Bnonn Tennant (the B is silent)

Where a recovering ex-atheist skewers things with a sharp two-edged sword

How God requires Christians to vote

Voting is an act of representative rulership. As such, it fundamentally represents Christ, and is subject to his clear laws. Christians therefore do not have the option of voting for anyone other than a man after God’s own heart.

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Everything Everywhere All At Once—a review

As the historical ordering principles of our culture disintegrate, we try to find meaning in the idea that our alternate lives might be better. But infinite potentiality devours meaning; it cannot create it.

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The religious significance of Covid, part 2: the symbolism of face-covering

Understanding the religious nature of man, and the symbolic patterns he follows in worship, helps us to understand the disturbing nature of mask mandates, and the idolatry implicit in obeying them.

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The religious significance of Covid, part 1: pandemic response as idolatry

Understanding the religious nature of man, and the symbolic patterns he follows in worship, helps us to understand the seemingly irrational response to Covid—and the Church’s gross dereliction of her duty.

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My submission to parliament against the COVID-19 Public Health Response Amendment Bill (No 2)

Posted verbatim for the encouragement and instruction of other Kiwi Christians.

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The scandal of lawless and rebellious Christians

Why are so many Christians today pretending submission to God while they openly defy his authority? Why are they encouraging hatred of neighbor and approving of rebellion, while condemning other believers seeking, with fear and trembling, to submit?

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I oppose marital corporal punishment

Years ago, I assessed what the Bible says about marital corporal punishment. Contrary to wise counsel, I did some of my thinking out loud among my enemies. Now, screenshots of my comments are used to perpetuate a rumor that I support wife-beating. This is false, and always has been.

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Should women learn self-defense?

Maybe, but they shouldn’t rely on it, and there are more important things for them to learn to keep them safe.

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Head coverings #1: the logic of glory and veiling

While head covering debates get mired in disagreement about cultural customs and what Paul meant about the angels, they ignore the central logic of 1 Corinthians 11—that only one glory should be on display in worship. Veiling still matters in the modern day because God’s glory still matters in worship—and that is what is at stake.

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It’s Good To Be A Man

In partnership with Michael Foster, I have launched a new website dedicated to developing a positive doctrine of masculinity.

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Q&A: why should Christians attend church?

A reader asks on behalf of himself and his daughter. I briefly demonstrate that the Bible doesn’t just consider it normal to worship with other believers, but really a practice of such critical importance to our spiritual growth that avoiding it carries an expectation of furious judgment.

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But what about businesswomen?!

Women in business are not usurping the father-rule that God made men to carry; they are exercising authority in matters of production. However, it is important to remember that God designed this to happen within the context of the household, not the emaciated quasi-household that is the modern corporation.

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5 clear reasons Christians should oppose female heads of state

Once the cultural blinders are removed, the evidence of Scripture against women ruling society is difficult to ignore. There are clear teleological, a fortiori, exegetical, inductive, and missional reasons for Christians to regard the rule of women, in the words of John Knox, as monstruous.

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Are women made in the image of God?

Both Genesis 1:26–28 and 5:1–2 are plain in ascribing the image of God to mankind in the plural: male and female. Men alone cannot order the world in a way that fully represents God, and women alone cannot either. Only together can they completely carry his rule into creation by both subduing and filling.

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Attraction v. arousal

Women are attracted by attributes which can paradoxically turn them off sexually. Neither are necessarily related to virtue—or necessarily not…but a Christian man must learn to balance them in a virtuous way.

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Q&A: how not to throw out the biblical baby with the blue pill bathwater?

A Christian reader asks for advice in grappling with unplugging from blue pill conditioning without losing his faith. I suggest that the answers primarily lie in understanding the creation mandate, the fall, and God’s providence. These are key differentiators between the theology of biblical sexuality, and the ideology of red pill sexuality.

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When italics won’t cut it

In which I find a difference of emphasis with Doug Wilson, and proceed to emphasize its importance.

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Straddling the stallion and the mare

In which I hope to sharpen some iron with Doug Wilson over whether 1 Corinthians 7 really gives a believing spouse license to separate from a nasty piece of work.

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It’s OK for a man to be a helpmeet

A progression of observations about Wesley Hill, based on his own testimony, that do not make him look very good.

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Applying torque to opposing corners of my Bible

Fundamentalists claim that I am mishandling Deuteronomy 22:5 by going beyond its literal meaning. I illustrate how their literalist hermeneutic makes nonsense of not only this passage, but all of human discourse.

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Can badass female characters ever be redeemed?

The problem of ubiquitous feminist icons in media is not that they violate God’s design for women, nor that they are often one-dimensional Mary-Sues—it is rather that they generally glorify that which God declares inglorious.

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Why a woman bearing the sword is an abomination to the Lord

Despite modern, feminist-conditioned sensibilities, carefully trained by modern, feminist media icons, there is strong evidence from both nature and Scripture that women in combat or enforcement roles are the sort of thing the Lord spits out of his mouth.

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Was Jesus an alpha male? Part 2: command

To properly understand intersexual dynamics, we need to ground them in human nature—which is fundamentally the image of God. This image consists in two related elements which are both encompassed by the term command.

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Was Jesus an alpha male? Part 1: a trick question

Christians should not be forcing their view of authentic masculinity into a simplistic dichotomy based on evolutionary psychology—no matter how central that is to the conceptual nexus of the manosphere. God’s design for men is exemplified in Jesus; not in natural selection.

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Gyneolatry

Glenn Stanton represents a broad stream of thought about gender relations and marriage within evangelicalism, where women are seen effectively as the cause of, and the solution to all of society’s problems. Unfortunately, that stream of thought is obviously incoherent, shamelessly unscriptural, and because it ultimately amounts to gyneolatry, actually produces the precise social decline that it laments.

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Am I toxically paranoid, or are you naïvely inured?

The frog is disputing the meaning of the bubbles as the pot comes to the boil.

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The Last Jedi is the first successful leftist porno

Why did the latest Star Wars installment receive fawning critical adoration, but widespread contempt from average movie-goers? Because average movie-goers didn’t realize that it was a film made to stimulate the engorgement of virtue, rather than to tell a story.

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What is the kingdom of God? Part 10: the urgency of preaching Jesus as king of the western world

The results of the evangelical gospel are things like easy-believism, an inability to easily squash the lordship salvation controversy, moralistic therapeutic deism—and ultimately cultural relativism due to the privatization of religion. The New Testament’s cosmological gospel confronts these errors.

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Advice for women on International Women’s Day

This is directed especially to Christian women, since it is based on Scripture—but any woman, and indeed any man, will benefit from it.

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Evangelical complementarian leaders mostly just teaching feminism

The Gospel Coalition tries to teach complementarianism by rebranding feminism, and I demur.

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Calvinism, masculinity and niceness

In some ways, this isn’t really about Calvinism. That’s just how the conversation started. It’s about Christianity abandoning masculinity, and thus replacing love with niceness.

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Prelapsarian predation, part 4: the curse

Were animals bitey before the Fall? Or did they only start munching on each other afterwards? In the fourth part of this series I assess what we can infer about death and predation from the curse.

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Are most women less perceptive than 6 year old children?

A question for Douglas Wilson, who seems to think the majority of women who procure abortions are hoodwinked, and have no real idea of what they’re doing.

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Abortion and the Holocaust

An informative exchange with an indignant pro-aborter.

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A simple argument that the Roman church is under God’s judgment for apostasy and idolatry

Pedophilia isn’t the only sexual scandal in the Roman ranks.

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Love is love

Even in the secular world, not all love is good—and in Christianity, love of evil entails hatred of God.

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Fisking the chieftain of the atheist village

An exchange with an atheist whose confidence is inversely proportional to his competence on the topics of sex, ethics and evolution.

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This is what we’re up against

A real-life demonstration of how the wolves have formed a protective circle around the pulpit to prevent the sheep getting near, while they tear all the offensive pages out of the Bible.

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Coming out

Maybe they’ll give me an award for courage. Terminators know no fear.

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Should I save a zygote over a baby?

If I don’t, then obviously it’s not murder to kill a zygote, lol.

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The rod in Proverbs is not metaphorical

It is increasingly fashionable to argue that corporal punishment is uncivilized and out of step with a God of love. It’s not, and it isn’t.

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What is honor?

And why does it matter to Christians?

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What is love? Part 5: the nature of our love for enemies

What does it mean that God is love, that he loves us, and that we are to love him? In part 5, I consider what loving our enemies means in light of onetogetherness, and whether it entails pacifism as some Christians think.

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What is love? Part 4: the nature of our love for God and neighbor

What does it mean that God is love, that he loves us, and that we are to love him? In part 4, I move into examining what God means when he commands us to love him, and each other, in light of love as onetogetherness.

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Useful thoughts for debating abortionists

A scattering of helpful ideas for anyone who has to debate the issue of abortion.

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4 reasons the consent argument for abortion is sociopathic

The consent argument is the most popular and vigorously-defended way for pro-abortionists to show that abortion is ethically justified—and that the abolitionist position is unreasonable. But what if their argument trades on hidden ethical concessions that, in any other situation, we’d think were psychopathic?

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Why abortion is irrefutably equivalent to murder

A simple 3-step argument that anyone can understand, showing that abortion is morally identical to murder.

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Education and child abuse

A critical response to the accusation that teaching children beliefs which contradict secular science is a form of child abuse. This post is a reply to Ken Perrott’s article ‘”Biblically correct” child abuse?’

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