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

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Hermeneutics

Hermeneutical Polytheism

A couple of decades ago, when I was a young Reconstructionist (instead of a middle-aged post-Reconstructionist), I coined the phrase "political polytheism" to describe how modern evangelical Christians approach matters of social law and politics. Christians want the Bible for Church and family life, but turn to other gods for…

by James B. JordanJanuary 28, 1996
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Biblical Horizons

Concerning Contracts and Covenants

Gary North has from time to time taken note of some of the differences between contracts and covenants. For him, one of the most important is the oath-character of a covenant. Naturally, the English terms "contract" and "covenant" can be used with varying nuances by different writers, and their zone…

by James B. JordanJanuary 5, 1996
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Biblical Studies

Rethinking the Order of the Old Testament

The Book of Chronicles is the last book in the Hebrew Canon of the Old Testament. The word "canon" means "authoritative list" when used in connection with the Bible. What we call the Hebrew Canon consists of 24 books arranged in three major divisions: the Law, the Prophets, and the…

by James B. JordanDecember 28, 1995
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Biblical Studies

At The Center of the Book of Kings

by: Peter Leithart and James Jordan The Book of Kings is structured chiastically, or concentrically. To see this clearly, we start in the middle and work our way outward. 2 Kings 3–7 record the central events of the ministry of Elisha. Elisha makes his first appearance in 1 Kings 19:19-21,…

by Peter LeithartNovember 5, 1995
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Judges

Dynastic Aspirations in the Book of Judges

(The following is a supplement to my book, God’s War Against Humanism , a study of the book of Judges, available from Biblical Horizons for $20.00 – a photocopy of the original book, which is now out of print). The turning point in the book of Judges is 8:22-28. Here…

by James B. JordanNovember 5, 1995
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Biblical Horizons

Doing the Lord’s Supper

From time to time I am asked how I think the Lord’s Supper should be done. This essay is my response to that question. To start with, we should agree that the Lord’s Supper is the only ritual we are obligated to do in the New Covenant on a routine…

by James B. JordanNovember 5, 1995

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Proverbs 11:1-8

INTRODUCTION This section of Proverbs 11 highlights several issues. The first two verses treat issues of honesty and dishonesty; verses 3-8 describe the security of the righteous. Verses 9-14 return to various concerns regarding the use of the tongue, which was a theme of the previous chapter. HONESTY AND HUMILITY…

November 4, 2005

Race in the South

James C. Cobb cites revealing statistics concerning the self-identification of blacks in the South: “In 1964, only 55 percent of southern black respondents expressed ‘warm’ feelings toward southerners, as opposed to nearly 90 percent of the southern white polled. By 1976, however, the proportion of southern blacks who expressed this…

November 4, 2005
History

Dynamo and virgin

Modernism, critic Richard Lehan writes, was built on the conception that the world was caught in a conflict between organicism and mechanism, between the feminine and masculine, or, as Henry Adams put it, between the dynamo and the virgin. Modernist writers can be classified by their responses to this division:…

November 3, 2005

Shared Nakedness

Leviticus 18 describes sexual sin as occasions of exposure, as “uncovering nakedness.” At times, the nakedness is not only an individual’s, but is shared. The reason given for the prohibition of maternal incest in Lev 18:8 is that the mother’s nakedness is the “father’s nakedness.” This makes sense: In the…

November 3, 2005
Biblical Studies

Scripture and Tradition

Patrick Henry Reardon writes concerning the use of “tradition” in the NT (2 Thes 2:15 especially): “In this respect it is important, I believe, not to interject into Paul’s formula a later controversy between the Protestants and the Council of Trent. We observe that Paul does not distinguish between ‘Scripture…

November 3, 2005

Gunton on Genesis 1

In his Triune Creator, Colin Gunton offers this “argument” against reading Gen 1 as an account of six literal days of divine activity: “the sophistication and complexity of the writings make it clear that the authors, and that includes those who wrote the books in their canonical form, exclude -…

November 2, 2005

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