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

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Biblical Studies

Biblical Theology Basics: Part 4

This series of post were originally published at the Biblical Horizons blog. The entire paper can be downloaded HERE . 4. The Three Basic Phases of the Covenant We have introduced the three phases of the covenant, from childhood to adulthood to full maturity. Let us look more fully at…

by James B. JordanAugust 31, 2011
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Biblical Studies

Biblical Theology Basics: Part 3

This series of post were originally published at the Biblical Horizons blog. The entire paper can be downloaded HERE . 3. Covenant Maturation Let us now turn to the application of this One Eternal Covenant into history. We have been looking at Covenant Theology. Covenant Theology has to do with…

by James B. JordanAugust 29, 2011
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Biblical Horizons

Hymn Bark #2: Holy, Holy, Holy

Hymn Bark is a series designed to purify our good hymns from errors, and purge some bad ones. Here is chapter 2: Not really much wrong with this hymn, though I wish musicians would teach the congregation how to sing it. Routinely the note at the end of line 3…

by James B. JordanAugust 26, 2011
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Biblical Horizons

Hymn Bark: The Lorica of Patrick

I begin here a series of criticisms of hymns commonly sung in Reformed and Presbyterian circles. I begin with the hymn “I bind myself,” commonly called “The Lorica. There is only one textual problem with the usual sung version of this, and that is the phrase “eternal rocks.” Obviously that…

by James B. JordanAugust 22, 2011
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Biblical Studies

Biblical Theology Basics: Part 2

This series of post were originally published at the Biblical Horizons blog. The entire paper can be downloaded HERE . 2. What is the Covenant? There are many and varied descriptions of what the Bible means by the word “covenant” (Hebrew: berith). We are tempted to write that there are…

by James B. JordanAugust 22, 2011
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Biblical Studies

Biblical Theology Basics: Part 1

This series of post were originally published at the Biblical Horizons blog. The entire paper can be downloaded HERE . 1. What is Meant by Biblical Theology “Theology” is language (logos) about God (theos). We can distinguish two broad kinds of theology: Biblical Theology and Ecclesiastical Theology. Biblical Theology concerns…

by James B. JordanAugust 20, 2011

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Conveniens

Bauerschmidt notes that Aquinas frequently argues, especially when speaking of the incarnation, not for “proof” of doctrine but for its “fittingness.” Reason has the role of “manifesting how [the incarnation] fits together (convenire means literally ‘to come together’) with other things that Christians hold true about God.” Perhaps this can…

March 23, 2006

Extra-Augustinisticum

In Epistle 137, Augustine writes: “The Christian teaching nowhere holds that God was so poured into human flesh as either to desert or lose - or to transfer and, as it were, compress within this frail body - the care of governing the universe. This is the thought of people…

March 23, 2006

Thomas on Merit

Commenting on ST I-II, q. 109, Frederick Bauerschmidt says that Thomas uses the word “merit” analogically when we speak of God rewarding human action “since we can act in the first place only because God has given us the capacity to act.” This applies even to Jesus: “even when Thomas…

March 23, 2006

On Seneca, de Beneficiis, Books 1-2

Seneca suggests that ingratitude is the worst of vices, and nothing is more “harmful to society” than ingratitude (I.1). Later in Book I, he lists a series of moral ills that plague society – “homicides, tyrants, thieves, adulterers, ravishers, sacrilegious, traitors” – but concludes that “worse than all these is…

March 23, 2006
Literature

Prospero the Magus

I am grateful to Ralph Smith for references to Frances Yates’ work on Shakespeare’s plays. In an analysis of The Tempest, Frances Yates writes: “It is inevitable and unavoidable in thinking of Prospero to bring in the name of John Dee, the great mathematical magus of whom Shakespeare must have…

March 22, 2006
History

Elizabethan Magic

Educated Elizabethans lived in a world of similitudes. As EMW Tillyard argued, the Elizabethan world picture was constituted by a series of analogous chains of being. The social world manifested and was manifested by the natural world; the universe as a whole resembled human beings; there was a hierarchy among…

March 22, 2006

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