Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
[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…
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…
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?…
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…
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.…
“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…
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What was Noah’s ark? A boat? Not really. As Morales points out ( The Tabernacle Prefigured , 157), the word used for ark ( tabah ) isn’t a normal term for a sailing vessel. Some have suggested the word derives from Egyptian words meaning coffer, chest or palace, house. The…
Derrida parodies Kant’s “On a Newly Arisen Superior Tone in Philosophy” with his late essay, “On a Newly Arisen Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy’ (published, with Kant’s essay, in Raising the Tone of Philosophy . Kant’s essay criticizes the mystagogues who have taken over philosophy, those who appeal to some sort…
Kant claims that philosophy got off to a bad start when the word itself stopped being used in a strict sense to name a wissenschaflichen Lebensweisheit and is transferred to speculation and mysticism. As Derrida summarizes the point ( Raising the Tone of Philosophy ), “no harm would have happened,…
Kant likes Plato the academic. He doesn’t like Plato the letter-writer, teacher, and sender of messages. The latter is, through no fault of his own, too much the Schwarmer for Kant’s tastes. The dividing line between the good and bad Plato - or, more accurately, between Plato and Kant -…
When the glory of Yahweh appears to Ezekiel by the Chebar river, it appears as a teeming cloud of cherubim surrounding a throne on which a molten figure is seated (Ezekiel 1:22-28). The glory is a model of the cosmos; or, better, the cosmos is modeled on the glory. The…
From the beginning of the Bible, sanctuaries and buildings and other enclosed places are conceived of as feminine. Eve is “built” ( banah ) from the rib of Adam; the first “architecture” in the world is the woman. Throughout the Torah, we find analogies between sanctuary and bed. Yahweh dwells…
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