Rick Oster

The following is one of the forewords for the book Male & Female: A Biblical Look at Gender, edited by Renée Webb Sproles.  Henny-Penny, we are told in various versions of the story, was a chick hit upon the head by a single falling acorn. She concludes the “sky is falling” and precipitates mass hysteria […]

*Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of a series on the Bible, its formation, and its trustworthiness. For Part 1 (“The Inspiration of the Old Testament”), click HERE.  Do we have good reasons to think that the New Testament is divine in origin and intended by God to be an authoritative guide for our lives […]

This is the sixth in a series of articles dealing with gender and the church. Previously, we engaged with John Mark Hicks’s book, Women Serving God, and Scot McKnight’s, Blue Parakeet. (See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.) This article focuses specifically on gender and marriage. While Paul honors and […]

“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” —Margaret Thatcher. “Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men’s chivalry to give them justice.” —Helen Keller. “It’s time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through, no right, no wrong, no rules […]

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian during the first century AD discussed the Hebrew Scriptures in the time of Jesus in an apologetic work written against a non-Jew named Apion. Josephus writes about the superiority of the Hebrew Scriptures over pagan writings in his work, Against Apion (1.8). For example, Josephus argues in this defense of […]

This is another in-depth post where we examine what the Word of God teaches about men and women in the church. This the fourth installment and it is focused on the vitally important teaching of 1 Timothy 2. We will continue to engage with John Mark Hicks’s book, Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding […]

This will be another in-depth post where we examine what the Word of God teaches about men and women in the church. It is the third installment in a series engaging with John Mark Hicks’s book, Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding Their Story, and Scot McKnight’s book, Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read […]

(For Part 1, click here.)  This is the second installment in a series engaging with John Mark Hicks’s book, Women Serving God: My Journey in Understanding Their Story, and Scot McKnight’s book, Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible. In the first post, we critiqued the methods and tools used by both authors to […]