 (75:2, pp. 219-242) examines the evidence for claiming that the Reformation doctrine of justification was…

May 4, 2005
Theology

More on Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite

Covenant of Light. This section concludes Part I of The Beauty of the Infinite , entitled ?Dionysus Against the Crucified.?E With this section, Hart concludes his critique of classical, modern and postmodern thought, and the outlines of the Christian ontology that interrupted the history of metaphysics and that he develops…

May 4, 2005

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