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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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Shiloh Redux

In his temple sermon, Jeremiah warns the people of Jerusalem that Solomon's temple is going to share the same fate at Shiloh (Jeremiah 7:1-15). Shiloh is where the Mosaic tabernacle was pitched when Israel entered the land. It remained there until the Philistines destroyed it and captured the ark (1…

January 26, 2018

Pity the Avant-Garde

Chris Kraus reviews Richard Cabut and Andrew Gallix’s Punk is Dead in the TLS . It was a short-lived movement, with a golden age of "between four and eighteen months," and was over by 1978. That obsolescence was built-in, as philosopher Simon Critchley says in an interview in the book:…

January 26, 2018

Music and the Mind

Musicologist and philosopher Jenny Judge thinks that the mind is more than a machine . Music provides the evidence. According to some philosophers, "if you can’t consciously represent the finer details of a guitar solo, the way is surely barred to having any grasp of its nuances. Claiming that you…

January 26, 2018

Benjamin in the Book of Chronicles

Benjamin Giffone's "Sit At My Right Hand" is a study of the tribe of Benjamin in the book of Chronicles and "in the social context of Yehud" (as the subtitle indicates). After sections examining the Chronicler's setting in the Persian era and the role of Benjamin in the "Deuteronomistic History,"…

January 26, 2018

Bible and Tradition

Few people have had a front-row seat to the various controversies that have rocked the Reformed world since the 1970s. John Frame is one of those few. Irenic and gentle as he is, he has been a target of attack and a spark of controversy throughout his long career of…

January 26, 2018

Failure of Patience

Toward the end of his "Short Treatise on the Lord's Supper" (sections 57-60), Calvin summarizes the history of Protestant disputes concerning the Supper. He focuses attention on the debate between Luther and Zwingli that culminated at Marburg (1529), and points to the failures on both sides that led to the…

January 25, 2018

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