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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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Noah’s nakedness

John Bergsma and Scott Hahn offer a compelling defense of a “maternal incest” view of the story of Noah’s nakedness in Genesis 9 (JBL 124:1). They reject a “voyeurist” interpretation of the story. They find more to recommend a “paternal incest” view of the story, pointing to the parallels between…

May 28, 2005
Economics

Economics of abundance?

George Gilder suggests in Telecosm that economists study scarcity rather than abundance because the former is measurable, and the latter approaches infinity (and hence zero price): “The economists’ focus on scarcity stems from the fact that shortages are measurable and end at zero. They constrain an economic model to produce…

May 27, 2005
Science

Darwin and evil

In his 2001 book, Darwin’s God , Cornelius Hunter argues that the theory of evolution was less a solution to a scientific problem than a solution to a moral, theological, and religious problem: the problem of evil. How could one rationally hold to the existence of a good God in…

May 27, 2005

Not One and Many

Is the Trinity a solution to the “problem of the one and many”? I think not. It is less a solution than a subversion of the problem itself. In Trinitarian theology, “one” no longer means what “one” means in the traditional problem of the one and many. If it does…

May 27, 2005

Dynamic theism

Rhetorically, many of the recent attacks on “classical theism” gain a foothold by characterizing classical theism as presenting a Hellenistic, static, and immobile God very much at odds with the dynamic, very Live God of Scripture. It is time to challenge this rhetorical move, and reverse this charge. Those who…

May 27, 2005
History

Decline of war

Gregg Easterbrook, a regular source of counter-intuitive insight, summarizes recent studies that show a decade-long decline in war around the world (TNR, May 30): “Five years ago, two academics - Monty Marshall, research director at the Center for Global Policy at George Mason University, and Ted Robert Gurr, a professor…

May 25, 2005

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