Bnonn Tennant (the B is silent)

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

The grace of stoning

Contrary to hypocritical modern sensibilities, God’s penalty for certain sins is not brutish or draconian, but gracious and loving. By confusing softness and niceness with grace and love, we have produced a society in which mothers freely murder their children, and men shamelessly commit indecent acts with other men.

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Seven things that are essential for understanding God’s creation & our place in it, but seem completely insane to the modern mind

A sort-of-manifesto about what Smokey and I are doing with our True Magic project—and why it matters.

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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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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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Why I cannot worship at your lockdown-compliant church

At what point does a difference of opinion about submission to state authority become a difference in worship? When the submission to state authority functionally unseats Christ as the head of that worship.

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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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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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But what about Deborah?!

Deborah is widely regarded as a feminist icon; the only woman to rule God’s people well. But close attention to the text reveals that her rulership was a shame to Israel, rather than a glory.

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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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The fruits of (Radical) Two Kingdoms theology

What happens when you spend a generation insisting that God’s law is not part of God’s gospel, and that God’s gospel has nothing to do with politics—but then you still want to talk about righteousness and justice in society? You give up Moses in favor of Marx.

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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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A brief theology of kink #3: what is sexual intimacy for?

Before we can ask about the permissibility of any given sex act, we need to know what criteria to judge it against. I identify three main ones, representing goals for sexual intimacy within marriage: (1) release; (2) enjoyment; (3) onetogetherness.

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A brief theology of kink #2: the natural order of things

To discern the permissibility of a particular sex act, we need to first know what the features of sexuality are; what they tell us about God’s intentions for his creation; and whether that act defies those intentions. This is not as straightforward as you might think.

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A brief theology of kink #1: what does the Bible command?

The Bible gives very few commands about what sex acts are permissible for married couples. Its concern seems to be not for regulating the nature of sexual intimacy, but rather for ensuring that it occurs with the right person. What couples may do is thus left for them to discern.

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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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Against “Against Intellectual Property”

In which I find N. Stephan Kinsella’s Against Intellectual Property generally wanting, due to the skewed nature of his libertarian ethical presuppositions, and the problem he has in grounding any kinds of rights whatsoever.

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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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Is lack of healing a failing of the church to exercise authority for their king?

In response to a reader’s question, I suggest a moderate path between taking kingdom theology to humanistic extremes that presume upon God’s authority, and swinging so far the other way that we refuse to represent his authority at all.

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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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If Adam thought Satan was a good guy, was his transgression justified?

A response to Steve Hays, in which I challenge the assumption to begin with, and then doubt the conclusion for two other reasons anyway.

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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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What is the kingdom of God? Part 3: what happened in Eden

Adam was created as the first human member of the divine council. The serpent was a shining, serpentine being who didn’t like Adam being given dominion of the earth instead of someone higher up…like him.

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Abortion as sacrament: why religious language is still used in a secular culture

A brief analysis of abortion in terms of Satan’s attack on the image and kingdom of God.

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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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The role of elders according to Scripture

What are they supposed to do, and what kind of people should they be?

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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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What is hell, and is it biblical? Part 7: the early church

A response to Jacob McMillen and Josiah Pemberton. In this installment, I demonstrate how they must cite cherry-picked evidence from the most absurdly unqualified sources to make the case that eternal punishment wasn’t part of early church doctrine.

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What is hell, and is it biblical? Part 6: argument from statistics

A response to Jacob McMillen and Josiah Pemberton. In this installment, I briefly demolish their “statistical argument” that if hell were in the Bible, it would appear more often.

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Why are some not drawn?

A cautious response to a difficult question.

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What is hell, and is it biblical? Part 1: hell and the gospel

A response to Jacob McMillen and Josiah Pemberton. In this installment, I question how their view of hell can square with a gospel that preaches eternal life.

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Are the first and second commandments morally distinguishable?

It’s a bit of a trick question when I ask it.

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Should women wear head coverings?

For what it’s worth, this is why I don’t read the Gospel Coalition.

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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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