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Biblical Horizons

The Great Awakening: A Critique

The following material was published in 1984 in Christianity and Civilization No. 4: The Reconstruction of the Church, pages 6-9, and are reprinted here as grist for the mill of the discussion of “evangelicalism.” Footnotes have not come through, of course. Though this material is offered in connection with a…

by James B. JordanJune 19, 2012
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Biblical Horizons

Concerning Regeneration

I wrote my beef about “regeneration” a decade ago, and I don’t really see the need to reopen what I think now. (Jordan, Thoughts on Sovereign Grace and Regeneration: Some Tentative Explorations. Biblical Horizons Occasional Paper No. 32) But. My pal Doug Wilson has been writing a series of essays…

by James B. JordanJune 19, 2012
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John

Born From Above: Some Notes on John 3

Nicodemus’s conversation with Jesus in John 3:1-15 is sometimes regarded as an illustration of the tremendous stupidity of the Jews of our Lord’s day. Nicodemus is treated as just some guy who comes to Jesus at night because he doesn’t want to get into trouble by being seen with Him.…

by James B. JordanJune 18, 2012
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Biblical Horizons

Is James B. Jordan an “Evangelical”?

During the last couple of weeks, Douglas Wilson has issued several posts over on his Blog and Mablog blog that deal with “evangelicalism” and who is and who is not an “evangelical.” In the course of these postings, Doug has written that while I am a fine Christian who has…

by James B. JordanJune 18, 2012
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Biblical Horizons

Three Issues in Regard to Eastern Orthodoxy

Here are three issues in regard to the Eastern Church. First, here is the quote from Bavinck’s The Doctrine of God, page 317, Banner of Truth edition (1977) under the heading of Inter-Personal Relations. The Greeks derived the unity of God’s essence and the unity of the persons not from…

by Richard BledsoeJune 14, 2012
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Biblical Horizons

Clerical Garb

Elsewhere on the blogosphere men are mocking the wearing of collars and albs to lead in worship. When it is pointed out that historically Reformed ministers have worn daily uniforms and robes in worship, it is replied that that was then and this is now. We ought to conform to…

by James B. JordanJune 9, 2012

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Creation under construction

Section 1.18 Cur Deus Homo contains a strange, very medieval digression on the question of whether the number of elect human beings is equal to, less, or greater than the number of fallen angels, and whether God created humans to make up the number of fallen angels. Through a series…

February 8, 2013

Creation’s final praise

Anselm ( Cur Deus Homo , 1.18) offers this lovely description of the consummation of all things. Creation consists on the one hand of the blessed city that is being built and brought to consummation. Physical creation is also destined to be renewed into something better ( in melius renovandam…

February 8, 2013

Aesthetic Theory of Atonement again

God’s honor cannot be diminished or increased in itself, but when human beings refuse to honor and obey Him, Anselm says ( Cur Deus Homo , 1.15), they dishonor God in relation to themselves. In so far as they are able, the disobedient disturb the “order and beauty of the…

February 8, 2013

Paul under the skin

Jacob Taubes - part historian, part philosopher, mostly stand-up comedian - gives this hilarious anecdote to illustrate how Paul conquered the European imagination ( The Political Theology of Paul (Cultural Memory in the Present) , 41): “I have a very good friend - now he’s a bishop in Stockholm, he…

February 7, 2013

Aesthetic Theory of Atonement

At the outset of Cur Deus Homo? Anselm cannot pull himself away from the beauty of the atonement. To say God humbled himself is not unsuitable ( convenire ) and makes no injury to God. It is perfectly appropriate, as evident from the symmetry of fall and redemption: Death enters…

February 7, 2013

Murderous Literalism?

For a sophisticated theologian, Conor Cunningham’s arguments ( Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong ) against a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 are remarkably thin. He follows what he describes as a “sophisticated” patristic hermeneutics, and adds “After all, if the first two chapters…

February 7, 2013

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