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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 IV: Implications

What About Catholics? (continued) Usually, such people are not seeking graven images, but rather their idolatry is of a broader character. They are seeking a home on earth. Scott Hahn’s book is called Rome Sweet Home . This is the essential sin, for there is no home on earth. The…

by James B. JordanDecember 7, 1994
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Biblical Studies

The Gospel and the Virtues

Reading the earliest Christian apologists is like watching a movie in which the hero has the means to demolish his opponents in his grasp but never realizes it. The apologists come across as men not altogether aware of the radical character of the gospel they defend. In response to charges…

by Peter LeithartNovember 23, 1994
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Biblical Studies

Suffer the Little Children

Then [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, ne`arim came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, "Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!" When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in…

by Peter LeithartNovember 23, 1994
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Biblical Chronology

Genesis 5 & 11: Chronological-Theological Reflections (Part 2)

Further Numerical Items of Interest Umberto Cassuto points out some other numerical factors in Genesis 5. 1 For one thing, he observes that every number in Genesis 5 is a multiple of 5, sometimes with the addition of 7. We have, in essence, made this point already. He also points…

by James B. JordanNovember 7, 1994
Biblical Horizons

The Second Word III: Exposition; Implications

Prostration God has designed the human body in a marvelous way, and Biblical religion is very physical. We believe in the resurrection of the body, against all pagan ideas of the immortality of the soul. We bury our bodies, not burning them. Human beings in their totality, including our bodies,…

by James B. JordanOctober 7, 1994
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Revelation

The Last Eight Visions of Revelation

Since Revelation is laid out in serieses of sevens, it is worth investigating to see if there is a series of seven after the seven libation-bowls of chapter 16. I believe there is, and it is the burden of this essay to expose it. The series of sevens, or heptamerous…

by James B. JordanOctober 7, 1994

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Eucharist, Evangelical and Catholic

Theodore Beza's opening speech at the Colloquy of Poissy was a model of irenic Protestantism (Nugent, Ecumenism is the Age of the Reformation ). He stressed the creedal commonalities of Rome and the Reformed, and argued that the differences were “matters of interpretation” and unnecessary accretions” (97). As Nugent says,…

September 16, 2015

Phone Booth

Way out in the Mojave desert is a phone booth. Some years ago, a resident of LA published a picture, which inspired Godfrey Daniels to start calling the phone. He was prepared to keep calling for years until someone picked up. A month later, Lorene Aiken, who worked at the…

September 16, 2015

Conformist Subversives

To secular analysts, “Progressive Pentecostals” seem naively apolitical. In their study of Global Pentecostalism , Donald Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori agree that the “integral” or “holistic” Pentecostals that they study are not social gospellers or liberation theologians. They don't aim to “reform social structures or challenge government policies.” They are…

September 16, 2015

Exit and Voice

What do people do when social institutions go wrong? Albert Hirschman ( Exit, Voice, and Loyalty ) argues that there are two main alternatives: One withdraws (exit) or one speaks out (voice). He admits that these categories sound “suspiciously neat,” but defends them because they “reflect a more fundamental schism:…

September 15, 2015

Deuteronomic Penalties

Deuteronomy 25 begins like a law-and-order text. Judges are to condemn the wicked and justify the innocent. Convicted criminals are beaten, and beaten publicly “in the presence” of the judge, beaten as much as his crime deserves (v. 2). Verse 3 takes a slight turn: It places a limit on…

September 15, 2015

Irenicism in the Reformation

“Perhaps irenicism is the finest synthesis of Renaissance and Reformation,” writes Donald Nugent in his 1974 monograph on the Colloquy of Poissy, Ecumenism in the Age of the Reformation (4). The irenicists had roots in the late medieval conciliarism and in Cusa's efforts to unite contraries, but it was humanism…

September 15, 2015

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