There is a line in Where the Conflict Really Lies I want you to hold on to before we go any further. Alvin Plantinga, building what is possibly his most famous philosophical argument,1writes this: "I will be assuming for purposes of this argument that evolution is true."2

Read that slowly.

I will be assuming for purposes of this argument that evolution is true.

This is the man behind the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism — the EAAN, as it’s known in the philosophy literature. And the argument he’s constructing begins by granting evolutionary theory. If you had Plantinga filed somewhere under “Christian intellectual who argues against Darwin,” that filing cabinet needs reorganizing.

What the Argument Actually Is

The EAAN is a conditional argument. Its form is: if evolutionary theory is true and naturalism is true, then we have a significant problem. It takes no position on whether evolution is actually true. It simply asks what follows if it is.

Naturalism, in the philosophical sense Plantinga is targeting, is not a vague cultural attitude. It is the specific claim that there is no God and no supernatural reality of any kind — that the natural world, matter and energy operating by physical law, is all there is. Evolution, on this account, is the unguided mechanism by which we got here: random mutation and natural selection acting over deep time, with no intention behind it.

Natural selection selects for survival. Organisms that are better at surviving and reproducing pass on their traits. That’s the mechanism.

Here is the question the EAAN presses: does survival require accurate beliefs?

Sometimes, obviously, yes. If you believe there is no tiger behind that bush, and there is a tiger behind that bush, your inaccurate belief is likely to end your participation in the gene pool. Some connection between true belief and survival seems clear enough.

But the connection is not tight. What natural selection produces are behaviors — behaviors that aid survival. Beliefs can produce behaviors, but many different beliefs, including wildly false ones, can produce the same survival-enhancing behavior. A creature that runs from tigers survives whether it runs because it correctly believes tigers are dangerous, or because it holds some bizarre false belief about tigers that, by coincidence, produces the right running behavior, or because it doesn’t represent tigers at all but has an instinct that manifests as running. Natural selection cannot reach in and check which of these is operating. It selects for the running.

What natural selection cannot do — because it has no mechanism for it — is select directly for truth. It selects for survival. If truth-tracking beliefs happen to aid survival, they'll tend to get passed on. But there is nothing in the mechanism that guarantees alignment between "what our cognitive faculties produce" and "what is actually the case."3

Which means: on naturalism plus evolution, we have significant reason to doubt that our cognitive faculties are reliable truth-trackers. They were shaped to keep us alive, not to give us accurate metaphysics.

The problem — and this is where the argument gets elegant — is that this doubt includes the belief in naturalism itself. If we cannot trust our cognitive faculties, shaped by blind, unguided processes with no interest in truth, then we cannot trust the reasoning that led us to naturalism. The naturalist has produced a worldview that, if true, undermines the epistemic foundations of the faculties that produced it.

Plantinga calls this "self-defeating." Not a logical contradiction — it doesn't refute itself the way "this sentence is false" does. But it gives the reflective naturalist an undefeated defeater: a reason to doubt her beliefs that she has no good resources, within her own worldview, to answer. If my faculties are unreliable truth-trackers by design, why should I trust the belief that my faculties are unreliable truth-trackers? Why should I trust anything, including naturalism? The floor gives out.4

Why Evolution Isn’t the Target

Now notice what’s doing the work in that argument. It’s not evolution. It’s naturalism.

Evolution, in the EAAN, functions as a premise about the mechanism by which cognitive faculties were produced. The problem arises because, on naturalism, that mechanism is unguided — aimed at nothing, designed by nothing, answerable to nothing except survival. Remove naturalism from the picture and you change the character of the mechanism entirely.

If you are a theistic evolutionist — someone who accepts evolutionary biology but holds that God was the agent behind it, guiding or instantiating the process — the EAAN does not apply to you. On theistic evolution, there is a principled explanation for why faculties shaped by natural processes might also be reliable truth-trackers: God, in creating human beings through evolutionary processes, can plausibly intend the result. The self-defeating loop never gets started, because the process was not unguided. It was aimed, at some level, at producing creatures capable of knowing both the world and their Creator.

Old-earth creationist who accepts deep time and common ancestry? Same result. Young-earth creationist who rejects common descent entirely? Also no self-defeating loop. The argument’s grip requires the specific conjunction: evolution as the explanation plus naturalism as the metaphysics. Adjust either element, and the argument has nothing to hold.

This is why Plantinga titled the book Where the Conflict Really Lies. He is making a point about misidentified battlegrounds. The conflict is not between science and Christian faith — Christianity, he argues, is not in conflict with anything in contemporary science. The conflict is between naturalism and its own preferred science of human origins, because naturalism cannot borrow evolution’s explanatory power without paying a philosophical price it has no resources to cover.

What This Means If You Accept Evolution

I want to make this implication explicit, because I think it gets missed in the usual ways the EAAN gets described.

If you accept evolutionary biology and you are a Christian, Plantinga’s argument is not your problem. It is your tool. He is not arguing against your science. He is arguing that naturalism cannot coherently complete itself as a worldview — that its metaphysics and its science are in tension with each other in a way that theism, including theistic evolution, simply is not.

The theist who accepts evolution can say: yes, natural selection explains the emergence of our cognitive faculties, and the God who stands behind the process can ground their reliability. The naturalist who accepts evolution faces a harder road: she must explain why faculties shaped by a blind, survival-oriented process with no interest in truth should be trusted to deliver accurate metaphysics — including the metaphysics of naturalism.

Plantinga’s contribution is to stand at the point where evolutionary naturalism tries to complete itself as a worldview and ask whether it can. The answer he gives, carefully argued across several books, is: not without self-defeat.

Is the argument finally decisive? Philosophers have pushed back on various steps — Patricia Churchland argues that selection for survival is sufficiently "truth-tropic" to underwrite reliability; Dennett and others have questioned whether the probability of reliable faculties is really as low as Plantinga claims.5Plantinga has replied at length. The literature is substantial and worth engaging. But that longer conversation presupposes getting clear on what the argument actually is.

The conflict really lies elsewhere. Plantinga has been saying so for thirty years. Given how often the EAAN gets misread as an attack on Darwin rather than on the metaphysics of his devoted followers, it might be worth taking him at his word.

Share With All My Mind

Because Stoicism is back.

You can’t open the bestseller table at any airport bookstore right now without bumping into Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic, The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy. There’s a daily Stoic email going out to two and a half million subscribers. There’s a YouTube genre — search “be a Stoic” or “Marcus Aurelius” — full of square-jawed men in white shirts explaining how the philosophy of the Roman emperors will help you achieve inner calm, dominate your career, and become the kind of person whose self-worth doesn’t depend on anyone else’s opinion. Massimo Pigliucci has rebranded the philosophy for the post-religious mainstream in How to Be a Stoic. Donald Robertson has done the same for the cognitive-behavioral therapy crowd in How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. There are Stoic men’s groups, Stoic productivity hacks, Stoic dating advice. The four cardinal virtues — wisdom, courage, justice, temperance — get printed on coffee mugs.

The appeal is not mysterious. Modern Stoicism promises three things people in 2026 are starving for. It promises mastery — the ability to govern your own emotions rather than be governed by them. It promises calm — the freedom to be unmoved by outside circumstances. And it promises virtue without religion — a robust ethical framework that doesn’t require you to believe anything metaphysically embarrassing. You can read Marcus Aurelius on the train to work and feel like a serious person without ever risking the social cost of saying you believe in God.

I’m not here to mock any of this. I’ll say something that may surprise you: there’s a great deal in Stoicism worth taking seriously. The Stoics were rigorous moral thinkers. Their psychology of the passions anticipated cognitive-behavioral therapy by two thousand years. Their insistence that virtue is the only true good is a healthier hierarchy than what most of our contemporaries are trying to live by. And their hostility to the slavery of public opinion is, frankly, a fitting rebuke to Twitter.

But here’s the thing. The early church already met this philosophy. It already absorbed this philosophy. And the Apostle Paul, watching the consequences play out in real time, wrote four chapters of fury about it.

I want to walk you through what he actually saw, what he said, and why it should make any Christian who’s reading The Daily Stoic uneasy.## What Was the Corinthians’ Stoicism?

When Paul writes to the Corinthian church in the mid-50s, the city has been a Roman colony for about a hundred years. It was rebuilt by Julius Caesar after lying in ruins for a century, repopulated largely with Roman freedmen and veterans, and seamlessly integrated into the Greek and Roman intellectual currents of the eastern Mediterranean.1By Paul's day Stoicism was the default philosophical framework for educated Romans. There's solid evidence for a Roman gymnasium in Corinth at this time, where the upper classes would have received standard Stoic-inflected education.2You didn't need to seek Stoicism out. Just being well-educated in Corinth meant absorbing it.

The Stoicism on display in the Corinthian church wasn't, however, the rigorous classical version of Zeno or Chrysippus. It was a popular, watered-down form. In real Stoicism, the "wise man" — the σοφός — was a regulative ideal, almost mythological. Engberg-Pedersen notes that the Stoics themselves regarded the true sage as "as rare as the Phoenix" — perhaps not actually existing at all.3But the Corinthians thought they had already attained that rank. That's why Paul mocks them in 4:8: "Already you have become rich! Already you have become kings!" The pose of the achieved sage, claimed without the difficult work the classical Stoics demanded — that's what Paul is taking aim at.

If you have any doubt that’s what’s going on, look at the parallel passages. In my MTh thesis I lined them up in a table; here are three of them.

In 1 Corinthians 4:8, Paul writes: “Already you have become rich! Already you have become kings!”

In Plutarch, summarizing Stoic teaching: "The wise man is termed an orator, a poet, a general, a rich man, and a king."4

In Cicero, on the Stoic σοφός: "For the wise man will have a better claim to the title of King than Tarquin, a better right to be called rich than Croesus."5

In 1 Corinthians 4:10, Paul says: “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise [φρόνιμοι] in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong [ἰσχυροί].”

Both adjectives are technical Stoic vocabulary for the sage. Zeno of Citium himself: "The wise one is great and grand and lofty and strong [ἰσχυρόν]."6Plutarch on the Stoic position: "the wise man is termed not only prudent [φρόνιμος] and just and brave."7

In 1 Corinthians 3:21-22, Paul writes: “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours.”

Plutarch on the Stoic claim: "If one has got virtue from the Stoa, it is possible to say, 'Ask, if there's aught you wish, all will be yours.'"8Cicero: "[The wise man] will most rightly be called king… master… rich. Rightly will he be said to own all things."9

This is not a stretch. These are the slogans the Corinthian Christians were using, picked up out of the air of an educated Roman city, and Paul is taking them apart phrase by phrase. He’s quoting back to them the exact terms — king, rich, wise, strong, all things are yours — that they themselves had absorbed from their cultural surround.

And the behavior on display in the church matches the philosophy that produced the slogans. Terence Paige observes:

Just such a callousness of individuals toward others as we find at Corinth, such a disregard for the community dimension of their new existence, would likely be fostered by a Stoicizing influence, which would in fact exalt the individual σοφός at the expense of the community. And a Stoic could behave in this individualistic, community-destroying fashion at the same time that he believes he is pursuing a virtuous life.10

That last sentence is worth slowing over. A Stoic could behave in community-destroying ways at the same time that he believes he is pursuing a virtuous life. The pursuit of personal virtue, in the Stoic frame, doesn’t necessarily lead you toward your neighbor. It can lead you straight past him. The ethics of the sage are vertical, not horizontal. You climb toward the Phoenix-rare ideal of self-mastery, and the brother whose foot you step on along the way is, well, his problem to bear.

That’s what was happening in Corinth. People who thought they were pursuing wisdom while ripping the body of Christ to pieces.

Paul’s Response

What Paul doesn’t do is interesting.

He doesn’t, point by point, argue against Stoic doctrine. He doesn’t write a tract titled Against the Stoics the way Plutarch did, refuting their positions by working through their syllogisms. He could have. He had the rhetorical training. But he doesn’t.

He also doesn’t try to baptize Stoicism. He doesn’t say, “Look, fellow Christians, much of what the Stoics taught is true; let me show you how to harmonize the two.” He doesn’t, for instance, attempt to map eudaimonia onto Christian flourishing or salvage the four cardinal virtues for use in the church. There’s a long tradition of Christians doing exactly this — Augustine and Aquinas both, in their different ways, tried to receive what was true in classical philosophy. But Paul doesn’t make that move here. The version of Stoicism his congregation has absorbed is not, in his judgment, a partial truth waiting to be completed. It’s a rival story.

What he does instead is a move theologians call out-narrating. The term comes from John Milbank, taken up by Christopher Watkin in Biblical Critical Theory, and it’s the move Augustine makes in City of God when he tells the story of Rome’s rise inside the Christian story rather than against it. Watkin defines it like this:

Out-narrating is not about telling the better story in the sense of being the most gripping or necessarily satisfying: it is about telling the bigger story, the story within which all stories find their place, like Augustine's City of God that "attempts to situate all of human history within a Christian reading of the Bible" and "includes…and explains" the earthly city.11

That’s what Paul does in 1 Corinthians 1-4.

The Stoic story says: there is a wise man who has mastered himself, who is rich and strong and a king, who owns all things, who is φρόνιμος and ἰσχυρός. He is the goal of human existence. Climb toward him.

Paul’s response is not, “No, you’ve got the wise man wrong.” His response is, “There is a wise man — and he was crucified.”

The crucified Messiah is the negation of the Stoic sage at every coordinate. The sage is master of himself; the Messiah is delivered into the hands of his enemies. The sage is rich; the Messiah has nowhere to lay his head. The sage is a king; the Messiah is mocked as one. The sage owns all things by virtue of his interior virtue; the Messiah forfeits his clothing to soldiers casting lots. The sage is strong; the Messiah is described, in the same letter, as “the weakness of God.” The sage commands his passions; the Messiah weeps in Gethsemane and asks for the cup to pass.

You cannot put the Stoic sage and the crucified Messiah on the same shelf. They are not two species of the same genus. They are opposite answers to the question of what a redeemed human being looks like.

And then Paul does something even sharper. He doesn’t just insist on the crucified Messiah as the true σοφός. He insists that the cross itself, the very moment of greatest weakness, is “the wisdom of God” and “the power of God.” The thing that on the Stoic accounting is the most catastrophic failure of self-mastery imaginable — public torture, judicial humiliation, surrender of agency, dependence on God for vindication — is what Paul calls divine wisdom.

That’s not a tweak to the Stoic frame. That’s an out-narration. The Stoic story can’t accommodate it. Stoicism requires the wise man to maintain inner sovereignty. A wise man who hands himself over to crucifixion is, in Stoic terms, not a wise man at all. Paul is not asking the Corinthians to refine their Stoicism. He is asking them to abandon it for a story that the Stoic framework cannot contain.

The Cross as Garbage

This is where I want to pause on something we’ve all but lost the ability to feel.

Glen Scrivener writes:

To us, the cross has become a sacred symbol and, as such, embodies the very opposite of its ancient meaning. Even if we're not religious ourselves, we might understand the cross to be a symbol of redemption, salvation, God's presence even among the lowly, and God's peace even amid our pain. In the ancient world it meant the reverse. It symbolized degradation, worthlessness, unremitting torture and unredeemed love…. Those crucified were garbage.12

That last sentence is the one to feel. Those crucified were garbage. In the Roman world the cross wasn’t a metaphor for triumph through suffering. It wasn’t even a metaphor for anything. It was a tool of imperial degradation, used specifically to remind subject populations what happened to anyone who stepped out of line. To die on a cross was to be erased from the human story, and erased deliberately, and erased publicly, and erased slowly.

To suggest, as Paul did, that the power of God could be located on a Roman gibbet was unhinged in the same way that suggesting divine wisdom could be located in a sewage trench would have been unhinged. The Stoic mind couldn’t rotate to it. It was on a different axis entirely.

Now turn around and look at your culture. The cross is a brand. It’s printed on T-shirts and stamped on rosaries; it hangs from earlobes; it crowns church steeples that are mostly architectural ornament; it appears in tattoo flash and album covers; it has been so thoroughly absorbed into the visual vocabulary of the West that even non-Christians find it innocuous, even pretty. Whatever else it has become, the cross has not been “garbage” in any culture’s general imagination for fifteen hundred years.

That’s not necessarily wrong. It is, in a sense, the gospel’s success. The thing that was unspeakable has become unremarkable. But it makes Paul’s argument almost impossible for us to hear at full volume. He’s saying that the worst thing that could happen to you is the place where God shows up. Not “God redeems suffering” in the abstract. Not “God uses our trials to make us better people.” He’s saying the actual instrument of imperial degradation is the place where divine wisdom is exhibited. The garbage is the throne.

The Corinthians couldn’t hear it, because their imagination had been disciplined by Stoic categories. They were reaching for a wise man who wouldn’t suffer. We can’t fully hear it, because our imagination has been domesticated by fifteen centuries of Christian iconography. We’re reaching for a cross that doesn’t smell of blood.

But the gospel is the same gospel. And the rival story is, at this point in 2026, very much the same rival story.

Liturgical Capture

The philosopher James K. A. Smith has a useful term for what was happening at Corinth. He calls it liturgical capture — the process by which a community's worship and imagination get shaped by the liturgies of the surrounding culture rather than the liturgies of the kingdom of God.13The Corinthian church wasn't deliberately Stoic. They didn't sit down one day and decide to swap out the gospel for De Officiis. They had simply absorbed Stoic categories so thoroughly through the educational and social structures of their city that, by the time they showed up to worship the crucified Lord, they couldn't help but read his story through the lens of the sage they'd grown up admiring. The wisdom they were importing into the church was the wisdom of the air they breathed.

The reason I’m describing this so carefully is that the same dynamic is, I think, in operation right now. The American Christian who reads The Daily Stoic in the morning and drives to a megachurch on Sunday is not, strictly speaking, deliberately syncretizing two religions. He’s doing what comes naturally in a culture that has made Stoicism cool again — letting the available philosophical apparatus help him make sense of his life. The trouble is that some of that apparatus has been picked up so thoroughly that it’s distorting the gospel in his hands without his noticing.

Some symptoms of liturgical capture by neo-Stoicism in contemporary American Christianity:

A theology of personal optimization, in which the goal of the Christian life is increasingly framed as becoming the best version of yourself. (The Stoic sage looms behind that phrase. Sanctification looks oddly like life-coaching.)

A discomfort with weakness in Christian leaders. Dynamic, decisive, mastered, unflappable, surrounded by competence — the qualities we increasingly demand of pastors are the qualities of a Stoic sage, not a fisherman from Galilee or a tentmaker who described himself as appearing “in weakness and in fear and in much trembling” (1 Cor 2:3).

An ethic of self-sufficiency that quietly dishonors the body of Christ. We are taught — in books, in podcasts, in the men’s group at church — to be the kind of person who doesn’t need anyone. To master our reactions. To be unmoved. The Apostle Paul never said any of this. He talked openly about being burdened beyond his strength and despairing of life itself, and he asked the church to pray for him as a man whose strength was made perfect in weakness.

A view of the world in which the Christian’s job is to rise above circumstances and remain interiorly calm. Compare this to the Apostle Paul, who wept publicly in Acts 20, who was angry to the point of trembling at the Galatians, who described himself as being “afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within” (2 Cor 7:5). The Stoic sage has mastered his emotions. The Apostle has not. What he has is hope, and he has it in something outside himself.

You can examine your own bookshelf, your own preferred podcasts, your own small-group conversations and ask: how much of this is gospel-shaped, and how much of it is Stoic-shaped wearing gospel clothes?

This isn’t an attack on anyone in particular. It’s an attempt to see clearly. We have inherited a powerful, sophisticated, ancient pagan philosophy that flatters us in particular ways — by promising us mastery and self-sufficiency and the dignity of the achieved sage — and the church in our age has, by and large, adopted it without realizing what we’ve signed for.

Buying the More Enduring Story

There’s a line attributed to St. Columba of Iona, the sixth-century missionary to Scotland, that I keep returning to:

Since all the world is but a story, it were well for thee to buy the more enduring story, rather than the story that is less enduring.14

The choice the Corinthians faced is the choice we face. Stoicism, ancient or modern, is a story. It’s a coherent, beautiful, austere, in many ways admirable story. But it’s a smaller story than the one in which the crucified Lord exhibits the wisdom and the power of God. The Stoic story can’t include the cross, except as failure. The gospel includes the Stoic story — receiving what’s true in it, naming what’s incomplete, seeing where it ends — and goes further.

You can be the wise man, mastering yourself with stoic resolve, climbing toward the Phoenix-rare sage. Or you can be in Christ — who is to us, in Paul’s own summary, “wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor 1:30). One of those stories ends with you, the achieved hero of your own narrative, surveying what you have made of yourself. The other ends with you, raised in a body you didn’t earn, in a city you didn’t build, made glorious by a glory that was never yours to start.

Buy the more enduring story.

It is not a more flattering one. It is just truer.

There’s a moment in 1 Corinthians 1 that, if you’re paying attention, ought to puzzle you.

Paul tells the church at Corinth that the message of the cross is folly to those who are perishing — and then he proceeds, for four straight chapters, to spar with someone. He spars hard. He’s sarcastic. He calls his opponents fools. He overturns their categories one after another. He says God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong, the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are. He tells the Corinthians they’re behaving like infants. He warns them he’s coming back, and asks pointedly whether he should bring a rod when he does.

Whoever Paul’s opponents were, he was angry.

But here’s the thing: he never quite says who they were. He names some teachers — Apollos, Cephas, himself — and says the Corinthians have been picking sides, but he doesn’t think any of those teachers were the real problem. He’s striking at something else, something behind the slogans, something the Corinthians had absorbed from the surrounding culture and that was now tearing the church apart.

Who?

I spent two years writing my MTh thesis on this question. I’m going to walk you through what I found — because once you know who Paul was answering, you can tell whether his answer is for you, too.

Most sermons on 1 Corinthians 1-4 don’t bother with the question. They take the phrase “wisdom of the world” as a generic label and apply it to whatever the preacher disapproves of in the present moment. Worldly wisdom = secular humanism. Or = relativism. Or = academic theology. Or = scientism. The list goes on.

But Paul wasn’t writing to the present moment. He was writing to a specific church about a specific problem in the year 53 or 54 AD. The “wisdom” he was destroying was a particular wisdom — held by particular teachers — that had infiltrated that particular congregation. If we want to know whether it has anything to do with us, we have to know what it actually was.

Here are the six options scholars have proposed. I’ll take them one at a time.

Option 1: Judaizers

The oldest serious proposal goes back to F. C. Baur in the 1830s. Baur read 1 Corinthians as a story of two parties — the Pauline (Gentile) faction and the Petrine (Jewish) faction — and he argued the conflict was driven by Judaizing teachers who had followed Paul’s mission and tried to undo it.1

This was the same template Baur applied to Galatians, and to be fair, in Galatians it has some real explanatory power. But in 1 Corinthians it doesn’t.

There are no Jewish-Christian theological complaints in the letter. Paul never argues about circumcision, food laws, table fellowship, or any of the markers that defined the Jew/Gentile fight elsewhere in early Christianity. When he addresses idol meat in chapter 8, he assumes his readers have a Gentile background (”former association with idols,” 8:7) — a phrase that would horrify any practicing Jew, Hellenistic or otherwise.2 And the most distinctive Pauline polemical moves of Galatians (covenant, law, justification) are entirely absent.

The historian Hans Conzelmann put it bluntly: Baur’s thesis “breaks down in face of the text.3” No serious recent scholar holds this view, with the partial exception of Michael Goulder.4

The Corinthian opposition is not Jewish.

Option 2: Gnostics

After the Nag Hammadi documents were unearthed in 1945, scholars in the 1950s — particularly Ulrich Wilckens and Walter Schmithals — began identifying Gnostic ideas5 as the “wisdom of the world” in Corinth. The case has surface appeal. Paul uses several terms (σοφία, πνευματικός, μυστήριον, γνῶσις) that became technical Gnostic vocabulary. He distinguishes between the “natural person” and the “spiritual person” in 1 Corinthians 2, which sounds like a Gnostic move.

But on closer look, this position falls apart for three reasons.

First, terminology shared between two systems doesn’t mean the systems share content. The word “freedom” appears in both Stoic philosophy and modern American political rhetoric, but they don’t mean the same thing by it. As Corin Mihăilă observes, “Terms do not have meaning in isolation but in relation to each other, their semantic context being dependent on their context and frame of reference.6”

Second, the natural-person/spiritual-person distinction in 2:14-15 doesn’t actually function the way it does in Gnostic literature. For Paul, the contrast is between Christians and unbelievers. For Gnostics, it would have to be between two grades of Christian — the lower ranks of believers versus the elite “spiritual ones” who possess hidden knowledge. Paul’s contrast is of an entirely different kind.

Third, and most damaging: Gnosticism as a developed system is a second-century phenomenon. 1 Corinthians was written in the mid-50s. To argue Paul was responding to Gnosticism, you have to assume “proto-Gnostic” ideas were already circulating, which is exactly what the textual evidence does not show. Robert Wilson saw the trap clearly:

Those who begin with the developed Gnosticism of the second century and go back to Paul’s letters have no difficulty in identifying ‘gnostic motifs’ — terms, concepts and ideas which may legitimately be described as Gnostic because they are used as technical terms in the context of Gnostic systems. This usage however may be question-begging, since there is no way of showing that these terms and concepts are already Gnostic in an earlier context.7

You don’t get to assume what you’re trying to prove.

Option 3: Hellenistic Jewish Wisdom Teachers

A subtler proposal: maybe the teachers in Corinth weren’t Judaizers in the Galatian sense, but Hellenistic Jews who’d absorbed the wisdom-speculation of writers like Philo of Alexandria and the Wisdom of Solomon. Richard Horsley, working in this lane, tried to show that “the close relation between gnosis and sophia in Philo and Wisdom enables us to determine, by analogy, how the Corinthians’ gnosis may have been related to the sophia rejected by Paul in 1 Cor 1-4.8”

It’s a more sophisticated version of Option 2 — and it suffers from related problems.

Gordon Fee put his finger on the two strongest objections.9 First, the supposed parallels between the Corinthians and Philo may owe more to their shared Hellenization than to anything distinctly Jewish. The Greek-speaking world was full of these ideas; you don’t need a Jewish vector to explain them. Second, Paul’s responses exclude a Jewish source. The pronouncement that “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom” (1:22) makes no sense if Philonic Judaism is what he’s opposing. And again, the “former association with idols” line in 8:7 is unintelligible if the wayward party is Jewish. As Fee dryly observed: “Even Philo would be horrified here.10”

So this option fails for the same family of reasons as the Gnostic one. The Corinthians’ problem wasn’t a Jewish-flavored wisdom tradition. It was something Greek.

Option 4: Socioeconomic Factions

Here we move out of pure ideology and into social structure. Beginning with John Chow, Frederick Danker, and L. L. Welborn, and continued more recently by Joshua Rice, a school of interpreters has argued that the divisions in Corinth weren’t theological at all — they were economic. Roman patron-client networks had infiltrated the church. The wealthy benefactors were sponsoring teachers and bringing along their dependents, creating cliques organized around social rank rather than doctrine.11

There’s something to this. Paul’s letter does engage social dynamics — the Lord’s Supper abuse in chapter 11 is straightforward class warfare, with the wealthy eating their fill while the poor go hungry. Welborn captures the dynamic crisply: “The bondage of the poor to the rich is the breeding ground of faction.12”

But you can’t reduce the conflict to economics, and you certainly can’t reduce 1 Corinthians 1-4 to economics.

Two pieces of textual evidence push back. First, if Paul understood the conflict as a patron problem, you’d expect him to position himself as the church’s true patron, replacing the rival benefactors. He doesn’t. He repeatedly identifies God as the source of the gifts the Corinthians have received (1:4-7), and he goes out of his way to avoid claiming patron status.13

Second, when Paul reaches for the construction metaphor in 3:10 — calling himself a “wise master builder” (ἀρχιτέκτων) — Joshua Rice argued this is patronage language, since “patrons constructed buildings.14” But that misses the more obvious referent. The same word ἀρχιτέκτων is used in the Septuagint of Exodus 31:4 to describe Bezalel, the temple craftsman whom God filled with His Spirit to build the Tabernacle. Paul isn’t describing himself as a Roman patron. He’s describing himself as a Spirit-filled master craftsman in the line of Bezalel and Solomon.15 The temple-building imagery in 1 Corinthians 3 is biblical-theological, not socioeconomic.

Patronage is a real factor in the background. But it’s not the wisdom Paul is destroying.

Option 5: Rhetors and Sophists

Now we get warmer.

In the mid-first century, Corinth was crawling with traveling teachers of rhetoric — Sophists, in the technical sense — who would set up shop in major cities, attract paying students, and compete with each other for prestige and following. Joseph Fitzmyer describes them as “wandering teachers of rhetoric who had come to Corinth and vied with each other to attract followers who would be loyal to them in their competitive rivalry.16”

There’s good evidence Sophists were operating in Corinth right around the time of Paul’s letter. We know they were there during Dio Chrysostom’s visit a few decades later (AD 89-96), and the social structure of the Sophistic teacher-disciple relationship maps remarkably onto what we see in 1 Corinthians. Students were expected to model their lives on their teachers. Loyalty was tribal. Ben Witherington summarizes the dynamic: “The Corinthians were apparently taking their cues from what they knew of the educational process as modeled by the rhetors teaching in their city and taking part in debates, quarrels, boasting, arrogance, and the like.17”

This explains Paul’s allegiance-slogans in 1:12 (”I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos”) nicely. It even explains, as Witherington speculates, why Paul felt the need to mention his unimpressive personal appearance in 2:3: “The real complaint against Paul may have been that he was not arrogant in his presentation or did not engage in boasting, unlike the Sophists.18”

But there are two problems with making rhetoric the primary cause.

First, if the issue were form, you’d expect Paul’s response to focus on form. And while he does address rhetorical form in 1:17-20 and 2:1-5, the bulk of chapters 3-4 is about content — about what the rival teachers were actually saying, not just how they were saying it.

Second, by the first century, the word σοφία had become more associated with philosophy than with rhetoric. Cicero and Quintilian distinguish carefully between eloquentia (the Latin for rhetoric) and sapientia (the Latin for wisdom).19 When Paul says “the Greeks seek wisdom” (1:22), he’s not referring primarily to rhetorical polish. He’s referring to philosophical content.

So rhetoric is part of the picture — these wisdom teachings were being delivered in fashionable Sophistic dress. But the substance of the wisdom was something else.

Option 6: Stoics

Which brings us, finally, to the proposal that I think fits the evidence best — and that has been gaining traction in recent scholarship: the Corinthians had been captured by a Christianized form of Stoic philosophy.

Stoicism was the dominant philosophy in the Roman world in the first century. When Corinth was rebuilt as a Roman colony in the early first century BCE, Stoic ideas came along with the colonization. By Paul’s day, Stoicism was what an educated Roman would be, by default, unless he had been initiated into something else.20 There is solid evidence for a Roman gymnasium in Corinth at the time of Paul’s letter, where the upper classes would have received the standard Stoic curriculum.21

That alone doesn’t prove the case. What proves the case is that the language of 1 Corinthians 1-4 — the specific phrases Paul attacks — comes straight out of Stoic literature.

Here are three sets of parallels you’ll find hard to read as coincidental.

When Paul mocks the Corinthians in 4:8 — “Already you have become rich! Already you have become kings!” — he is quoting almost exactly a stock Stoic teaching about the wise man. Plutarch: “The wise man is termed an orator, a poet, a general, a rich man, and a king.22” Cicero: “For the wise man will have a better claim to the title of King than Tarquin, a better right to be called rich than Croesus.23”

When Paul writes in 4:10, “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise [φρόνιμοι] in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong [ἰσχυροί]” — those two adjectives are technical Stoic vocabulary for the sage. Plutarch again: “The wise man is termed not only prudent [φρόνιμος] and just and brave.24” Zeno of Citium: “The wise one is great and grand and lofty and strong25 [ἰσχυρόν].”

When Paul says in 3:21-22, “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours,” he’s not coining a phrase. He’s deliberately echoing — and reframing — a famous Stoic boast. Plutarch: “If one has got virtue from the Stoa, it is possible to say, ‘Ask, if there’s aught you wish, all will be yours.26’” Cicero: “[The wise man] will most rightly be called king… master… rich. Rightly will he be said to own all things27…”

These are not loose thematic similarities. They’re the kind of close verbal echoes that Paul’s Corinthian audience would have heard immediately. Paul is taking the Corinthians’ own slogans and throwing them back at the church — to show how absurd those slogans become when measured against the cross.

There’s more. The word σοφός (”wise one”), which Paul uses repeatedly in 1 Corinthians 1-4, was claimed almost as a brand by the Stoics. Timothy Brookins notes that “the Stoics in fact boasted that they had exclusive right to the title.28”

And the behavior of the Corinthians — the individualism, the disregard for community, the elevation of the self-actualizing sage figure over the welfare of the body — fits the Stoic outlook precisely. Terence Paige observes:

Just such a callousness of individuals toward others as we find at Corinth, such a disregard for the community dimension of their new existence, would likely be fostered by a Stoicizing influence, which would in fact exalt the individual σοφός at the expense of the community. And a Stoic could behave in this individualistic, community-destroying fashion at the same time that he believes he is pursuing a virtuous life.29

That’s the Corinthian church in one paragraph. People who think they are pursuing wisdom while ripping the body of Christ apart.

It’s worth saying — because the thesis I’m summarizing here was careful to say it — the Stoicism on display in Corinth wasn’t pure classical Stoicism. It was a watered-down popular version. Real Stoicism held the “wise man” up as an unreachable ideal — “as rare as the Phoenix,30” in one Stoic’s vivid phrase. The Corinthians thought they had already attained the rank. That self-congratulating shortcut may itself be what Paul is mocking when he says “Already you have become wise! Already you have become kings!”

So What?

This isn’t just pedantry. It changes how you read the entire opening section of 1 Corinthians.

If Paul’s opponents were Stoics — or, more precisely, if his congregation had been seduced by a Christianized Stoicism that taught self-sufficiency, individual sagehood, and the elevation of the wise above the foolish — then his response is not generic. It’s targeted. He’s not attacking “worldly wisdom” in the abstract. He’s attacking a specific philosophical system that his readers had imported into the church and were using to justify their own social hierarchy and their own self-image as “the wise ones.”

The cross, for Paul, is the device that detonates that whole framework. Stoicism was a philosophy of self-mastery, status, and the heroic individual sage. The crucified Messiah is the exact opposite: weakness chosen, status forfeited, the individual humiliated in public for the sake of others. You can be a Stoic, or you can be a Christian, but you cannot be both. Not because they overlap on too many surface concepts (they do), but because their underlying stories about reality are mutually exclusive.

And here’s the part that will only land if you keep reading.

In 2026, Stoicism is back. Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic sells in the millions. “Be a Stoic” is now an entire content genre on YouTube. The self-sufficient sage who masters his emotions and rises above the herd is once again one of the most marketable figures in Western culture. There are Christians right now reading Marcus Aurelius alongside their Bibles and feeling like the two fit naturally together.

Paul has thoughts about that.

I’ll take those up next week.

That’s a reasonable thing to want. This book will help you do exactly that. But winning arguments is not what logic is for — and if you start there, you’ll misuse every tool in the kit.

Here’s what logic is actually for: knowing what follows from what.

That sounds anticlimactic. It isn’t.

When I taught formal logic at the community college level, I started every semester the same way. I’d walk in on the first day, write a single argument on the board, and ask the class to evaluate it. The argument was this:

All dogs are mammals. All mammals are warm-blooded. Therefore, all dogs are warm-blooded.

Every hand would go up. “Valid.” “Correct.” “Obviously true.” And they were right — but for the wrong reasons. Most of them approved of the argument because they agreed with the conclusion. Dogs are warm-blooded. The conclusion is true, so the argument must be good.

Then I’d write this one:

All dogs are fish. All fish are warm-blooded. Therefore, all dogs are warm-blooded.

False premise, false premise — and the exact same conclusion. Dogs are warm-blooded. And the logical structure — the form of the argument — is identical to the first one.

The class would get uncomfortable. “That’s a bad argument,” someone would say. “Why?” I’d ask. “Because the premises are wrong.” “Right. But is the reasoning wrong?”

That pause — that moment of genuine uncertainty — is where logic education actually begins.

The distinction you need is between validity and truth. They are not the same thing. Confusing them is the source of more bad reasoning than almost anything else.

A valid argument is one where, if the premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true. The logical structure holds. The gears mesh. Validity is a structural property — it says nothing about whether the premises actually are true. That’s a separate question entirely.

A true statement is one that corresponds to reality. “Dogs are mammals” is true. “Dogs are fish” is false. Truth is a property of individual statements, not of the reasoning that connects them.

Both dog arguments above are valid. The reasoning is identical — they share the same logical form. But only the first is sound. Soundness means valid and the premises are actually true. The second argument is valid but unsound, because “all dogs are fish” is false and “all fish are warm-blooded” is false. The conclusion still happens to be true — but it got there by accident, not by reasoning.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Logic in the Wild: From Formal Proofs to Real-World Decisions. The book covers everything you’d get in a college-level introductory logic course — with real-world applications in every chapter. Ebook and workbook at ratio.press. Hardcover and paperback on Amazon.

Want a preview of what’s ahead? Grab the free Fallacy Field Guide — 35 logical fallacies on one reference card.

In a former life (not really, but it was like 25 years ago), I taught formal logic at the community college level for four years. Predicate calculus, truth tables, derivations — the whole works. I also studied theology. These two interests don’t intersect as often as you’d think, but when they do, the results are worth paying attention to.

John 1:3 is one of those intersections.

Here’s the verse, in the ESV: “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”1

Most Christians read this and nod along — yes, Jesus is the Creator. But there’s something happening in the logic of this verse that’s sharper than most people realize. John isn’t just asserting that the Word created things. He’s constructing an argument — a tight one — that the Word *cannot* be a created thing, and therefore must be God. And the structure of that argument is formally valid. You can prove it with predicate calculus.

Let’s do exactly that. If you haven’t studied formal logic: (a) why the heck not? and (b) I’ve provided less-geeky translation of the math-looking stuff.

Setting Up the Language

First, we need to formalize our terms. In predicate logic, we define a domain of discourse and assign predicates and constants.

Domain: All things that exist.

Constants:

- w = the Word (the Logos, identified in John 1:14 as the one who “became flesh” — Jesus Christ)

Predicates:

- C(x) = “x is a created thing” (x was made)

- T(x, y) = “x was made through y” (y is the instrumental cause of x’s creation)

That’s all we need. Now let’s translate the verse.

Translating John 1:3

The verse makes two claims. They look like a simple repetition, but they’re not — the second clause is the contrapositive of the first, which is logically significant. John is locking down the argument from both directions.

**John 1:3a — “All things were made through him”:**

∀x(C(x) → T(x, w))

“For all x: if x is a created thing, then x was made through the Word.”

Every created thing, without exception, was made through the Logos. The universal quantifier ∀x is doing real work here. John doesn’t say “many things” or “most things.” He says *all things* — πάντα (*panta*) in the Greek2] There are no exceptions in the domain of created things.

**John 1:3b — “without him was not any thing made that was made”:**

¬∃x(C(x) ∧ ¬T(x, w))

“There does not exist an x such that x is a created thing and x was not made through the Word.”

This is the negation of the existential — there is no created thing that came into being independently of the Word. And notice: this is logically equivalent to Premise 1. The equivalence ∀x(P(x) → Q(x)) ≡ ¬∃x(P(x) ∧ ¬Q(x)) is a standard identity in predicate logic.3John is stating the same truth in two ways, positive and negative, to eliminate any wiggle room.

That’s not literary flair. That’s a logician’s instinct.

The Metaphysical Premise

John 1:3 gives us the two formalized premises above, but the argument needs one more — a metaphysical premise that John’s audience would have taken as self-evident:

**Premise 3 — The Impossibility of Self-Creation:**

¬∃x(T(x, x))

“There does not exist an x such that x was made through itself.”

Nothing can be the instrumental cause of its own coming-into-being. This isn’t just a theological claim — it’s a basic metaphysical principle. For something to cause its own creation, it would need to exist before it existed, which is a contradiction. Aristotle knew this.[4The Stoics knew this. Every serious philosopher in the ancient world knew this. John’s readers certainly knew it.

This isn’t a hidden assumption. It’s a logical law dressed in metaphysical clothing.

The Derivation

Now we have everything we need. Here’s the formal proof that the Word is not a created thing, laid out as a derivation:

P1) ∀x(C(x) → T(x, w)) [John 1:3a]

P2) ¬∃x(C(x) ∧ ¬T(x, w)) [John 1:3b — equivalent to P1]

P3) ¬∃x(T(x, x)) [Self-creation is impossible]

Step 1 — Universal Instantiation on Premise 1:

Premise 1 holds for *all* x. That means it holds when x = w. Substitute:

(4) C(w) → T(w, w) [Universal Instantiation, P1, x = w]

“If the Word is a created thing, then the Word was made through the Word.”

This is the critical move. The universal quantifier in John 1:3a means the Word is not exempt from its own scope. If the Word is a created thing — if C(w) is true — then *by John’s own premise*, the Word was made through itself.

**Step 2 — Instantiation on Premise 3:**

From Premise 3, we know that nothing was made through itself. Instantiate this to extract the relevant case:

(5) ¬T(w, w) [From P3: ¬∃x(T(x, x)), therefore ¬T(w, w)]

“The Word was not made through the Word.”

Self-creation is impossible, and the Word is no exception.

Step 3 — Modus Tollens:

Now we have a conditional and the negation of its consequent. This is textbook modus tollens (If a then b: Not b: Therefore Not a) — one of the most basic valid inference forms in all of logic:

(4) C(w) → T(w, w)

(5) ¬T(w, w)

Which allows us to conclude:

(C) ¬C(w) [Modus Tollens, (4), (5)]

In English: The Word is not a created thing.

That’s it. Three premises, three steps, one conclusion. The argument is deductively valid — the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. And if the premises are true (which they are, if you accept the inspiration of John 1:3 and the impossibility of self-creation), then the conclusion is not just valid but *sound*.

What Follows from ¬C(w)

We’ve proven that the Word is not a created thing. But John doesn’t stop there — and neither should we. The argument has a second stage.

If we accept an exhaustive dichotomy — that everything which exists is either created or uncreated — we can add one more premise:

P4) ∀x(¬C(x) → U(x)) [Everything uncreated is eternal/divine]

Where U(x) = “x is uncreated” (and therefore eternal, self-existent — the defining attributes of God in classical theism). This isn’t smuggling anything in. In the metaphysical framework shared by Jews, Greeks, and Christians in the first century, the division between Creator and creation was exhaustive. There is no third category. You’re either made, or you’re the Maker.

(6) ¬C(w) [Proven above]

(7) ¬C(w) → U(w) [Universal Instantiation, P4, x = w]

(C) U(w) [Modus Ponens, (6), (7)]

In English: The Word is uncreated — eternal, self-existent, divine.

Which is exactly what John says in the very next breath: “the Word was God” (John 1:1c).5 Verse 3 isn’t restating verse 1. It’s *proving* verse 1. The claim that the Word is God in verse 1 is supported by the logical argument embedded in verse 3.

The Complete Derivation

For the sake of clarity, here’s the whole thing in one block:

PREMISES:

P1) ∀x(C(x) → T(x, w)) All created things were made through the Word

P2) ¬∃x(C(x) ∧ ¬T(x, w)) No created thing was made apart from the Word

P3) ¬∃x(T(x, x)) Nothing is the instrument of its own creation

P4) ∀x(¬C(x) → U(x)) Everything not created is uncreated/divine

DERIVATION:

(4) C(w) → T(w, w) Universal Instantiation on P1, x = w

(5) ¬T(w, w) From P3 (instantiated to w)

(6) ¬C(w) Modus Tollens on (4), (5)

(7) ¬C(w) → U(w) Universal Instantiation on P4, x = w

(C) U(w) Modus Ponens on (6), (7)

CONCLUSION:

The Word (w) is uncreated and divine. ∎

Why This Matters: The Arian Problem

This isn’t just an academic exercise. This argument has been at the center of one of the most important theological debates in Christian history.

In the fourth century, Arius argued that the Son was the first and greatest of God’s creations — made before all other things, and then the instrument through which everything else was made. “There was a time when he was not,” as the slogan attributed to Arius goes.6 The Council of Nicaea (325 AD) rejected this, and the Johannine Prologue — including the argument embedded in John 1:3 — was part of the biblical case against him.7

The same debate is alive today. Jehovah’s Witnesses hold an essentially Arian position — that Jesus is a created being, the first thing God made, through whom all other things were subsequently created. Their New World Translation handles John 1:3 by rendering it: “All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence8 So far, so close to the Greek. But the key move comes in their broader theology: they introduce the category of “all *other* things” (see their rendering of Colossians 1:16–17, where they insert the word “other” four times despite its absence in the Greek) to exempt Jesus from the domain of “all things.”9

Here’s the problem. The logic won’t let you do that.

If you accept that the Word was created — C(w) is true — then by Premise 1, T(w, w) must also be true: the Word was made through himself. That’s self-creation. And self-creation is incoherent, not just theologically but logically and metaphysically. The Arian has to either deny Premise 1 (and thereby deny the clear statement of John 1:3a), deny Premise 3 (and affirm the metaphysical absurdity of self-creation), or accept the conclusion.

There’s no fourth option. That’s how deductive arguments work. If the premises are true, the conclusion is inescapable. The universal quantifier ∀x in John 1:3 doesn’t have an asterisk. There’s no footnote that says “except the Word himself.” The whole point of πάντα is its absolute scope.

Arius and his modern heirs aren’t just making a theological error. They’re making a logical one.

John the Theologian — and Logician

What I find remarkable is that all of this is packed into a single verse. Twenty-three words in English. John didn’t write out a formal proof — he didn’t need to. His audience could follow the logic intuitively. But the structure is there, waiting to be unpacked, and it holds up under the most rigorous analysis we can throw at it.

Theologians have long called John’s Gospel the most theologically sophisticated of the four. I’d add that it’s also the most logically sophisticated. The Prologue alone is a masterclass in compressed argumentation — every clause load-bearing, every word doing double duty.

John 1:1 makes the claim: the Word was God. John 1:3 provides the proof. And the proof is deductively valid.

Not bad for a fisherman from Galilee.10

Abstract

The widespread assumption that Christians are biblically mandated to tithe ten percent of their income rests on a conflation of Old Testament cultic obligations with New Testament ethical teaching. This article demonstrates that the Old Testament itself prescribed not one but multiple tithes embedded within the Levitical-agricultural economy of ancient Israel, that the New Testament nowhere reiterates a ten-percent obligation, and that the earliest Christian communities drew their institutional and liturgical patterns from the synagogue rather than the temple. A survey of the major Reformation confessions confirms that the magisterial Reformers consistently classified the tithe under the ceremonial law abrogated by Christ, articulating instead a theology of voluntary, proportional generosity. The New Testament articulates a theology of radical, voluntary, Spirit-led generosity that transcends any fixed percentage.

1. Introduction

Few financial doctrines in contemporary Christianity are as firmly held—and as poorly examined—as the mandatory tithe. Across denominational lines, pastors routinely instruct their congregations that God requires Christians to give ten percent of their income to the local church, usually citing Malachi 3:8–10 as proof that failing to do so constitutes robbery of God. Yet this common teaching conflates several distinct obligations from the Mosaic law, ignores the dramatically different framework of New Testament giving, and overlooks the ecclesiological reality that the early church modeled itself on the synagogue—a voluntary, community-funded institution—rather than the temple, which was sustained by mandatory levies tied to the Levitical priesthood and the land of Israel.

The purpose of this article is fourfold: first, to clarify the nature of Old Testament tithes, demonstrating that they were multiple, agricultural, and covenantally specific; second, to examine the New Testament's explicit teaching on giving, which is consistently voluntary and proportional rather than legislated; third, to show that the church's structural dependence on the synagogue model, rather than the temple model, has implications for how financial support should be conceived in the gathered community of believers; and fourth, to demonstrate that the magisterial Reformers and their confessional documents consistently rejected a binding tithe for the new-covenant church.

2. The Old Testament Tithes: Not One Obligation but Three

Modern tithing advocates typically speak of "the tithe" as though the Old Testament prescribes a single, straightforward ten-percent contribution. In reality, the Pentateuch legislates at least two and arguably three distinct tithes, each serving a different purpose within the theocratic economy of Israel.1

2.1 The Levitical Tithe

The foundational tithe appears in Leviticus 27:30–33 and Numbers 18:21–32. This tithe was given to the Levites, who had received no territorial inheritance in the land, in exchange for their service at the tabernacle and, later, the temple.2 The Levites in turn gave a tithe of the tithe (a "terumah") to the Aaronic priests. This was fundamentally an agricultural tax—it applied to the produce of the land and the increase of herds, not to monetary wages.3 Importantly, it was inseparable from the land-based economy of ancient Israel and the Levitical priesthood's unique position as landless servants of the sanctuary.4

2.2 The Festival Tithe

Deuteronomy 14:22–27 prescribes a second tithe, sometimes called the "festival tithe" or "pilgrimage tithe." This tithe was to be consumed by the worshiper and his household at the central sanctuary during the annual festivals. If the distance to the sanctuary was too great, the produce could be converted to money, which the worshiper would then spend on whatever he desired—"oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink"—and eat in the presence of the Lord.5 This tithe was not given away to religious officials but consumed by the giver as an act of covenant celebration. It was, in effect, a mandated worship expenditure.

2.3 The Poor Tithe

Every third year, a special tithe was collected for the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow (Deut 14:28–29; 26:12–15). Whether this replaced the festival tithe in the third year or was an additional levy is debated among scholars, but its distinct social-welfare purpose is clear.6

2.4 Cumulative Burden

When these tithes are considered together, the total annual obligation for an Israelite farmer was not ten percent but closer to twenty to twenty-three percent of agricultural produce, depending on the year in the three-year cycle.7 This already demonstrates that the popular notion of "the biblical tithe" as a flat ten percent dramatically underrepresents the Old Testament's actual requirements. Moreover, these tithes applied only to agricultural output from the land of Israel; they were not levied on wages, trade income, or other forms of non-agricultural wealth.8

3. The New Testament on Giving: Voluntary, Proportional, Cheerful

If the Old Testament tithe were intended as a permanent, trans-covenantal obligation binding on the people of God in every era, one would expect the New Testament to reiterate and clarify it—especially given the apostles' meticulous attention to ethical instruction for Gentile believers. What one finds instead is a striking silence on the tithe coupled with a rich and consistent theology of voluntary generosity.

3.1 Jesus and the Tithe

Jesus mentions the tithe only twice in the Gospels (Matt 23:23; Luke 11:42), and in both instances he is addressing Pharisees who are still living under the Mosaic covenant in pre-resurrection Israel. He affirms that they should not have neglected the tithe—but his point is to condemn their hypocrisy in tithing herbs while ignoring justice, mercy, and faithfulness.9 This is not a prescription for the post-Pentecost church but a critique of Pharisaic casuistry within the still-operative old-covenant system. Notably, Jesus' most pointed teaching on financial generosity moves far beyond ten percent: he tells the rich young ruler to sell everything (Mark 10:21), commends the widow who gave her last two coins (Mark 12:41–44), and instructs his followers to give to everyone who asks (Luke 6:30).

3.2 The Apostolic Teaching

The apostolic letters contain extended treatments of financial giving—most notably in 1 Corinthians 16:1–4 and 2 Corinthians 8–9—yet none of them mention the tithe. In the Corinthian correspondence, Paul instructs believers to set aside money on the first day of every week "as he may prosper" (1 Cor 16:2), a phrase indicating proportional and voluntary giving rather than a fixed percentage.10 The absence of a specified percentage is conspicuous in light of Paul's well-known willingness to legislate on matters of sexual ethics, food offered to idols, and church order. If the tithe were binding, Paul's silence here would be inexplicable.

Paul's most developed theology of giving appears in 2 Corinthians 8–9, where he holds up the Macedonian churches as an example of generosity. The key operative principle is articulated in 2 Corinthians 9:7: "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."11 The Greek word translated "compulsion" (ἀνάγκη) denotes external necessity or constraint. Paul explicitly excludes the very kind of mandated, percentage-based obligation that a binding tithe would impose. The motivation for giving is joy, not legal duty; the measure is the believer's own heart and means, not a legislated fraction.12

Paul does invoke agricultural metaphors ("whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly," 2 Cor 9:6) and grounds generosity in Christological theology ("though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor," 2 Cor 8:9), but the theological framework is grace and koinonia, not legal compliance.13 The early Jerusalem community practiced radical sharing of possessions (Acts 2:44–45; 4:32–37), but even this was voluntary: Peter explicitly tells Ananias that the property was his to keep or sell as he chose (Acts 5:4).14

3.3 Hebrews and the Obsolescence of the Levitical System

The Epistle to the Hebrews is uniquely relevant to this question because it explicitly addresses the Levitical priesthood and its relationship to the new covenant. The argument of Hebrews 7 is that Jesus' priesthood is "according to the order of Melchizedek," not Aaron (Heb 7:11). Because the priesthood has changed, "there is necessarily a change in the law as well" (Heb 7:12). The author notes that the Levitical priests "have a commandment in the law to take tithes from the people" (7:5) but argues that this entire system has been set aside (ἀθέτησις, 7:18) on account of its "weakness and uselessness."15

This is perhaps the most theologically decisive New Testament text for the question of tithing. The tithe was a commandment given to the Levitical priests. Hebrews explicitly argues that this priesthood and its associated legal ordinances have been superseded by Christ's high-priestly ministry. To insist on the continuing validity of the tithe while accepting the obsolescence of the Levitical priesthood is hermeneutically inconsistent: the tithe is structurally inseparable from the priesthood it funded.16

4. The Church as Heir of the Synagogue, Not the Temple

A frequently overlooked dimension of this question is ecclesiological. The early church's institutional form was patterned not on the Jerusalem temple but on the diaspora synagogue. Lee Levine's comprehensive study of the ancient synagogue demonstrates that it functioned as a community center for Scripture reading, prayer, and instruction—precisely the activities that characterized early Christian gatherings.17

The synagogue had no priesthood, no sacrificial cult, and no mandatory tithe. It was sustained by voluntary donations, patronage, and community contributions.18 When Paul planted churches across the Mediterranean, he established communities that met in homes, read Scripture, prayed, celebrated the Lord's Supper, and heard apostolic teaching—all activities with synagogue parallels, not temple parallels.19 The temple, by contrast, required a hereditary priesthood, daily sacrifices, and the tithe system prescribed in the Torah. The church inherited none of these structures.

This distinction matters because the tithe was a temple institution. It funded the Levitical priesthood and the sacrificial system. When the church is understood as a community modeled on the synagogue—a gathering of the faithful for word, prayer, and mutual edification—the conceptual basis for a mandatory tithe disappears. The early church supported its teachers and cared for its poor through voluntary collections (1 Cor 9:3–14; Gal 6:6; 1 Tim 5:17–18), not through a levied tithe.20

5. Historical Considerations: The Patristic Era

The history of tithing in the post-apostolic church confirms this analysis. Stuart Murray's study of tithing in church history demonstrates that the earliest church fathers—including Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen—did not teach mandatory tithing.21 Irenaeus argued that Christians are freed from the obligation of tithes because they have been taught to devote all their possessions to the Lord's purposes, not merely a tenth.22 The mandatory tithe was not formally imposed in the Western church until the Synod of Mâcon in 585 CE, and it was not enforced as civil law until Charlemagne's legislation in 779 CE—more than seven hundred years after the apostolic period.23

6. The Reformation Confessions and the Tithe

The magisterial Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced a rich body of confessional literature that has defined Protestant orthodoxy for nearly five hundred years. It is therefore significant that none of the major Reformation confessions mandate a tithe. When these documents address financial giving at all, they consistently locate the tithe within the ceremonial or judicial law of Israel—categories of Mosaic legislation that the Reformers unanimously regarded as abrogated by the coming of Christ—and they articulate a standard of giving that is voluntary, proportional, and governed by the moral law of love rather than a fixed percentage.

6.1 The Three-Fold Division of the Law

Central to the Reformers' treatment of the tithe is their classification of the Mosaic law into moral, ceremonial, and judicial (or civil) categories. This hermeneutical framework, inherited from the medieval scholastic tradition but refined and sharpened by the Reformers, provided the mechanism by which they could affirm the abiding authority of the Decalogue while recognizing the obsolescence of the Levitical and civil codes. Calvin articulated this distinction with particular clarity in the Institutes, arguing that the ceremonies were "like a tutor" that pointed to Christ and were therefore annulled at his coming, while the judicial laws, given to Israel as a body politic, expired with the dissolution of that polity.24 Since the tithe belongs either to the ceremonial law (as a Levitical ordinance funding the priesthood) or to the judicial law (as a civil tax supporting the theocratic state), it falls on either reading into the category of abrogated legislation.

6.2 The Thirty-Nine Articles (1571)

The Anglican formulary addresses this question directly. Article VII, "Of the Old Testament," states that "although the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men, nor the Civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth; yet notwithstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral."25 The tithe, as a Levitical ceremony and a civil precept of the Israelite theocracy, is explicitly placed in the categories that "do not bind Christian men." The article makes no exception for the tithe or any other specific element of the ceremonial-civil code.

6.3 The Belgic Confession (1561)

The Belgic Confession, one of the Three Forms of Unity that define Continental Reformed orthodoxy, addresses the relationship between the testaments in Article 25: "We believe that the ceremonies and symbols of the law have ceased with the coming of Christ, and that all shadows have been fulfilled, so that the use of them ought to be abolished among Christians."26 While the article goes on to affirm the ongoing value of the Old Testament for instruction, it is categorical in asserting the cessation of ceremonial obligations. The tithe, as a ceremony embedded in the Levitical cultus, falls squarely within this abolition. The Belgic Confession nowhere introduces a replacement obligation of any specified percentage.

6.4 The Heidelberg Catechism (1563)

The Heidelberg Catechism treats financial ethics under the eighth commandment ("You shall not steal"). Question and Answer 111 defines the scope of this commandment positively: God requires "that I do whatever I can for my neighbor's good, that I treat others as I would like them to treat me, and that I work faithfully so that I may share with those in need."27 The catechism's treatment of financial obligation is entirely governed by the moral law of neighbor-love, not by any ceremonial percentage. The standard is "whatever I can" and "share with those in need"—language that is open-ended and proportional, not fixed at ten percent.

6.5 Calvin on the Tithe

John Calvin's exegetical treatment of the tithe is particularly important given his immense influence on the Reformed tradition. In his commentary on Malachi 3:8–10, Calvin acknowledges the original force of the passage within its old-covenant context but does not apply the tithe as a binding obligation for the Christian church. In the Institutes, he argues that the ceremonial laws were given to the Jews "until the fullness of time should come" and that to reimpose them would be to obscure the clarity of the gospel.28 In his commentary on 2 Corinthians 8–9, Calvin emphasizes that Paul's collection for the saints in Jerusalem was governed by the principle of voluntary equality (ἰσότης), not by a legislated fraction.29 Calvin does insist that Christians must give generously and that ministers deserve support, but his framework is one of moral obligation rooted in gratitude, not ceremonial compliance with a fixed rate.

6.6 The Westminster Standards (1646–1648)

The Westminster Confession of Faith, the doctrinal standard of Presbyterian and Reformed churches worldwide, is perhaps the most detailed of the Reformation confessions on the relationship between the covenants and the law. Chapter 19 ("Of the Law of God") explicitly articulates the three-fold division: the moral law binds all persons in all ages (19.5); the ceremonial laws "are now abrogated under the New Testament" (19.3); and the judicial laws "expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other, now, further than the general equity thereof may require" (19.4).30 Since the tithe is a Levitical-ceremonial ordinance inseparable from the priesthood and the temple system, WCF 19.3 places it among the abrogated laws. And since it functioned simultaneously as a civil tax within the Israelite theocracy, WCF 19.4 further classifies it among the expired judicial laws.

The Westminster Larger Catechism addresses financial ethics in its exposition of the eighth commandment. Question 141, on the duties required, includes the obligation of "giving and lending freely, according to our abilities, and the necessities of others."31 The operative standard is "our abilities" and "the necessities of others"—a proportional, situational standard that varies with the giver's capacity and the recipient's need. Question 142, on the sins forbidden, condemns "covetousness, inordinate prizing and affecting worldly goods" and "injustice and unfaithfulness in contracts."32 Nowhere in the catechism's detailed treatment of financial ethics does a ten-percent obligation appear. The silence is telling: the Westminster divines, who were meticulous in their precision, chose to frame financial obligation in terms of ability and need rather than a fixed percentage.

6.7 The Second Helvetic Confession (1566)

Heinrich Bullinger's Second Helvetic Confession, widely adopted across Reformed churches in Switzerland, Hungary, and Scotland, addresses church property and the support of ministers in Chapter 28. Bullinger affirms that "the possessions of the Church" should be administered faithfully and that ministers deserve adequate support, but he grounds this obligation in apostolic precedent (1 Cor 9; Gal 6:6) rather than in the Levitical tithe. Chapter 28 refers to "tithes" in a historical register, acknowledging their former use, but treats the support of the ministry as a matter of Christian duty governed by the moral law, not as a continuation of the Mosaic tithe.33 Bullinger's approach is characteristic of the broader Reformed position: ministers must be supported, but the basis is new-covenant generosity, not old-covenant legislation.

6.8 Luther and the Lutheran Confessions

Martin Luther's position on the tithe underwent significant development. In his earlier writings, Luther accepted the tithe as a civil obligation owed to secular authorities, but he consistently denied that it was a binding divine commandment for the new-covenant church. In his treatise On Trade and Usury (1524), he addressed economic obligations in terms of neighbor-love and the golden rule, not Levitical percentages.34 In his Lectures on Deuteronomy (1523–1524), Luther explicitly classified the tithe among the judicial laws of Moses that applied to the Israelite polity and not to the Christian church.35 The Augsburg Confession (1530) does not mention the tithe. The Formula of Concord (1577), in its discussion of the third use of the law, limits the binding force of divine law to the Decalogue and does not extend it to ceremonial or judicial statutes.36 The Lutheran confessional tradition thus provides no basis for a mandatory tithe.

6.9 Summary: The Confessional Consensus

The confessional consensus of the Reformation is clear and remarkably uniform across its Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed branches: the tithe belongs to the ceremonial and/or judicial law of Israel, both of which have been abrogated by Christ. No major Reformation confession mandates a ten-percent contribution. Where financial obligation is addressed, it is consistently framed in terms of the moral law—proportional generosity governed by ability and need, motivated by gratitude and love, and directed by the believer's own conscience. The modern practice of teaching the tithe as a binding divine commandment thus lacks not only New Testament warrant but also the support of the confessional tradition that most Protestant churches claim as their doctrinal heritage.

7. Conclusion

The evidence presented here converges on a clear conclusion: the New Testament does not mandate a tithe. The Old Testament tithes were multiple, agricultural, and bound to the Levitical priesthood and the land of Israel. The New Testament teaching on giving is explicitly voluntary, proportional, and grounded in grace rather than legal obligation. The Epistle to the Hebrews declares the Levitical system—including the commandment to tithe—superseded by the priesthood of Christ. The church's structural inheritance from the synagogue rather than the temple removes the institutional basis for a mandatory levy. The earliest church fathers did not teach mandatory tithing. And the Reformation confessions—across Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed traditions—unanimously classify the tithe as abrogated ceremonial or judicial law, articulating instead a standard of voluntary, proportional generosity rooted in the moral law of love.37

None of this implies that Christians should give less generously. Precisely the opposite: the New Testament envisions a generosity uncapped by any percentage, motivated by the grace of Christ and the power of the Spirit, and directed by the believer's own conscience. The Macedonians gave beyond their ability (2 Cor 8:3). The Jerusalem church shared everything (Acts 4:32). The early Christians were known for their generosity to the poor and to one another. The Reformers themselves insisted that Christians owe everything to God and that the moral law demands lavish generosity toward the neighbor—a standard that may well exceed ten percent for those with means. The question is not whether Christians should give, but on what basis—and the answer of the New Testament, the church fathers, and the Reformation confessions alike is not law but love, not compulsion but cheerful, sacrificial freedom.

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I’m six weeks into something I didn’t see coming.

Every morning, somewhere around 5:45, I sit down with a cup of coffee and a new friend - the Book of Common Prayer. I open to the Daily Office, find the date, and start reading aloud. “Lord, open our lips. And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.” I follow along with a podcast called the Daily Office Podcast, which walks through morning prayer step by step, and I read the appointed psalms and scriptures and collects right there from my office easy chair in Medical Lake.

I’m not Anglican. I’m PCA — Presbyterian Church in America, Reformed, the whole deal. I grew up in dispensational Southern Baptist churches, found my way out of that system in my twenties, landed in the Reformed tradition, and have been there since. I studied Greek in college. I teach occasionally. I’ve read more Calvin than most people would consider healthy.

So what am I doing with the Book of Common Prayer?

Here’s the thing — I think it’s teaching me how to pray again.

I come from a tradition that prizes extemporaneous prayer. You bow your head, you talk to God in your own words, you mean it. And I do mean it. But I’d noticed something over the years. Left to my own devices, my prayers had become almost entirely about me. My anxieties. My plans. My requests. I’d sit down to pray and within thirty seconds I was running through my to-do list with a “Lord” tacked on the front.

The BCP short-circuits that. When I open to morning prayer, the words are already there — and they’re pointed at God. His character. His faithfulness. His mercy. The psalms do what psalms have always done (which is everything — lament, praise, confusion, rage, trust). The collects are these impossibly compressed little prayers that somehow say in two sentences what I’d fumble around trying to say in ten minutes.

I didn’t expect it to click so fast. I thought written prayers would feel rote, performative — like reading someone else’s mail. They don’t. They feel like being handed a vocabulary I didn’t know I was missing.

My wife started on this trajectory before me. She uses a different podcast — one by the Trinity Mission — and does her own morning prayer. We didn’t coordinate this. I don’t know what got her started, but she really resonates with it.

But here’s where it gets good. At night, we do Compline together.

Compline is the last office of the day — a short evening prayer, maybe ten minutes. We lie in bed and read it aloud, trading off the versicles and responses. “The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end.” There’s a prayer of confession. There’s a psalm. There’s a moment where you commend yourself to God before sleep — “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.”

We’ve been married thirty-one years. We’ve done devotionals together, read books together, prayed together in the usual free-church way — eyes closed, someone starts talking. Most of the time, it hasn’t stuck. This is different. There’s something about reading these ancient words side by side, out loud, that strips away the pressure to perform. Neither of us has to come up with the right thing to say. The prayer is already written. We just show up and pray it.

I want to be clear — this isn’t a critique of the PCA (though I wish we recited the creeds more) or of extemporaneous prayer. I’m not becoming Anglican. I still believe free prayer is vital. But I’ve found something in another tradition that’s filling a gap I didn’t fully recognize was there.

Cranmer and the compilers who came after him — they knew what they were doing. They built a prayer book that takes you outside yourself. That’s no small thing for a guy in his fifties who’s spent decades praying prayers that orbit his own life like a satellite.

Most nights now (we’re not perfect), my wife and I end the day the same way. Same words. Same commendation to the same God.

It’s only been a month. I’m not an expert on any of this. But I know what it’s done already.

It’s taught me to shut up and let the prayer pray me.

Dear [name redacted],

I hear you when you say ICE is “just law enforcement,” and I want to engage with that seriously, because the comparison matters—and it breaks down in ways that should concern anyone who values the rule of law, regardless of where they stand on immigration policy.

Where ICE Does Resemble Law Enforcement

Let’s start with the fair part of the comparison. ICE agents are federally authorized law enforcement officers. They carry badges and firearms. They undergo academy training. Their authority derives from the Immigration and Nationality Act, and Congress has granted them statutory power to arrest individuals they have reason to believe are in violation of immigration law.1 They can conduct vehicle stops. They can make warrantless arrests in public when they believe someone is removable and likely to flee.2 In these respects, ICE is functionally a law enforcement agency—nobody credible disputes that.

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Where the Comparison Falls Apart: Structural Differences

But there are critical structural differences between ICE and every other law enforcement agency you’ve ever interacted with, and these aren’t trivial.

First, immigration enforcement is overwhelmingly civil, not criminal. This matters enormously, because civil proceedings carry far fewer protections. When a police officer arrests you for a crime, you have a right to an attorney. In civil immigration proceedings, you don’t—the government is not required to provide you one, even though the consequence (deportation, indefinite detention, family separation) can be as life-altering as any criminal sentence.3 You can be detained for months or years while your case is adjudicated, without the procedural safeguards we take for granted in criminal court.

Second, ICE operates largely on administrative warrants—documents signed by ICE’s own officials, not by a judge or magistrate. A police detective who wants to arrest you needs to convince a neutral judge that probable cause exists. ICE issues its own warrants internally. These administrative warrants don’t authorize entry into a home (only judicial warrants do), but they are routinely used to detain people in public spaces and workplaces without any judicial review whatsoever.4 This is a fundamentally different accountability structure than what governs your local police department.

Third, there is no right to a speedy trial. People can sit in immigration detention for months with no hearing. The government has argued—and in some cases succeeded—that certain categories of noncitizens are subject to mandatory detention with no bond hearing at all, even people who have lived and worked lawfully in the U.S. for decades.5

Where ICE Is Acting Unlike Any Law Enforcement Agency in Modern American History

Now, beyond these structural differences, look at how ICE is actually behaving right now. This is where “just law enforcement” becomes impossible to defend with a straight face.

Masking and Refusal to Identify

ICE agents are now routinely conducting arrests wearing ski masks and balaclavas, in plainclothes, without visible badges, and refusing to identify themselves when asked.6 This is not how law enforcement works. Your local police officer wears a uniform, displays a badge number, and can be identified and reported for misconduct. The former acting director of ICE under President Obama said he never saw agents wearing masks during his tenure—the practice began in March 2025.7

Human Rights Watch has documented 18 cases of people arrested by unidentifiable individuals who couldn’t tell if they were being detained by the government or kidnapped. In one case, a woman named Öztürk was grabbed on the street by masked people who seized her phone and backpack and handcuffed her; when she asked to see their badges, one flashed a gold necklace. She later said: “I didn’t think that they were the police because I had never seen police approach and take someone away like this.”8

The FBI issued a nationwide bulletin after criminals began successfully impersonating ICE agents—because when real agents look indistinguishable from criminals, that’s what happens. In North Carolina, a man impersonated an ICE officer to sexually assault a woman. In Pittsburgh, a man broke into a home through a kitchen window claiming to be ICE while wielding a knife.9

Multiple states have now passed or introduced laws requiring ICE agents to identify themselves, and the federal government is suing to block those laws.10 As one Chicago community organizer put it: “If you don’t know who is doing something to you, you don’t know how you’re supposed to protect yourself.”11 When “law enforcement” fights for the right to be anonymous while exercising lethal force, something has gone deeply wrong.

Use of Force

Since July 2025, there have been at least 31 shootings by immigration agents, resulting in 8 deaths—including two U.S. citizens killed during operations in Minneapolis: Renee Good on January 7 and Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026.12 The Wall Street Journal identified at least 13 instances of agents firing at or into civilian vehicles,13 despite the fact that ICE’s own handbook explicitly states that firearms shall not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles.14 In FY2023, ICE agents were involved in 5 shootings total.15 In one year, that number has increased by orders of magnitude.

In dozens of legal claims filed between June and December 2025, people alleged they were tackled, thrown to the ground, had knees pressed into their faces and necks, were pepper-sprayed, and punched repeatedly. In one case, an ICE agent used a carotid chokehold—a potentially fatal technique that blocks breathing—on a man sitting in his car, despite DHS policy prohibiting chokeholds unless deadly force is authorized.16

And here’s a telling statistic: according to the CATO Institute, ICE and Border Patrol agents are 5.5 times less likely to be killed on the job than a civilian—and non-immigration law enforcement officers had a death rate 6.3 times higher than immigration agents in 2025.17 The escalation in force is not proportional to the threat these agents face.

Defiance of Court Orders

This is perhaps the most damning point. In January 2026 alone, ICE violated approximately 96 court orders in Minnesota federal courts—in a single month.18 Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz—a George W. Bush appointee and former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia—compiled the list and wrote:

“ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”19

He also wrote: “ICE is not a law unto itself.”20

When courts ordered detainees released, ICE instead transferred them to other states, imposed ankle monitors the court never authorized, held them for days or weeks past explicit release deadlines, or left them outside in Minnesota winter without money, phones, or means of contact.21 Judge Schiltz summoned ICE’s acting director to appear personally in court to explain why he should not be held in contempt, writing that the court’s “patience is at an end.”22

In over 1,600 habeas cases, more than 300 federal judges have found ICE’s detention practices illegal—while only 14 have sided with the administration.23 Law enforcement, by definition, enforces the law. An agency that systematically defies the orders of the judiciary is not “enforcing” anything—it is operating outside the law.

Detention Conditions and Deaths

Thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025—a two-decade high. Six more died in January 2026 alone.24 Organizations have documented overcrowding, lack of medical care, and denial of access to legal representation in facilities across the country. One detention facility in El Paso, Camp East Montana, saw three deaths in a matter of weeks.25 When people die in government custody at this rate, with this little transparency, calling it “law enforcement” is a euphemism.

Arrests in Sensitive Locations

ICE has made arrests in courthouses, at regularly scheduled immigration appointments, and near schools—locations that were previously treated as sensitive and off-limits under longstanding policy.26 In Franklin County, Ohio, ICE has arrested 18 people inside the courthouse since 2025.27 When people fear going to court to testify as witnesses or victims, the entire criminal justice system is undermined. No serious law enforcement agency deliberately sabotages the courts it depends on.

The Bottom Line

Yes, ICE has statutory authority. Yes, it employs sworn officers. Yes, Congress created it. But “law enforcement” is not just a label—it’s a set of norms, constraints, and accountability mechanisms. Law enforcement officers identify themselves. They comply with court orders. They don’t claim absolute immunity. They don’t operate anonymously while shooting civilians. They submit to oversight and investigation when things go wrong. By every one of these measures, ICE is not operating as law enforcement in any recognizable sense of the term. It is operating as something else—something that should alarm anyone who cares about the rule of law, regardless of how they feel about immigration.

The administration has argued for “absolute immunity” for ICE officers—meaning lawsuits would be dismissed without even reaching the investigative discovery phase.28 Not qualified immunity, which already provides substantial protection. Absolute immunity—the kind normally reserved for judges and prosecutors acting in their official capacity. No law enforcement agency in America operates under absolute immunity, because the entire concept is antithetical to accountability. If ICE is “just law enforcement,” why does it need protections that no other law enforcement agency has ever required?

This doesn’t even get into the ethical considerations. Should Christians support a regime where immigrants (or any human being creating in the image of God) are denied basic rights of due process and freedom from state violence? This shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer biblically. Sadly, for too many, it is.

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We had great accommodations in the center of town, just around the corner from the arena the Romans built there and time has mercifully spared. To get acquainted with the city, we spent our first morning on one of those hop-on-hop-off sightseeing buses. Yes, they can be a little pricey, but they’re a great way to get the lay of the land in an unfamiliar city.

It was on the bus that I saw it at the end of the street. It was clearly a cemetery. I would later find out that it is called the Cimitero Monumentale. But what caught my eye was not the ornate sculptures at the entrance, sublime though they were. It was one word, carved into the facade in huge letters, so it cannot be missed: Resurrecturis.

I absolutely love this. This memorial, built as a house to remember the dead, proudly thumbs its metaphorical nose at the whole concept. “Hey Death! You will not have the last word here. These graves will be emptied, the bodies planted here restored to life and wholeness. So enjoy your mini-reign. It is coming to a sure and certain end! Resurrecturis!”

Paul basically says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15:54-55:

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

“Death is swallowed up in victory.
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”

A couple of months ago, our church said “goodbye” to a deacon, husband and father of two young kids. His wife is one of my wife’s best friends. David was a good man, whose faith never wavered in the face of cancer, pain and decline. We all miss him terribly. I regret not having more time to get to know him better.

David’s funeral was a party. We celebrated a life gone too soon but well lived. We shared stories that made everyone laugh. His daughter shared a poem she had written, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

And we remembered together that this “goodbye” is not forever.

The promise stands.

Jesus said “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25)

When he comes again, those bodies buried in that cemetery in northern Italy, and my friend David, and all who have died in Christ, will emerge from those graves, whole and fully alive. And I can imagine us all thumbing our nose at death. “Is that all you got? What kind of victory is that?” Maybe we’ll blow raspberries at the grave. Maybe (if such a thing is allowed to sinless beings) a middle finger or two or ten million will be raised in salute to Death.

Resurrecturis. Latin for “for those who will rise again.” Or as I like to translate it: “Laugh it up, Death. Your time is coming.”

It was Saturday morning when I saw the news of the US government’s infiltration of Venezuela and the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife. I was deeply distressed by this action, though not surprised - the Trump administration seems to cross lines at a steady clip these days - and I posted on Facebook that I was ashamed of my country for taking such a step.

Within hours, the predictable reactions poured into my comments thread. That high school acquaintance who always responds whenever I say anything critical of Trump showed up, right on cue. The former coworker accusing me of “Trump derangement syndrome.” I tried to engage in conversation, to explain my alarm at the administration’s actions. Would we be OK if Russia did this to Ukraine? Or China to Taiwan? Or Iran to Israel? Or, God forbid, what if some bold country did it to the United States?

A friend asked if I was ashamed of the country or just the administration. A fair question. “Both” was my answer. We knew what Trump was and we handed him the keys a second time, after January 6. We as a nation bear responsibility for Trump and his actions. We share in the blame.

The comments that really stung, however, were from two former pastors of mine, men whom I respect deeply, who have given their lives to serve the homeless community in Spokane. One asked how many overdoses I would be OK with. This seemed to me to be uncharacteristically naive, since most overdoses in Spokane are fentanyl-related, and Venezuela has no active role in the manufacture or distribution of fentanyl to the US. Grabbing Maduro won’t prevent a single overdose in Spokane, I’d wager.

The second just called me a “leftist.” Because I disagree with Trump, I cannot be a conservative, or even a moderate. I have to be one of those commies on the left.

I had no desire to argue with these men (or the other commenters), though there were certainly arguments to be made. So I deleted the post yesterday.

Upon reflection, I’ve realized a few things.

First, Facebook (and social media in general) has coarsened the civility of our discourse. We say things in comment threads that we would never say face to face. My pastor friend would never call me a leftist to my face, but on Facebook, all bets are off. (And to be clear, I’m guilty of this too. I did tell one of my commenters “don’t be an idiot” - not the most charitable of takes.)

Second, and related, it is nearly impossible to have a reasoned dialogue - a frank and charitable discussion of matters of importance - on social media. The medium may not be the message, but it certainly taints the message. I am convinced that if social media were to disappear, much of our national division would disappear too.

I want to have reasoned discussions with people, not shouting matches. Posting on Facebook was a mistake, and the results were predictable. I got the shouting match, not the discussion.

And so I have made a decision. I will not make substantive posts on Facebook in 2026. I will not contribute to the shouting match. I will not listen to the siren song of ad hominem attacks or “owning” my interlocutors in comment threads. It’s ultimately dehumanizing, and I want no part of it.

Why not delete my account altogether? Unfortunately, there are many friends that I only have a connection with though social media. Former professors, high school and college friends, distant relatives - people I don’t want to lose contact with entirely. That’s what Facebook is good for, if it is good for anything.

I’ll continue to write on my Substack, and try to elevate the discourse there with thoughtful writing (subscribe if you haven’t!). I’ll link to my articles on Facebook, with the comments turned off. I’m happy to engage with anyone who wants to, but through email or face to face.

And if it lowers the temperature, even a little bit, then I will have done my part.

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Specifically, a mobile app. I have been working on an app that manages home libraries. Because if you’re like me, your books are a mess, and it’s impossible to find the book you’re looking for at any given moment.

So I’m building a tool to fix that. All you need to do is scan in your books using your iPhone’s camera, and it will look up the information about that book, add each book to your library and note what shelf it’s on. You can also add notes, lend the book out and keep track of who has it, and other fun stuff.

The app is called Shelves, and I plan to launch it this fall. If you’d like to be notified when it launches, or to be part of a beta testing group, please visit shelvesapp.com and sign up for the waitlist.

I’d also be honored if you’d share this link with your book hoarding friends!

I remember sitting in the front row, equal parts starstruck and grateful for the opportunity, hanging on every word. MacArthur was an exegete’s exegete, and I had already decided what kind of preacher I wanted to be - one who did the hard work of study and preparation, and who preached without compromise. MacArthur was my hero, and here he was, standing not 6 feet away. I felt like I was watching a master at work.

So of course I took the chance during a break to introduce myself and ask a question. “Dr. MacArthur, I’m going to college next year to study the Bible and prepare for ministry. Do you have any advice for me?” I half expected to receive a gentle admonition for not going to California to study as his school, but what I got back was life-changing. “I’ll give you a charge, and a recommendation. The charge: Always preach the text. Always. The recommendation: Take Greek as soon as you can, as much as you can.”

I took the recommendation to heart, signing up for Greek 100 the fall semester of my freshman year, and I took 3 more semesters in my undergraduate studies. Of everything I learned during my undergrad years, learning Greek was the most impactful.

I didn’t go straight to seminary after school as I had originally planned. (I didn’t get a seminary degree until my 50’s!) I ended up married with children, with a lucrative career in software, but I always would volunteer in my local church, occasionally getting to preach or teach Sunday School. (I even did a stint as a bivocational pastor, which meant I was preaching every week for a while.) But in every sermon, I preached the text. I don’t get many opportunities to preach nowadays, but when I do, I preach the text.

As I grew older and studied more, I left behind the dispensationalism of my youth. Other influences had a larger sway in my life. And MacArthur took some stances that I simply didn’t agree with. We grew apart, if you can say that where one party doesn’t know the other exists! Still, I am grateful for those years under MacArthur’s influence, learning from his example what it means to exegete a text of Scripture. I am thankful for the charge he gave me, and the advice about learning Greek. It shaped my ministry and changed my life.

Rest in peace, Pastor John.

Ephesians 1:3-14 is a tangled mess, grammatically speaking. Our English translations (thankfully) break it up into multiple sentences (the ESV divides it into 5 sentences, each of them more lengthy than the average English sentence), but in Greek. One gigantic run-on sentence that spans 12 verses. It’s the longest sentence all the New Testament.

If you tried to diagram this sentence, you’d need one very large piece of paper. (I tried after taking the Ephesians class in my undergrad days I spoke of in my introduction to this series, and I ended up taping multiple sheets of typing paper together. If memory serves, it took something like 12 sheets.). Grammatically, that means that there’s one main verb, and every other verb in this passage somehow modifies the main verb.

That main verb is “blessed” at the beginning of verse 3. In Greek, the verb is ευλογητος1 (eulogētos) - the word from which we get the English term eulogy. It’s literally a “good word” about it’s subject - here “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The difference of course is that the modern word implies a funeral oration, whereas the original word does not carry that connotation.

God the Father is singled out here for praise. Why? Keep reading. “Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, which the subsequent verses will enumerate and expound on.

But before we look at that long (and frankly convoluted) list, a few general comments are in order.

It may be helpful to divide the passage thusly: 4-6; 7-12; 13-14. The first section focuses on the activity of the Father, the second on the Son, and the third on the Spirit. This is a very Trinitarian passage, showing how each member of the Trinity has contributed to our salvation.

There is also a temporal progression to the passage. Paul starts in eternity past, “before the foundation of the world” (v. 3) and runs all the way through the receipt of our future inheritance at the final resurrection in verse 14.

Next time: What in the world does “in the heavenly places” mean in verse 3?

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I, to put it mildly, am not a gym rat. I have a gym membership, but I seldom go. When I do go, I’ll huff and puff on the machines, curl a few dumbbells, and do the things that gym people do. I’ll go home, ache the next morning, and make precisely zero progress. My arms won’t be stronger, I won’t have magically developed six-pack abs during the night, and my fifty-something dad bod remains a fifty-something dad bod.

Why? Because I didn’t put in the reps.

If I made it a habit to go to the gym every day and hit the weights, I have no doubt I’d see progress. But I haven’t. Because a simple rule of life gets in my way: If I don’t put in the reps, I won’t make progress.

The same is true in other areas of my life. If I don’t tidy up every day, my office will become a mess. My skills at playing the mandolin will not develop by me staring at the instrument hanging on its hook. I won’t develop in my writing craft if I don’t apply butt to chair and write.

This week, I’m taking a couple days off work to attend a preaching workshop put on by the Simeon Trust. It’s been 13 years since I was a bivocational pastor, preaching every week. I don’t get opportunities to preach that often these days, but should the Lord provide me with one, I want to be ready, not rusty. So this week, I’m putting in the reps.

I’m trying to put in the reps in other areas as well. I’m currently rehabbing a frozen shoulder, so I’m making it a point to do the exercises every morning. I’m trying to publish something a couple times a week in this space, and get in the habit of pitching articles for publication in other media. (I just had a book review published by the Gospel Coalition, so things are in motion on that front!) I’m picking up my Greek New Testament more and more, trying to relearn a language I first learned 35 years ago. It’s tough work, but I’m determined.

In what areas or your life are you putting in the reps? How can we encourage each other?

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 1:1-2 ESV)

Letters in the Greco-Roman world were addressed differently then those in the modern day. Today, we start with the recipient, and identify ourselves at the very end. But in the ancient words, they would state the author first, followed by the recipient(s), and finally a word of greeting (usually charein, which meant “greetings”).

So the heading might run like this: “John to Matthew, greetings!”

Paul follows this pattern in his letters, but with a few modifications. He will usually say something about himself, some things about his companions, then give a greeting that is really more of a blessing upon his audience.

Notice first how he describes himself: An apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. As some of his other letters make clear, Paul was used to having his apostleship questioned. The other apostles were with Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, and were eyewitness of his resurrection. Paul, as far as we know, never encountered Jesus during his earthly ministry.

But make no mistake, Paul did encounter the risen Jesus. Paul’s vision of Christ on the Damascus road not only was Paul’s conversion experience, it was his commissioning ceremony. Paul was hand-picked by Jesus, just the same as Matthew or Philip. And Paul never got over the experience that changed the course of his life. He was an apostle by the will of God.

The recipients are described as “the saints who are in Ephesus, faithful in Christ Jesus”. Interestingly, many of the early manuscripts of this letter omit the words “in Ephesus,” leading most scholars to conjecture that Ephesians was an encyclical letter, intended to be passed around among the churches of the region. The relative lack of personal greetings in the letter lends further support to this theory.

Whoever the recipients were, they were described as “saints” (literally “holy ones”) and “faithful in Christ Jesus.” As such, he can speak of the immense blessings that are their possession by virtue of being in Christ. There is no hint of division or error as there was in Corinth or the churches of Galatia.

Finally, Paul, as is his custom, swaps the normal Greek greeting charein with the similar but much more profound charis (grace). Grace is central to Paul’s thought, and is a major theme of Ephesians. He couples this greeting with the Greek term eirene (peace), almost certainly meant to stand for the Hebrew shalom.

Finally, he locates the source of the grace and peace in “God our Father” and “the Lord Jesus Christ.” By using the title kurios (Lord) for Jesus - a title used of YHWH in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint - Paul is putting his cards on the table, so to speak: Jesus is God the Son and should be honored and worshipped as such.

Next time: The longest run-on sentence in the Bible!

I love Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. My love affair with this book started in January 1995, when as a bright-eyed college freshman, I took an upper level January term class on Ephesians. If I recall correctly, there were only about 8 of us in the class. For four days a week, two hours a day, for four weeks, we lived and breathed Ephesians. 32 hours of instruction, discussion, and (occasionally) argument over the text of Scripture and what it meant. It was glorious. It was one of the happiest experiences of my life. It remains - 30 years later - one of my favorite memories.

We didn’t finish the book - not by a long shot. In those 32 hours, we barely made it to the end of chapter 3. Ephesians is such a dense book. Around every corner is a new gem, a nugget of truth that will take your breath away. Ephesians is one of those books that requires you to slow down and pay attention.

I recently reread through Ephesians during my morning devotions, and all those memories have been flooding back to me. I found my love for this book rekindled.

Strangely, I’ve never taught or preached through Ephesians, like I have other books like Romans, Philippians or Hebrews. So that’s my plan here. I propose to do a guided tour of sorts of Ephesians: not as in depth (or as boring, hopefully) as a commentary, but acting as a tour guide would - pointing out items of interest along the way.

I hope you’ll join me on the tour. I’ll publish new entries twice a week. If you’d like to receive these in your inbox, then take a moment to subscribe. (It’s free!) If you know someone who would enjoy this, I hope you’ll share it.

And finally, like a good tour guide, I want to be sure to answer your questions along the way. If you have questions, or just want to share your thoughts, drop a comment and let me know.

Posts in this series:

• Dear Church (Ephesians 1:1-2)

• The Tangled Eulogy (Ephesians 1:3-14)

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- I live in a small town near Spokane, WA, a city not large enough for mass transit other than a bus network. So it’s a change of pace when I go to European cities and can avail myself of the metros (subways) and the trams. Clean, efficient, and used by all classes of people. What’s really nice is the train network. In Lisbon, we took trains to Sintra and Cascais, and on a previous visit to Amsterdam, we took the train to Haarlem. Cities in Europe don’t confine you - it’s easy to get out of town and explore without renting a car.

- I would not own a car if I lived in a large European city. What would be the point?

- Walking is far more common in Europe, which probably explains why obesity is so less frequent in Europe - it’s certainly not that the food is healthier! Walking is a great way to explore a city.

- Amsterdam is a cyclist’s paradise. Bike lanes cover the city, and the cyclists ride like they own the place (which they do). Step in a bike lane at your peril!

- Europeans do coffee much better than Americans. Much better.

- Lisbon is a beautiful city. In Lisbon, most buildings are covered in hand-painted tiles, and they are beautiful. The Jeronimos Monastery had a room with painted tiles telling the Biblical story of Joseph that was breathtaking. Even the sidewalks were done in tiles, which are beautiful, but can get slippery when it rains. Did I mention that Lisbon, like Rome, is built on seven hills?

- Lisbon has its own version of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue. It’s called Cristo Rei (Christ the King) and it faces the city from across the Tagus River. We could see it (barely) from our hotel window.

- Sintra - an hour’s train ride out of Lisbon - is a must-do if you ever make it to Portugal. The Pena Palace is nice, but in my opinion the grounds are more beautiful than the castle/palace. Don’t miss the Quinta da Regaleira and its Initiation Well - so called because the descending spiral stairs were used in Freemason initiation ceremonies. (Wait - does that make me a Freemason now?)

- In Cascais, we found a cafe whose mission is to provide employment for developmentally delayed people. It’s called Cafe Joyeux, and I love their mission. It was a delight to interact with the employees and see the dignity with which they are treated in their jobs. (Plus, the coffee cake was pretty good!)

- In Lisbon, we visited (after a couple wrong turns) the Livraria Bertrand, the oldest continually operating bookstore in the world. A cool experience!

- Also in Lisbon, we took in a Fado dinner. Fado, for the uninitiated, is a uniquely Portuguese form of music - kind of opera meets blues. We got 4 mini-concerts and a great meal (and superb wine).

- We were in Lisbon on a Sunday morning, so we visited St. Andrew’s Church for their morning service. We had a warm welcome by the whole congregation - right down to the dog sleeping under the piano!

- In Amsterdam, I had one day to explore the city. So I hopped the metro to Museumplein (the museum district), had breakfast, and just made it to the Rijksmuseum for my 9 AM entry time. (The larger museums in Amsterdam require you to prepurchase tickets with a stated entry time. I had booked the week before, but sadly the Van Gogh museum was booked several months out. Next time!). The Rijksmuseum is large - plan a half-day at least. The Night Watch by Rembrandt - probably the most famous work of art in the museum - is being restored, so you can’t get a good look at it. But there are several other Rembrandts in the collection, along with some Vermeers and a few Van Goghs, including his famous self-portrait.

- French fries with mayo is a thing in Amsterdam. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but I couldn’t finish mine. Total gut bomb!

- I had the best apple pie/tart in my life at Winkel 43, a restaurant in the Jordaan district of Amsterdam. If you go, don’t miss it!

- It was nice to be away from the political turmoil of the US for a while. But the little bit of political talk I heard was apprehensive about the Trumpian turn in American politics. But for all that, no one was unfriendly toward us because we were Americans. In fact, the people were uniformly pleasant.

- At breakfast on my Rijksmuseum day, the people at the table next to me were talking about university life in Europe. Higher education is valued, and usually free (or heavily subsidized) in Europe. I’m a little jealous.

- It grieves me that, in the city that gave us Kuyper and Bavinck, these two giants are uncelebrated. In fact, except for a few old churches that are now functionally museums, there is no visible sign of a vibrant Christian faith in this country, and few in Portugal. Europe is truly post-Christian.

Somehow, the topic of conversation turned to politics, and I was a little apprehensive. I know Rebekah’s family are very conservative politically, and are generally supportive of Donald Trump. I assumed the same of most of the people helping, and so my wife and I had resolved not to engage on the topic - who wants a political argument to spoil a happy occasion?

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What I didn’t expect was for Rebekah to say something to the effect of “Why can’t we just set the political stuff aside in our churches and love one another like Jesus said?” Nodding heads all around from the twenty-somethings in the group. They had no interest in politics. They weren’t radicalized liberals by any stretch. But they knew enough to know that politics has no place in the church.

Everyone decries the rise of the “nones” - those with no religious affiliation - and the general flight of Gen Z from church. But I wonder if it’s not Christianity per se that they’re running from, but the overpoliticization of our churches?

I often assist with serving communion at my home church in Spokane. Last Sunday, I was floored by the number of college-age students in attendance coming up to receive the sacrament. They are hungry - for the gospel, for deep Biblical truths. But I think there’s something else to it as well. Our pastor (praise be upon him) allows no political talk from the pulpit. There are Trump supporters and Harris voters and third-party supporters in our congregation, and we all get along, because what unites us is not party affiliation, but the presence of Jesus in our lives.

I’m not worried about Rebekah and Zach and Gen Z. They’ll be fine. I am worried about the Boomers and Gen X’ers who so entangle politics and Christianity, and the harm they are doing to the cause of Christ.

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Several authors I admire talk frequently about a sense of place - of being rooted to a specific town or house or community. I haven’t had that since I was a boy. We’ve moved around too much, and never seemed to create strong attachments in any place. Oh sure, we’ve made friends in our travels, but never such that we were sad to leave a place.

The town in which we currently live, Medical Lake, Washington, has a population of around 5000 people. My wife is a substitute teacher in the school district, so she knows a lot of the people (and their kids). I know comparatively few.

When we moved in, men from the local community church helped us unload. We thought that would be our church home. But the Chick tracts in the foyer were an indication that the church would not be a good fit for us. We moved in in the summer of 2016, and the election was underway. It became clear to us that anything other than full-throated support for Donald Trump was not a welcome position there.

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The other churches in town were Catholic, or Lutheran, or Assemblies of God (and from what we could tell from talking to some of the people who attended there, leaning hard into the Bethel heresy). The Southern Baptist church was dead - they just hadn’t realized it yet. (It has since closed.)

This saddens me, because we believe in local churches. But there was not a healthy, orthodox church in town. So we had to look elsewhere for a church home. (We currently attend a Presbyterian church in Spokane.)

The town has a coffee shop and two drive-by coffee stands, a Mexican restaurant, and a bar that keeps changing hands and going in and out of business. A grocery store, a pizza place, and a Subway round out the offerings.

We have a city council that’s actually good at its job, and a mayor who I don’t personally care for but is beloved by most of the citizenry. (She didn’t like some questions I asked when she was running for office.)

The schools are decent, with a terrific band program and a horrible football program. (Guess which one gets all the funding?) A cross-country team coached by a one-armed coach that regularly competes in the state finals. And a robotics team that will forever have a place in my heart. (Go Circuit Breakers!) My daughter met her future husband on the robotics team.

My wife and I support the booster club and the local scholarship program as we’re able. We even go to the occasional football game, cheer every time the Cardinals score a first down, and be part of the community.

There is decidedly redneck feel to much of Medical Lake. I don’t love the redneck vibe, honestly - I grew up in redneck country and was glad to leave. But they are my neighbors and I want to love them, perceived warts and all. (And it’s not as if I don’t have warts of my own!)

When I go back to the town where I grew up in Florida, it doesn’t feel like home. The “house” I grew up in (really a mobile home with lots of built-on additions) has since been torn down, and the land is not in the family anymore. I drive past the church where I first met Jesus, the cemetery where the bodies of my grandparents await the Resurrection, my old high school. Maybe a couple of trophies in the case still bear my name, but I doubt it. There’s no memento that I was ever here, except in my memories. My life is elsewhere now.

I’m trying to find the place where I fit, and it eludes me.

I’ve been thinking about getting out of the United States lately. I don’t like the direction the country is headed. I don’t recognize this as the America I loved. But I won’t leave. My kids are here, and they still need me and my wife in their lives. And we need them in our lives.

Maybe that sense of place I’m longing for will only come when I myself am planted in the dirt, and my soul is with Jesus. Maybe that’s what it means to be a sojourner and an alien.

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I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.

I know Lewis is explaining something about the praise of God in this text, but the general statement holds true as well. And it spurred a thought in me: How many marriages grow cold because husbands and wives neglect to praise their spouses?

So, without further ado, and to lead by example, let me tell you about my wife, Naomi.

Naomi is possibly the most caring person I know. You know those needy people who most of us cut loose at the first opportunity? Not Naomi. She will visit them, invite them for holiday dinner, drive them to surgeries, take them meals - all with no expectation of a return gesture. Like Jesus, she is profligate in her care.

At church, Naomi is on the lookout for the people on the margins - the newcomer looking awkward, the sad single in the corner, the elderly couple no one is talking to. Naomi sees people. And she has the uncanny ability to get people talking about themselves. She can extract someone’s life story in 5 minutes flat!

And it’s not just at church either. More than once I’ll hear some variation on, “I was having my nails done today and the lady was a immigrant from Ukraine and she’s been here for 2 years and…”

Naomi is tough. In her late forties, she decided to run a marathon. And then she tore her meniscus in her knee. She had surgery to fix that in September, and 3 months later ran her first marathon. (She tore the other meniscus last summer in a snorkeling accident and just had surgery to get that knee fixed too. She’s looking forward to running again!)

Naomi is adventurous. I travel a lot for work, and Naomi has tagged along, joining me on trips to San Francisco and Vienna and Lisbon. While I’m attending conferences, she’ll explore the city on her own. She’s jogged across the Golden Gate Bridge, for crying out loud!

And best of all, Naomi is a great mother. Our kids are mostly grown now, but they all have a great rapport with their mom.

I am blessed to have shared 30.5 years of marriage with her. Putting up with me can be a challenge, but she does it with good grace (and occasional sarcasm).

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