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Writing

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

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Art

The Second Word V: On Images and Art, Part 3

The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

Patriarchal Dominion

The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…

by James B. JordanAugust 4, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

The Case Against Western Civilization, Part 6

Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…

by James B. JordanAugust 4, 1998
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Biblical Studies

Re-creation in the Ascension Offering

The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998
Biblical Horizons

The Framework Hypothesis: A Gnostic Heresy

Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998
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Art

The Second Word V: On Images and Art, Part 2

The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998

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Philosophy

Caputo’s oversignt

A friend, Bret Saunders, writes the following in response to my post summarizing Caputo’s account of the “postmodern turns”: “Caputo appears to have omitted the so-called ‘theological turn,’ such as is found in J.-L. Marion and J.-F. Courtine. Of course, this is because Caputo continues to deny that Marion’s work…

September 17, 2007

Cool or good

Pountain and Robins comment that Cool “is in the process of becoming the dominant type of relation between people in Western societies, a new secular virtue. No-one wants to be good any more, they want to be Cool.”

September 17, 2007
History

Regency Cool

In their book Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude , Dick Pountain and David Robins define Cool as “an oppositional attitude adopted by individuals or small groups to express defiance to authority - whether that of the parent, the teacher, the police, the boss or the prison warden.” More pithily,…

September 17, 2007
Theology

Federal Vision Discussion

Over at the De Regno Christi web site (http://deregnochristi.org), we’re starting a discussion of the Federal Vision today. Participants include Doug Wilson, Richard Lints, John Muether, Daryl Hart, and me.

September 17, 2007

Sermon notes

INTRODUCTION According to many translations, Jesus instructs His disciples, “do not resist him who is evil” (Matthew 5:39, NASB). This is mistaken. What Jesus says is “do not resist by evil means.” Jesus resisted evil, but He resisted evil by doing good. He calls us to the same kind of…

September 17, 2007
History

It

Reviewing Joseph Roach’s It in the TLS (September 7), Michael Caines cleverly sums Roach’s history with: “Now it is celebrities who have two bodies: the body natural and the body cinematic.” At the same time, he faults Roach for giving “relatively little attention to the techniques by which performers and…

September 16, 2007

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