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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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Touch of God

An extract from a remarkable sermon given by Rev. Dr. Rufus Okikiola Ositelu, Primate of the Church of the Lord (Aladura) at the 1999 Tabieorar festival in Nigeria: Some of you may be asking the following questions: What can the touch of God do in your lives? How can you…

May 28, 2015

Seven

Jeff Cook's Seven matches Jesus' beatitudes with the seven deadly sins. The beatitudes, he says, “are a picture of the voids created by sin being filled in with the life of heaven.” They provide “eight pictures of resurrection” (26). So, being poor in Spirit is set against pride, envy against…

May 27, 2015

Deceptive God?

Like many young earth creationists, Kurt Wise ( Faith, Form, and Time ) argues that the world is created with the appearance of age. He creates stars whose light already reaches the earth, even though they are only an hour old; trees, not merely seeds, with tree rings. Isn't this…

May 27, 2015
Creation

Why Is There Something?

Why is there something rather than nothing? is usually posed as a philosophical question, the ontological question. Kurt Wise ( Faith, Form, and Time ) poses it as a scientific question. According to current models of the history of the cosmos, “organisms have been in existence hundreds of thousands of…

May 27, 2015

Arousal Addiction

Philip Zimbardo ( Man (Dis)connected ) claims that young American men have become habituated to “regularly experience stimulus” by excessive exposure to porn and video games. He calls is “arousal addiction,” and explains that “in order to get the same amount of stimulation, you need new material, seeing the same…

May 27, 2015

Foolish Worship

Babylon the great city appears in Revelation as a prostitute, offering her wine of passion to the nations (Revelation 14:8; 17-18). She resembles the prostitute from the book of Proverbs, Lady Folly. Both offer illicit love and the wine of passion (cf. Proverbs 7:1). Both try to seduce simpletons. Both…

May 26, 2015

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