Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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Aesthetic consciousness - the capacity to abstract the aesthetic component in all perception, so as to view everything “aesthetically” - also implies, Gadamer argues, a particular notion of simultaneity. Because it abstracts the aesthetic value of the work, and downplays or ignores all other aspects of an aesthetic object, the…
After Kant, and especially after Kant’s romantic disciples, art came to be viewed as a matter of beautiful appearance, consciously defined in contrast to practical reality. This had not always been the Western conception of art. Gadamer comments, “Traditionally the purpose of ‘art,’ which also includes all conscious transformation of…
In 1439, representatives of Eastern and Western churches met in Florence to heal the schism of 1054. An agreement was reached, but it remained a paper agreement only. But the event had enormous consequences for the future of the Western world. Because of the good will this ecumenical meeting produced,…
Still on Rosenstock-Huessy: “How could we enjoy a restful sleep without social peace? The Gestapo in many countries changes man back to the deer whose sleep is perfunctory and scanty.” No political theory, or sociology, can be complete if it does not “include those who must wake when we are…
Rosenstock-Huessy cites Josiah Royce’s The Philosophy of Loyalty as an example of a reductive view of human life. Royce rightly emphasizes the importance of loyalty, but then “could not resist the temptation to explain everything in terms of this one power which essentially binds us to the past.” But the…
Rosenstock-Huessy again: He writes that Christian conversion always involves a break with an old way of life, a breach with old loyalties and commitments, and a “verification” of that experience by an induction into a new people, “formerly overlooked or even despised, who now enable us to strengthen experience into…
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