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Writing

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

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Art

Toward a Biblical Definition of Obscenity

My copy of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1976: not so new, really) defines obscene as (1) "disgusting to the senses; repulsive" and (2) "abhorrent to morality or virtue; specif: designed to incite lust or depravity." Definitions such as this serve a useful purpose only when there is agreement on what…

by Peter LeithartMay 30, 1991
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Biblical Studies

The Abomination of Desolation, Part 1

An Overview Here begins a series of studies in the Abomination of Desolation, or Desolating Sacrilege. This month and next I shall set out an overview of what I regard as the best interpretation of the phenomenon. Later essays will look at it in more detail. (The original form of…

by James B. JordanMay 22, 1991
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Biblical Studies

Advice From a Sojourner, Part 12

29. There are three things that are stately in their march, Even four that are stately when they walk: 30. The lion is mighty among beasts And does not turn back before any, 31. The strutting cock, The male goat, And a king with his army around him. 32. If…

by James B. JordanMay 22, 1991
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Biblical Studies

The Chronology of Ezra & Nehemiah, Part 4

We have seen that it is likely that the Artaxerxes of Ezra-Nehemiah is the same as Darius the Great. If this solution be correct, and I think it is, possibly there is another problem in Ezra that can be resolved by it. In Ezra 4:6 we are told that "in…

by James B. JordanMay 22, 1991
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Biblical Horizons

The Weight of Being

Czech novelist Milan Kundera, though hardly a household name in the English-speaking world, has achieved a certain notoriety in America in recent years, largely on the strength of the English translation and film version of his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 1 The Unbearable Lightness of Being — the…

by Peter LeithartMay 6, 1991
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Proverbs

Advice From a Sojourner, Part 11

24. Four things are small on the earth, But they are exceedingly wise; 25. The ants are not a strong folk, But they prepare their food in the summer; 26. The coneys are not a mighty folk, Yet they make their houses in the rocks; 27. The locusts have no…

by James B. JordanApril 22, 1991

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Murder and Manuscript

We might not have the Nag Hammadi library if it had not been for a gruesome murder. The collection was found in 1945 by two brothers in Egypt, Muhammed and Kalifah Ali. As Giovanni Filoramo tells it, when the brothers took the jar containing the texts back to their village,…

December 20, 2007
Theology

Guy Waters

One Brian Cosby has a review of Guy Waters’s book on the Federal Vision in the latest issue of the Westminster Journal. After a fair summary of Waters’s book, Cosby levels two charges: First, that Waters “criticizes the various FV proponents’ positions and doctrines appealing to older, unrevised editions that…

December 19, 2007
History

Mr Magoo Abroad

In the October 22 issue of TNR , Walter Russell Mead compares American foreign policy to Mr Magoo, since it seems to “wanter nearsightedly but relatively unscathed past one hazard after another.” The pattern goes back at least to the Jefferson administration, and Mead quickly summarizes Magoo’s foreign policy through…

December 19, 2007
History

Covenant of Peace

Bossy again, from the same essay: He quotes Oberman’s claim that “in the old dispensation the holiness of the Church and its governors was made manifest by their power to transmit to the body of Christians the condition of peace, and conversely that the absence of peace was an indication…

December 19, 2007
History

Priesthood of Plebs

In a 1977 review in Past and Present , John Bossy summarizes an essay by Heiko Oberman about the “closing gap between the sacred and the secular” in late medieval life (Oberman’s description). Bossy says this involved “an abandonment of metaphysical hierarchies in favor of a direct and covenantal partnership…

December 19, 2007
History

The Last Theocrats

In his controversial book, The Stillborn God , Mark Lilla suggests that nineteenth-century German liberalism attempted to raise political theology from the grave to which it had been consigned since Hobbes. Their political theology had little to recommend it. Charlotte Allen sums up in her Weekly Standard review: “The liberal…

December 18, 2007

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