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

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Abortion

PROLIFISM: A New Humanism

There is nothing good Satan cannot pervert, and that fact extends to the Christian public witness against abortion just as it applies to everything else. As a Christian who has written, marched, and picketed against legalized abortion since 1970, I have been saddened to see the development of the anti-Christ…

by James B. JordanApril 6, 1994
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Biblical Chronology

The Chronology of the Pentateuch (Part 2)

(We are discussing the meaning of the phrase "cutting off of days" in Genesis 4:3, showing that it implies the turn of the year in autumn.) Two passages use the term "cutting off of years" to refer to the lunar year, beginning in the Spring. Exodus 12:41 – at the…

by James B. JordanApril 6, 1994
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Haggai

The Wealth of Nations

In the second year of Darius, near the end of the feast of booths, the prophet Haggai encouraged the Jews of the restoration to continue their work on the temple by assuring them that “the latter glory of this house will be greater than then former” (Hag. 2:9). To this…

by Peter LeithartApril 6, 1994
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Biblical Horizons

A Theology of Ritual: Mapping the Territory

G. K. Chesterton began Orthodoxy by describing the plot of a book that he had never written. Taking a page from Chesterton, below I will briefly map out the territory of a book (or books) that need(s) to be written. Had I but world enough and time–and a small army…

by Peter LeithartApril 5, 1994
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Deuteronomy

Israel and Other Gods

As long as Moses lived, Israel seldom worshipped other gods directly. She broke the First Word by breaking the Second, worshipping God through the calf. As we shall see, God always treats such Liturgical Idolatry as Covenantal Idolatry, but it is far more serious because it is committed by those…

by James B. JordanApril 5, 1994
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Biblical Studies

The Holy City Revisited

In response to my article, " The Holy City " (in Biblical Horizons 55) James B. Jordan has made several suggestions about how I might expand on the ideas presented there. Several other readers have also contributed their insights. Below, I trace a few sketchy lines of thought. 1. The…

by Peter LeithartMarch 23, 1994

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Christianity and the Sexual Abuse of Children

I n Destroyer of the Gods , Larry Hurtado reminds us that “in the Roman era the sexual use of children, including young adolescents and also younger children, was widely tolerated and even celebrated lyrically by some pagan writers of the day, such as Juvenal, Petronius, Horace, Strato, Lucian, and…

July 7, 2017

Dechristianization

“O riginally and properly,” writes John McManners ( Death and the Enlightenment ), the term “dechristianization” refers “to the anti-religious manifestations of the French Revolution,” which were “neither homogenous in character nor unambiguous in meaning.” Dechristianization refers in part to administrative, institutional changes: “The transfer to the secular authorities of…

July 7, 2017

Perfect Fear

M ichael Oakeshott ( Hobbes on Civil Association , 38-39) states Hobbes's solution to the dilemma of human violence in evangelical terms. Human existence is plagued by the fear of death, and for Hobbes the only salvation lies in greater fear. The saviour is not a visitor from another world,…

July 7, 2017

Democide

“D uring the first eighty-eight years of [the 20th] century,” writes R. J. Rummel ( Death by Government ) “almost 170 million men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other…

July 7, 2017

Microtime

J imena Canales has written a history of A Tenth of a Second . It seems an arbitrary cut-off. Why not 1/100 or 1/1000? After all, we've been able to measure in finer units than 1/10 of a second: “In 1878 Eadweard Muybridge famously photographed running horses galloping in a…

July 7, 2017

Reform of Humanism

W hen the Reformation and humanism are discussed together, the question is typically how the latter helped produce the former. Erika Rummel ( The Confessionalization of Humanism in Reformation Germany ) turns the question around: How did the Reformation change humanism? One effect was in education: Protestant school orders, drawn…

July 7, 2017

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