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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Finally getting around to Jorge Gracia’s Theory of Textuality . It’s got a lot of strengths. Gracia recognizes the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of textual meaning, and sensibly tests theories by their ability to explain our actual experience of texts. Postmodern diffusion can’t explain the fact of daily…
Considering the plural pronoun at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, Chrysostom says that it announces a moral and social revolution: “by this He at once takes away hatred, and quells pride, and casts out envy, and brings in the mother of all good things, even charity, and exterminates the…
Athenagoras condemns worship of the creation using a musical analogy ( A Plea for Christians ): “If therefore the world is an instrument in tune, and moving in well-measured time, I adore the Being who gave its harmony, and strikes its notes, and sings the accordant strain, and not the…
Gregory of Nyssa explains in On the Making of Man that the human body is like a musical instrument, designed for reason. This is itself a striking image, but Nyssa expounds on the analogy by looking at the specific contours of the human body. The passage reminds me of Leon…
Clement of Alexandria begins his Exhortation to the Heathen by reviewing various myths about music, and then introduces the gospel as God’s new song. By the time he’s done, he’s told the history of the world musically: “Behold the might of the new song! It has made men out of…
In his study of children’s literature ( Stars, Tigers, and the Shape of Words ), JH Prynne mounts a critique of Saussure designed to show that “the methodology of practical literary criticism habitually contradicts Saussure’s theory of language by assuming that acoustic or graphic properties of the sign do contribute…
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