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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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Translation, 2 Kings 10

Now to ‘Achav [were] seventy sons in Shomron And wrote Jehu’ scrolls And he sent [to] Shomron to the princes of Yizre’e’l, the elders And to the trustees of ‘Achav, saying, “Now you yourselves according to the entering of this scroll to you And with you [are] the sons of…

June 30, 2005

Anthropology and soteriology

Explaining the meaning of the image of God, Calvin writes, “there is no solidity in Augustine’s speculation, that the soul is a mirror of the Trinity, inasmuch as it comprehends within itself, intellect, will, and memory. Nor is there any probability in the opinion of those who place likeness to…

June 29, 2005
History

Delayed Globalization

In his account of the beginning of World War I, Europe’s Last Summer , David Fromkin notes that globalization was already well underway prior to 1914, and in fact was in some ways more advanced than at any time since: “You could go to practically anywhere in the world without…

June 29, 2005

Modernity thesis revisited

I have been deeply skeptical about the arguments of Jacques Ellul and others concerning our enslavement to technology, as well as the arguments of Peter Berger about the “heretical imperative” that modernity imposes on us. Technological modernity tempts us, as Craig Gay has argued, to act as if God does…

June 29, 2005

High Context Societies

Ronald Simkins has distinguished between “high context” and “low context” societies. In the former, the members of the society share many cultural assumptions and meanings; in the latter, the shared meanings are much thinner and more sporadic. Of course, the distinction is not absolute, since within a relatively “low context”…

June 28, 2005

Eucharistic meditation, June 26

2 Kings 5:17: Naaman said to Elisha, “Your servant will no more offer burnt offering nor will he sacrifice to other gods, but to Yahweh.” Naaman, we noted in the exhortation, was a baptized Gentile convert. That baptism in the Jordan healed him of his leprosy. That baptism was an…

June 26, 2005

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