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

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Biblical Studies

Is Abraham’s Life a Type?

The preceding essay has caused me to consider the possibility that the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis contains a typological prophecy of the history of Israel; that is, that the events in Abraham’s life broadly anticipate events in Israel’s history. This kind of pattern is seen in the…

by James B. JordanMay 5, 2001
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Hermeneutics

Thirty-Eight Years by the Sheep Pool

by: Jeff Meyers and James Jordan In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we read of a man who had been ill for 38 years and who was lying by a pool located by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. This sheep waited, as did many other infirm people, for an…

by Jeff MeyersDecember 5, 2000
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Biblical Horizons

How Are Women Saved?

What had been reduced to ruin by this sex, would by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. —Tertullian What is Paul saying about women and salvation…

by Jeff MeyersOctober 5, 2000
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Jeremiah

The Return of Hamor

Back in Biblical Horizons 132 I discussed the horrible abuse of the converted men of Salem/Shechem in Genesis 34. These Hivites had joined the covenant by circumcision and then were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. That, however, is not the end of their story. In Joshua 9 we find the…

by James B. JordanOctober 4, 2000
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Biblical Horizons

Abram’s 318 Men

Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 2000
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Hermeneutics

153 Large Fish

Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 2000

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Trinitarian love

Toward the end of Love’s Work , Rose offers a quasi-Augustinian account of love: ” L’amour se revele en retirer . If the Lover retires too far, the light of love is extinguished and the Beloved dies; if the Lover approaches too near the Beloved, she is effaced by the…

May 12, 2009
Philosophy

Violence deeper than violence

Of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas, Gillian Rose wrote, “The separation in their work of the lesson of love or perficient commandment from the actualities of law or coercion suffuses their ethics with an originary violence that has been borrowed from the political modernity which they refuse to historicize.” That opens…

May 12, 2009

Analogy of being

David Hart ( In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments ) explains the analogy of being by pointing to the difference between God (whose essence is existence) and us (whose essence in no way implies existence, and who do not even possess our essence, since we become “by losing what we…

May 11, 2009
History

Against the Priests

Jesus castigates corrupt priests and scribes for oppressing the people of God. So does Luther. So do the leaders of the Enlightenment. Shouldn’t we at least give the last of these credit for getting something fundamentally right?

May 11, 2009
Media

Constantinian media

Miami priest Alberto Cutie is found in an illicit sexual relationship. A few days later he’s on CBS “Early Show” confessing and explaining what happened. Did his bishop approve the media appearance? “Constantinianism” is, in Yoder’s terms, the church’s peace with the world; as RR Reno has explained Hauerwas, the…

May 11, 2009

Doing what I do not wish

Romans 7 is about the law, and the effects that the law has on someone (Paul) who is living in the flesh. When the law comes, it divided Paul into two, like a sacrifice, killing him and leaving him desperate for new life, which he found in Christ and His…

May 11, 2009

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