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Writing

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

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Masculinity

Ringing the Brothel Door

Bruce Marshall once wrote that every young man who rings the bell at a brothel is unconsciously looking for God. While it is not necessarily true that the inward desire of every man is ultimately a thirst for righteousness, it is true that every sin is the disordering of a…

by Garrett SoucyOctober 31, 2023
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Ruth

Work and Gratitude in Ruth

In a previous essay , I argued that the story which begins with Lot and culminates in Ruth’s great-grandson David follows God’s five-fold pattern of creative work as laid out by Jim Jordan: taking something in hand (in this case, the Abrahamic family), restructuring it, distributing the product of labor,…

by Josh JensenOctober 27, 2023
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Books

Men, Marriage, and the Feminine Imperative: A Review of "Men and Marriage"

Gilder, George. Men and Marriage. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2023. 1 By 1973, the hightide of second-wave feminism had flooded the beaches of American culture. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique eroded the shores of traditional female roles by naming and stirring up further domestic discontentment. Kate Millet wrote her dissertation-turned-book,…

by Bill SmithOctober 17, 2023
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Galatians

Get Behind Me, Eliphaz!

The Book of Job is a very tortuous book. The arguments of Job and his friends are shot through with truth and error hopelessly mixed together. Every line of contentious poetry stands locked in deadly battle with every other line. As maddening as this can be for a reader who…

by Jonathan WhiteOctober 10, 2023
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Apostle Paul

Before His Conversion, Paul Knew Jesus

More than once in the last 50 years it has occurred to me that Paul might have known Jesus before He appeared to Paul on the Damascus road, but I had never taken up the notion in earnest until recently when I ran into a book by Stanley Porter titled…

by Ralph Allan SmithOctober 4, 2023
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Acts

Did Peter Found the Church in Rome?

The question in the title is genuine, not polemic. I could be perfectly happy to follow an ancient — and what is regarded as a well-attested — tradition. But I do not feel compelled to follow it simply because it is tradition. I would like to have arguments that Peter…

by Ralph Allan SmithSeptember 26, 2023

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Sermon Outline, January 23

INTRODUCTION The man of God from Judah and the old prophet both prophesied against Jeroboam?s idolatries. In this passage, a third prophet, Ahijah of Shiloh, prophesies the end of Jeroboam?s house. When Jeroboam?s son dies, Jeroboam and his house have no future. THE TEXT ?At that time Abijah the son…

January 17, 2005

Eucharistic Meditation, January 16

1 Kings 13:31: ?And it came about after he had buried him, that the old prophet spoke to his sons, saying, ?When I die, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones.?? One of the fascinating things about this…

January 16, 2005

Exhortation, January 16

The writers of Scripture conclude prayers, letters, and praise with ?Amen.?EBut ?Amen?Eis not just an ancient way of saying ?The End?Eor ?We?re finished with that now.?EThe word is from the Hebrew word for ?believe?Eor ?prove faithful,?Eand when used at the end of a prayer or praise, it is an oath…

January 16, 2005

Structural Features of 1 Kings 13

1 Kings 12:25-13:34 hangs together as a single unit. The chapter break is very bad. There is a clear inclusion between 12:25-31:3 and 13:33-34. The oracle of the prophet of Bethel in 13:32 brings up the altar in Bethel and the ?houses of the high places?Ethat were mentioned in 12:31,…

January 14, 2005

Will and Nature

Is the begetting of the Son an act of God’s will or nature. Barth, with the tradition, says that it is not an act of God’s will if will means the freedom to be thus or not to be thus. “God cannot not be God,” and Barth is correct that…

January 14, 2005
History

1421

Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America (New York: William Morrow, 2002), 552 pp. Pursuing his passion for medieval cartography, Gavin Menzies, a veteran of the British Royal Navy, discovered a 1424 Venetian map that showed four strangely named islands. He concluded that two of them ?Eidentified by the…

January 13, 2005

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