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Writing

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

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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

Postmodern Tragedy

Postmodern tragedy is also rooted in Freud: For Freud, the id desires but is blocked and opposed by the superego. The ego negotiates, and finds ways for the id to express itself without violating the standards of the superego. This is reasonable, submission to the reality principle. But it is…

October 30, 2003
American Religion

Just War

Christopher Lynch ends a review of several books on just war ( Weekly Standard , Nov 3), with the comment that “popular punditry’s now-routine use of the theory and the flood of recent books on the topic suggest that a change in the nation’s thinking has taken place.” Just in…

October 30, 2003
Philosophy

Worldview

Evangelicals these days are positively giddy about worldview. For many, developing a Christian worldview is the answer to all or most of the ills that plague the contemporary church. When I see a bandwagon, however, I tend to wonder why they are heading in that direction, and this contrarian bias…

October 30, 2003

Unitarianism

The internal contradictions of unitarianism: If God is finite, then there is a boundary, and he is hardly worthy of the name God. If he is infinite, then there is no boundary, but there is also no outside. But if there is no “outside,” where does this unitarian God “put”…

October 30, 2003
Philosophy

Plato and Fear

To what extent does Platonism arise out of fear of contaminants, of miasma, of impurity? On Derrida’s reading, Plato dreams of an uncontaminated origin and presence that can never be arrived at or achieved, and he sees every supplement as an unhappy contamination of the purity of the origin. That…

October 30, 2003

JSOT Articles

Several interesting articles in the current issue of JSOT : 1) Yairah Amit of Tel Aviv University writes on “Progression as a Rhetorical Device in Biblical Literature.” The concept is fairly simple: He’s pointing to places where, in narrative or speech, the biblical writers list a series of events or…

October 29, 2003

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