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Writing

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

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Baptism

Analogies to Baptism

Every attempt to understand the Christian sacraments makes use of comparisons or analogies with other rituals, events, or customs. Calvin and those who followed him, for example, spoke of the sacraments as “seals,” and compared them to the “seal of approval” that an official impresses on a document. Thinking about…

by Peter LeithartMay 29, 1998
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Art

The Second Word V: On Images and Art, Part 1

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out in his essay "Hitler and Israel, or On Prayer" (available for $2.00 from Biblical Horizons ) that it is God’s word "No!" that establishes in a culture the distinction between the Creator and the creature. The Bible repeatedly says "No!" to every human attempt to…

by James B. JordanMay 4, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

Gattaca

If you missed Gattaca at the movie theaters, you can probably check it out from your local video store now. And you should. This is one of those relatively rare thought-provoking movies that can stand being watched with brain in gear more than once. It is also poetic, sensitive, visually…

by James B. JordanApril 4, 1998
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American Culture

The Case Against Western Civilization, Part 4

Part 4: The Nephilim Factor Western Civilization partakes of what I call "the Nephilim Factor." The Enoch Factor means that the pagans get there first. This is both a blessing and a danger. As a blessing, it means that they work out techniques of dominion over the lower creation that…

by James B. JordanApril 4, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

A Visionary Liturgy, Part 2

The Worship Service Then the one speaking with me took me by the hair and lifted me into the air in the middle of the great room. And as I watched, I saw people entering the room to the sound of the great bells outside. Then entered from all four…

by James B. JordanMarch 4, 1998
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American Culture

The Case Against Western Civilization, Part 3

Part 3: Philosophy (continued) If we realize that human beings are the images of God, and that man hates God, then we realize that all non-Christian political philosophy is founded on a fundamental hatred of other human beings, a hatred manifest in contempt. Rome, like Enoch, was founded on the…

by James B. JordanFebruary 4, 1998

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Eucharistic meditation, Third Advent

Micah 3: Hear now, O heads of Jacob, and you rulers of the house of Israel: Is it not for you to know justice? You who hate good and love evil; who strip the skin from My people, and the flesh from their bones; who also eat the flesh of…

December 16, 2007

Exhortation, Third Advent

Doctrine matters, and no doctrine matters more than the doctrines concerning Jesus Christ. One of the earliest and most intense controversies in the early church had to do with Arianism. Arius taught that the Son of God was not equal to the Father, not eternal God, but only a very…

December 16, 2007
Music

Wedding sermon

I am reading a portion of the text from 2 Corinthians 4. We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but…

December 16, 2007
History

Hunger and power

In imitation of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” the Cambodian tyrant Pol Pot attempted to rationalize the inefficiencies of Cambodian agriculture. In an essay in the Black Book of Communism , Jean-Louis Margolin writes: “It was perhaps the sons of the soil who controlled operations on the ground, but their real…

December 15, 2007
Music

Savant

In his wonderful Musicophilia , Oliver Sacks describes a patient named Martin, who suffered meningitis at the age of three and was never mentally normal afterwards. He spent hours listening to operas and by the time Sacks met him in 1984, he claimed to have more than 2000 operates memorized,…

December 14, 2007
Music

Concert gnostics

In many cultures, music and dance go naturally together. Music moves the body, and so bodies move to the music. Not ours, or at least not in “high culture.” Patrick Shove writes, “Many twentieth-century composers focus on sound qualities or abstract tonal patterns, and performers of their compositions often neglect…

December 14, 2007

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