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Biblical Studies

Thinking About Church History

This essay takes up from the essay " Thousands of Generations. " In that essay we saw that God has promised to show His faithfulness to thousands of generations of those who love Him. If God is going to do this, then human history will have to last for thousands…

by James B. JordanJune 9, 1994
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Biblical Chronology

The Chronology of the Pentateuch (Part 4)

11. The Life of Abraham 2006 – Noah dies (Gen. 9:29). 2008 – Abram is born of Terah in Ur (Gen. 11:26-32; 12:4; Acts 7:4). 2026 – Reu ben Peleg dies (Gen. 11:20-21). 2042? – Abram and Terah move to Haran (Gen. 11:31-32). 2049 – Serug ben Reu dies (Gen.…

by James B. JordanJune 9, 1994
Authority

The Second Word I: Seeing & Hearing

While this is dated June/July, this essay is actually being finalized and prepared for shipment in November. What this reflects more than anything else is my personal reluctance to take up this topic. The reason is that a number of friends and acquaintances have over the years, some rather recently,…

by James B. JordanJune 5, 1994
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Art

The Enoch Factor

After Cain murdered Abel and was driven out of the land of Eden, we read that he had a son whom he named Enoch, and that he founded a city that he also named Enoch (Genesis 4:17). The city, we are told, was named for his son. This was the…

by James B. JordanMay 25, 1994
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Art

The Importance of the Woman

Now we notice that God said that it was not good for the man to be alone in this task. God determined to make a helper suited to the man (Genesis 2:18). In context, the woman is to help the priest guard and beautify the sanctuary, home, and workplace. Two…

by James B. JordanMay 25, 1994
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Art

The Bride as Artist

Genesis 2:15 says that the first man was commissioned by God to dress and to keep the garden. The garden was located within the land of Eden, which was one among many lands on the earth according to Genesis 2:8-14. The garden was the place where God would meet with…

by James B. JordanMay 25, 1994

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Shepherds among the sheep

Jesus observes that Israel wanders like sheep without a shepherd, so He sends the Twelve to be shepherds to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In the next breath, He says that the Twelve go out as “sheep in the midst of wolves.” So which are they? Sheep…

February 23, 2008

Wise as Lizards

“Be wise as serpents,” Jesus says. The first wise serpent in the Bible is a deceiver. Is Jesus encouraging His disciples to use deception to protect themselves? In part, the answer is a tentative Yes. Paul escaped the ethnarch Aretas in a basket let down through a window in the…

February 23, 2008

War on Cliche

Martin Amis’s 2001 collection of criticism was entitled The War Against Cliche . Now he comes out with The Second Plane: September 11: 2001-2007 . According to Marjorie Perloff (in the TLS), it’s mostly cliche. There are religious cliches. Though the age of ideology in the last century was bad,…

February 22, 2008
Politics

McCain and the Right

Clever move by the McCain campaign: A scandalous piece in the NYT becomes an opportunity to rally the right to McCain’s side. The piece and the campaign’s well-organized and long-anticipated response puts the anti-McCain right into a bind: If they jump in against McCain, they’re in bed with Media Enemy…

February 22, 2008

Logic of love

Rahner says, “if the ordination [toward the supernatural] cannot be detached from nature, the fulfillment of the ordination from God’s point of view is exacted.” Reno explains, “this obligatory or necessary fulfillment violates the logic of love. There can be no ‘must’ of this sort in the relationship of self-giving.”…

February 22, 2008

Unexacted favor

This is fuzzy, but let me try to write toward clarity. The great problem for the nouvelle theologie , Rahner, and neo-scholasticism was to preserve the gratuity of grace. If man is created with an inbuilt orientation toward a supernatural fulfillment, then God cannot deny the supernatural fulfillment “without offending…

February 22, 2008

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