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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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How Plants Think

The always-fascinating Oliver Sacks takes a break from his human patients to review several recent and old books on earthworms, jelly-fish, and plants in the NYRB . One is Daniel Chamovitz’s recent What A Plant Knows . Sacks writes, “We all distinguish between plants and animals. We understand that plants,…

April 4, 2014

Between Mother and Dragon

John sees two signs in heaven (Revelation 12), a woman and a dragon. Sharply different as they are, John’s language brings out their similarities. 1) Both are called semeion , vv. 1, 3. 2) John uses the passive ophthe to introduce both, vv. 1, 3. 3) Both are signs in…

April 4, 2014

City of Language

In Who’s Afraid of Relativism? , his recent brief for Christian pragmatism as a philosophy of contingency and creaturehood, James KA Smith summarizes a wonderful little analogy from Wittgenstein: “Language [is] a city. While referentialist theories of meaning might recognize that there could be other uses of language, they will…

April 4, 2014

Breeders: A Subclass of Women?

Jennifer Lahl of the Center for Bioethics and Culture will show her latest documentary film, Breeders: A Subclass of Women? , at Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, on the evening of Saturday, April 5. The event is co-sponsored by Trinity House and Beeson Divinity School. For more information, click here .

April 4, 2014

Latin, Elite and Vulgar

J.N. Adams takes up a classic question about the history of Latin in his Social Variation and the Latin Language : How did the Romance languages emerge from Latin? It’s been thought that the Romance languages came from changes in Latin pronunciation and grammar at the lower levels of Roman…

April 3, 2014

Foreshadowing in 1 Samuel 14

1 Samuel 14 records the second of Saul’s three falls: He sins when he sacrifices impetuously without waiting for Samuel (ch. 13), when he attacks Jonathan for eating during a battle (ch. 14), when he refuses to carry out the ban against the Amalekites (ch. 15). Chapter 14 is also…

April 3, 2014

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