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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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First Resurrection

Martyrs share in Jesus' suffering and death. Martyrs also come to life as Jesus did. This is what John calls the “first resurrection” (Revelation 20:5). That is the argument presented by GB Caird ( Revelation of St. John the Divine , 255). Jesus' resurrection, he argues, “had a double sequel,…

January 5, 2016

Democracy and Mixed Government

In a lively exchange with Eugene McCarraher , John Milbank summarizes his views on democracy. Like Chesterton, he is a defender of the democracy of the dead, and he insists that this is not simply “a defense of the given and an assault on the present.” That is, he claims,…

January 5, 2016

Levitical Priesthood

“Despite the central role which the priesthood played in Israel's life and worship,” writes Nicholas Haydock ( The Theology of the Levitical Priesthood ), it has only a small role in “the majority of Old Testament theologies” (xii). This neglect is partly due to the influence of Wellhausen's documentary thesis,…

January 5, 2016

Seconds

There are a number of “seconds” in the book of Revelation. References to the “second death” surround the book (2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8), and there is a second seal (6:3), a second woe (11:14), and several second angels (8:8; 14:8; 16:3). The living creatures are enumerated, the lion first, the…

January 4, 2016

Didactic Poetry

In his introduction to Scott Cairns's collection, Slow Pilgrim , Gregory Wolfe recounts Cairns's development as a poet. He grew up “within a powerful religious subculture that splits the spirit off from the letter, reducing faith to didactic legalism. These fellow religionists of his youth loved nothing better than to…

January 4, 2016
Time

Ringing the Changes

JT Fraser begins one of his essays in Time and Time Again with this lovely sketch of a musical cosmology: “The noble English art of change ringing consists of the ringing of a set of bells of different pitches, according to sequences that follow stable mathematical patterns. A set of…

January 4, 2016

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