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Writing

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

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Biblical Studies

Gold, Silver, & Precious Stones

[This essay was originally published in 1988. Given the situation that our new national socialists are getting the world into, I thought it might be useful to reprint it here. – JBJordan] The Bible has quite a bit to say about gold, silver, and precious stones, and the Bible always…

by James B. JordanMay 19, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

The Pastoral Function

I wrote this elsewhere and was encouraged to put it here. It is a comment on what a pastor is. Today, this is not very well understood, and God’s people suffer because of it. There are four professions: medicine, education, law, and religion. Each of these, when done at a…

by James B. JordanMay 17, 2009
Biblical Horizons

The Virgin Tomb: The Womb of the New Birth

James Jordan recently pointed out in private conversation how appropriate it is, in John’s Gospel, that Nicodemus is present both to ask Jesus about being born again, and to see Jesus re-enter the womb of the mother. Nicodemus rhetorically asks, “How can a man be born when he is old?…

by Mark HorneMay 8, 2009
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Romans

Romans 7

This is a problematic and much discussed passage. I’ve been discussing it in another forum, and have decided to move it here and present some very preliminary observations about it. One large question is this: Who is the speaker here and what is his situation? Traditionally, the speaker is seen…

by James B. JordanApril 19, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

Good New Sci-Fi

1. The current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction includes a good fantasy novella by John C. Wright, who since his conversion has been writing Christianly. This is a fine fantasy with nods to C. S. Lewis and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and probably Gene Wolfe as well.…

by James B. JordanApril 15, 2009
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American Culture

The Name of Jesus

“It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it cost to speak this name is perhaps connected to some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent within it. Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is…

by Richard BledsoeMarch 20, 2009

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Theology

Feuerbach’s inversion

What theologians was Feuerbach reading? If God is to be transcendent, he said, “the human, considered as such, is depreciated . . . . To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all in all, man must be nothing.” He certainly wasn’t reading Paul, or if he…

October 9, 2006
Philosophy

Cognitive Metaphor

Steven Pinker (TNR, October 9) has a field day demolishing George Lakoff’s recent Whose Freedom? Lakoff attacks conservatives’ use of freedom to justify their political agenda and argues that liberals can regain political power by reframing political debate using new metaphors. Along the way, Pinker also scores some points against…

October 9, 2006
Theology

Papal evangelism

After noting the political import of the Pope’s recent speech (eg, its implicit warning against including Turks in the European Union - in which context the citation of Manuel II Paleologus, who spent his life fighting Turks, was particularly apt), David Nirenberg (TNR, October 9) concludes that Benedict XIV’s speech…

October 9, 2006
Philosophy

Nothing outside the text?

John Frame distinguishes between facts as states of affairs and facts as statements concerning those states of affairs: “It would not be true to say that facts in the sense of states of affairs are identical with our interpretations of them, but facts in the sense of statements of fact…

October 9, 2006

Sermon Outline

With lots of help from Gary Burge’s NIV Application Commentary . . . . INTRODUCTION The world around us seems to solid and permanent. We can hardly imagine what life would be like without well-stocked grocery shelves, autumn elections, air travel, electricity, running water, and all the amenities of modern…

October 9, 2006

Eucharistic meditation

1 John 2:5: Whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. As we saw in the…

October 8, 2006

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