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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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42 Times: Isaiah and Servants

A year ago, I observed the shift from singular “Servant” to plural “servants” within Isaiah 40-54. Further work has revealed a larger pattern. ebed , “servant,” is used 42x in the Hebrew text of Isaiah. The distribution of the word is significant, It is used only five times in the…

July 9, 2014

Jew

Balaam tries to curse Israel but the Lord turns the curse to blessing. He alludes to the exodus of Jacob and Israel from Egypt, and then says, “He couches, he lies down as a lion, and as a lion, who dares rouse him? Blessed is everyone who blesses you, and…

July 9, 2014

Tabernacled Among Us

In his history of Mesopotamian religion, Treasures of Darkness , Thorkild Jacobsen calls attention to the intimate relationship between a temple and the god who was supposed to reside in it. The presence of the temple was “visible reassurance that the God was present and available, that he - as…

July 9, 2014

Speak, Hear, Do

At the creation, God spoke and “did” or “made” ( ‘asah ) things. God speaks again to Judah, with the same creative word, a word that will form a new heavens and a new earth (Isaiah 65:17). Something is “done” or “made,” as it was at the beginning (Isaiah 65:12;…

July 9, 2014
Postmodernism

Postmodernism

I offer a brief assessment of postmodernism at the Trinity House web site .

July 9, 2014

ID and the nature of science

John Walton’s discussion of Intelligent Design is a mess ( The Lost World of Genesis 1 ). He writes, “The difficulty they face is that if there is intelligent design, there must logically be an intelligent designer” (126). That inference is not a “difficulty,” but one of the aims of…

July 8, 2014

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