Sarah Lindsay, author of this article at Arise, is an assistant professor of English at Milligan College in eastern Tennessee. She is a graduate of Wheaton College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she balances teaching medieval literature with raising three energetic daughters who inspire her to advocate for gender equality. Recently on Arise, Jeff Miller wrote about the long history of women in the church, dispelling the idea that egalitarians are merely adopting current cultural ideas about women.... Read more

From Anxious Bench, by Beth Allison Barr: In a 2006 interview, Wayne Grudem argued that female leaders in the church (especially pastors) are disobeying God’s word and thus open to “the withdrawal of God’s hand of protection and blessing.”  As Grudem explained: “A woman who serves as a pastor, preaching to both men and women, is disobeying the word of God. There are always negative consequences to that.” Female leadership, Grudem argues, leads to an erosion of orthodoxy in churches–including misinterpretation... Read more

Jimmy Adcox, on pastoring 40 years in the same church, has been the preaching minister at the Southwest Church of Christ in Jonesboro Arkansas. Longevity in ministry is the result of a healthy partnership between the minister, the church, and the elder group. As cited in a previous blog, ministers help make longevity possible through building trust – trust that is demonstrated through a healthy measure of character, competence, and chemistry with the church. But members and leadership groups are... Read more

When it comes to evaluations of Greg Boyd’s massive The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, the central topic of discussion ought to be method: Boyd’s method is theological interpretation of Scripture with a Cruciformity Hermeneutic at the center. A central question, then, is this: How Christocentric, or how Cruciform or Christoform, is your hermeneutic? When it comes to the wrath of God, how does a cruciform hermeneutic conclude? He turns in chapter sixteen to Jesus’ pattern of withdrawal (wrath is withdrawal of divine... Read more

Seriously, her book on Paul — Paul Among the People — was a gem, she has become well known among classicists for her translations, and now she has a splendid new, beautifully written (her prose is always splendid) book called The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible. Why should we listen to this Quaker who is a classicist and not a Bible scholar? But how do I dare try to expound the book? I’m the opposite of... Read more

Six Ground-breaking Discoveries A Summary of “Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34–5” New Testament Studies 63 (2017) 604–625 (c) 2017 Payne Loving Trust Philip B. Payne Philip Barton Payne, author of Man and Woman, One in Christ, (PhD, Cambridge) has served with his wife Nancy with the Evangelical Free Church Mission in Japan for seven years. He has taught New Testament studies in Cambridge colleges, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Gordon-Conwell, Bethel, and Fuller, and is known for... Read more

From SI.com J.J. Watt is a superhuman. What he does on the field, like playing despite having a bone in his finger cut through his skin, is evidence of such. But it’s his recent off-the-field efforts to aid victims of Hurricane Harvey that has elevated him to legendary status. The three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year launched a fund on YouCaring.com to raise money for victims of Hurricane Harvey on Aug. 26 with an initial goal of $200,000. At the... Read more