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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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Raunch Culture

Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture . New York: Free Press, 2005. 224 pp. “Raunch Culture” involves the mainstreaming of pornography and strip clubs, Howard Stern interviewing topless women, college girls flashing for the camera on Girls Gone Wild videos, skanky fashions marketed to…

April 24, 2006

Eucharistic Meditation, Second Sunday of Easter

2 Kings 16:7: Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, I am your servant and your son. As we’ve seen in the sermon this morning, the changes Ahaz makes to the temple are intended to ingratiate himself to Tiglath-pileser and reflect Ahaz’s chastened sense of his own position…

April 23, 2006
Theology

Exhortation, Second Sunday of Easter

Easter is about faith, because Easter is about light. Jesus came as Light from the Father of lights into a world darkened by sin and death, and His light shone especially at the resurrection. At His resurrection, His “appearance was like lightning, and His garment as white as snow” (Matt.…

April 23, 2006

No King But Caesar

Thanks to Toby Sumpter, Peter Roise, and Joshua Appel for the discussion that led to these observations. How should we take the phrase “because of the king of Assyria” in v. 18? It has sometimes been taken to mean that Tiglath-Pileser forced liturgical changes on Ahaz, but recent studies of…

April 22, 2006

Fellowship and cleansing

1 John 1:7 says “if we walk in the light as He is Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” We expect the sequence: If we walk in light, the blood of Jesus cleanses…

April 22, 2006

“The King”

2 Kings 16:12 describes Ahaz’s consecration of the altar built from the prototype in Damascus. Three times in that verse he is called “the king,” and in this designation, the author of Kings picks up the technique employed in 1 Kings 13 to describe Jeroboam’s consecration of the altar at…

April 20, 2006

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