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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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Yahweh the Teacher

Genesis 1 presents a macro-creation, Genesis 2 a micro-creation. The latter follows the former, for humanity is micro-cosmic. The Spirit hovers over waters, and water arises to water the ground. God speaks light into existence, and by the same breath He makes Adam a living soul. Day 1. Yahweh forms…

April 8, 2015
Liturgy

Omnivorous Liturgy

We stand, we kneel, we sit, we stand, we kneel. The postures of liturgy write “upon the bodies of those who perform it frequently a habit of acting as an unworthy recipient of a prevenient gift” (Paul Griffiths, Decreation , 232). By developing the habits that the liturgy impresses on…

April 7, 2015

The Primacy of Pattern

“When we do science,” writes William Dembski in his Being As Communion (85), “we don't encounter matter in its raw state nor do we encounter sensory experiences in their raw state. Rather, we encounter certain patterns to the exclusion of others. In other words, we encounter information. The material and…

April 7, 2015

World-Making Word

The Creator God is a speaker, who speaks to form the formless, dark, and empty void into the structured and glorious cosmos. As images of the world-making God who speaks, we also make worlds with words. Genesis 1 provides a paradigm, an allegory of world-making words. In the darkness, words…

April 7, 2015

When Stars Fall

NT Wright has insisted over the years that the apocalyptic language of the gospels (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) doesn't refer to the end of the space-time universe but to the end of a socio-political order. Edward Adams dissents in his 2007 The Stars Will Fall From Heaven .…

April 6, 2015

More Than Anxiety

Laura Pelaschiar's forthcoming Joyce/Shakespeare collects essays that explore the various facts of Joyce's use, misuse, criticism, and combat with Shakespeare. She observes that “Shakespeare’s existence in Joyce is tentacular and functions on many different levels: cultural, structural, political, thematic, contrapuntal, imitational, quotational/misquotational, stylistic, lexical, psychological, or psycholiterary.” Joyce's reception of…

April 6, 2015

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