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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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Twenty-Something Radical Orthodoxy

A couple of years ago, Kyle Nicholas summed up "The Progress and Future of Radical Orthodoxy ," now entering its early adulthood. Though the movement has waned, he argues for "its continuing relevance." "Amidst scathing critiques from every corner," he points out, "Radical Orthodoxy has continued to bear fruit on…

September 22, 2017
Eucharist

Homily on Grain

In his Material Eucharist (30), David Grumett summarizes the "Homily on the Grain" from the Syrian poet Cyrillonas: "Alluding to the incarnation and to Christ's two natures,. he describes the grain falling into the earth and its kernel encased within a dual outer husk. This echoes the image that Jesus…

September 22, 2017

On the Structure of Leviticus

Leviticus is divided into thirty-seven speeches, each introduced by "Yahweh spoke to Moses" (see Warning, Literary Artistry in Leviticus ). The 19th speech - the central one - is Leviticus 16, instruction for the "day of coverings." From this, one can derive a simple chiastic outline of the book (I've…

September 21, 2017

The Cross of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, 4

IV. Cross of Reality Christianity’s history is the story of the cross’s penetra­tion into human experience and society. New epochs are formed when the cross begins to mark a new “sphere of our minds or bodies” ( CF , p.165). In the new era that Rosenstock-Huessy saw coming, the cross…

September 21, 2017

Post-Confederate Memorials

Joseph Bottum offers a Girardian analysis of the current craze for knocking down monuments ( Weekly Standard ). Along the way, he explores the origins of the Confederate memorials, observing that "The list of removed statues and memorials seems mostly to prove what busy beavers the United Daughters of the…

September 21, 2017

The Cross of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, 3

III. The Cross and Civilization Jesus gives abundant life. As the Crucified and Risen Man, he also creates new possibilities for history, forms a new epoch of history, the Christian era, and forms the possibil­ity of a new civilization. To understand fully what Rossen­stock-Huessy means by this, we need to…

September 20, 2017

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