We just finished a fantastic tour of Edinburgh with NSA’s Pelican Club. Many thanks to George Grant for leading. The picture is from right after our church service at Barnbougle Castle, with the Firth of Forth in the background. Scotland is pretty lovely this time of year.

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Happy No Quarter November to you and yours!

Humbled
I have heard people say that they were humbled when they were told that other people were praying for them. I always thought that was a strange reaction. Grateful or thankful would make sense. But why would you feel humbled to hear that someone was praying for you?
Well, I think I have learned my lesson here. Over the past two and a half months I have been humbled in wonderful ways. Well, wonderful is a strange way to describe it. It started with a prostate cancer diagnosis in August. There were lots of doctors’ appointments that, finally, have culminated in surgery in Orlando this last week. But all along the way I have consistently heard from friends and from people I don’t think I even know, all tell me that they are praying for me. And the whole experience has been wonderfully humbling. So let me just take a moment to express my gratitude for a whole host of blessings that I am not worthy of.
First, I was diagnosed because of an annual blood test that I probably would have skipped except that I have a fantastic family doctor, Rod Story, who appears to take my health more seriously than I am prone to do. I am tremendously grateful for his attention to this, as well as to the medical technology that allows us to catch something like this at an early stage when it can be effectively addressed. From the first diagnosis to all the handholding through booking all the necessary procedures, I’ve had someone who eliminated bureaucracy and just gave me very personal and effective care.
Since then, I have been tremendously blessed by the elders of Christ Church and the board of NSA that have both given me a little bit of a break to take the time to address this and have given support throughout. Many thanks to the faculty, staff, and students of NSA who have been enthusiastically prayerful on my behalf. I’m especially grateful to NSA’s President’s Council who have shouldered a lot of work on my behalf during an exceptionally busy period. How great is it to be able to walk out of your office for two weeks and feel confident that everything will be fine?
And then I’m also very thankful for Dr. Patel and his staff at Advent Health in Orlando where I had my surgery. How many generations of men went before me who had no possible solution to this cancer? And how blessed am I to have such incredible medical knowledge at my disposal to remove the cancer and put me all back together? It is astonishing how spoiled we all are. And so I am truly grateful and humbled, as I know that I am in no way worthy of such blessing.
Lastly, I am tremendously grateful to my wife and kids who have been such staunch allies throughout all of this. Bekah has, more than once, stood with me as we emptied all our emotions onto the table and then sorted through them all according to God’s promises and put everything where it belongs. You can’t carry this sort of trial like a man, without having your heart and mind all sorted out. I’m very blessed to have such a helpmeet.
Cancer has been an astonishing little blessing to me. I’m almost to the point of wanting to recommend it to others. Are you feeling a little sorry for yourself? Are you getting a little resentful and petty? Are you turning into a bit of an insufferable ingrate? Try cancer! Okay, I’m not quite there. To be clear, I still recommend against it. But we serve a God who works for the good to those that love him and are called according to his purpose. And I have tasted this goodness plentifully in ways that I don’t deserve. And so I am happily humbled.

"Feminist education is anti-liberal—whatever its compatibility with political liberalism—because it cannot do the thing that it promises: no one is liberated from anything through the denial of the created order."

Read this insightful article by @Verge_of_Jordan here: nsa.edu/blog/the-offic…

Is the Protestant Old Testament just a rabbinic text?

That's the fight on here right now. But it isn't new. The Reformers argued the Hebrew vs. Greek question 400+ years ago, against Rome.

Here's what Whitaker, Turretin, and Owen actually said. 🧵

I highly recommend that anyone in the DC area give this a look.

I asked for a question to be added to our alumni survey this year regarding home ownership. I just got the results and was surprised to learn that over 95% of NSA grads who graduated 15 years ago own their homes. And 65% of NSA grads who graduated five years ago own their homes. I don’t know the national averages for these age brackets, but a suspect that these rates are significantly higher.

I don’t normally engage with the comments section much. But I notice that the majority of guys down there seem to think that in my earlier post somehow I wasn’t aware of the Septuagint, which is kind of funny. So, let’s walk through this.
If you reread my post again you will see that I am addressing the Protestant church, or more specifically the Reformed. On Scripture, Westminster 1.8 reads “The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as in all controversies of religion the Church is finally to appeal unto them.” You can’t hold this and insist on an Old Testament from the LXX at the same time.
The cry of the Reformation was ad fontes, back to the sources. The source of the Old Testament is the Hebrew text. And the Protestant church has been built on that assumption that we are going back to the source. I don’t think most of the guys commenting below have thought very hard about the implications of abandoning the Hebrew text. They are trying to get away from the Jews so hard, but what they don’t see is that it will cost them their Protestantism.
Now, yes, you can get a Bible with an Old Testament that is a translation of from the Septuagint. But you will gradually cease to be a Protestant, and you will instantly cease to be confessionally Reformed. So, by all means, if you have such an allergic reaction to the rabbis, please go Eastern Orthodox. Our churches will be better off.
But what you can’t do is continue using your ESV, or your NKJV, or your KJV, or whatever modern translation you use, while pretending that you are not relying on post-70 AD rabbis for your Bible.
Also, one quick note about Jerome and the Vulgate. No, the Vulgate is not translated from the Septuagint. Jerome had started with a translation from the Septuagint, but he became convinced that the Septuagint had been corrupted by anti-Christian sentiments by the rabbis. So, he went back to what he termed the Hebraica veritas, the Hebrew truth and translated his Vulgate Old Testament from there.

Without post-70 AD, rabbinic Judaism, the Protestant church does not have a Bible.
First, the manuscript tradition that all of our modern translations are based on is the Masoretic text. The Masoretes were the rabbis that followed after the Tannaim and the Amoraim. They worked from the 7th to the 10thcentury AD and their main focus was the preserving of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and developing the vowel and accent system that we use today when we read the Hebrew text. Delete the work of the Masoretes and you delete the text that we use for our Old Testament. No rabbis, no Bible.
Second, the Protestant recovery of the ability to read the Old Testament in the original Hebrew language was made possible by relying on the work of late medieval rabbis, primarily the grammarians, along with the assistance of 16thcentury Jews who either were willing to teach Hebrew to their Christian neighbors or who actually converted to the Christian faith themselves and brought their rabbinic knowledge of the Hebrew text with them. For instance, in the early thirteenth century, David Kimhi composed the Miklohl, a basic grammar of the Hebrew language, and the Hashorashim, a Hebrew dictionary. When sixteenth century Christians began returning to the Hebrew language, these texts provided their entrance into Hebrew fluency.
Additionally, the grammarians produced a series of commentaries on the text of the Old Testament, commentaries which developed something very similar to what we now refer to as the historical-grammatical method. These commentaries served as tutors to early protestant exegetes, trying to make their way through the Hebrew text for the first time. For instance, from 1517-1519, the Christian publisher Daniel Bomberg, working in Venice, published what we now refer to as the Bomberg Rabbinic Bible. It contained the Masoretic text of the Old Testament, surrounded by the corresponding Targum (Aramaic translation/interpretation of the Hebrew text), and commentaries by grammarians such as Rashi, Kimhi, Ibn Ezra, etc.
Bomberg’s Rabbinic Bible became an essential tool in the libraries of Reformed exegetes. If you have spent any time in Bucer’s commentary on the Psalms, you know how heavily he relied on Bomberg’s sources for his own understanding of the text. What is harder to notice, but which is equally true, is how much weight Calvin himself gave to these sources. At one point Calvin singles out Kimhi as the best of the Jewish exegetes. This reliance on the assistance of the grammarians permeates the works of sixteenth and seventeenth century, Protestant exegesis. Delete the Rabbis, and you delete the Protestant ability to read and translate the Hebrew text.
This reliance on Jewish sources was not without its pitfalls. The anti-trinitarian controversies that plagued the Reformed church in the 16th century were largely a result of Protestant reliance on Jewish commentaries. For instance, Kimhi’s commentary on the Psalms included critiques of the Christian reading of the messianic Psalms. Some young exegetes were not ready to go up against Kimhi’s work and found themselves succumbing to heterodox views on the deity of Christ, etc.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of the Reformed church figured out how to make good use of Jewish sources without losing their minds. For instance, it is not a coincidence that many of the contributors to the formation of the Reformed political tradition, men like Franciscus Junius and John Selden, were also great Hebraists, steeped deeply in the works of medieval rabbis. They drew from that tradition for much of their work. There were movements to burn all the Jewish sources that rose up at various moments, but these movements were primarily driven by the Papists, not the Reformed, who generally opposed this mania.
To repeat my opening claim - without post-70 AD, rabbinic Judaism, the Protestant church does not have a Bible. The Jews were still wrong about Jesus. But without them, you don’t have Bible.

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Regarding some of the recent posting about pastors and their levels of fitness, a few comments. First, if you think that these posts are actually about fitness, you are missing the actual game. This conversation is motivated by something else entirely.
Second, to the extent that young men are being discipled into this mentality, they are being shepherded into spiritual retardation. Proverbs teaches that the glory of young men is their strength and of old men, their grey hair (Prov. 20:29). Over the course of life, you move from strength to wisdom. And like the wine in Jesus’ wineskin parable, no one having tasted the older prefers the younger. By making fitness into a pastor’s goal, you swap out the end and replace it with the beginning. That is what I mean by spiritual retardation. You are putting infancy in the place of maturity. And that is no knock on pursuing fitness. By all means, young men pursue strength. That is where you start. But the end is wisdom. And I prefer a mature pastor over an infant pastor.
Lastly, I’ve seen the argument that this is about stewardship, about healthy practices that will give you a long life. That is a great end to seek. But scripture gives us clear teaching on how to pursue that end. “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you,” (Ex. 20:12). If you want to live long in the land, obey the fifth commandment. If you pursue fitness while disrespecting your elders, best of luck on your wellness journey, but don’t expect God to bless it.

What is a Christian education? What does it look like? What are its goals? What are its successes?

@PresidentNSA spoke with @tpusaeducation, providing answers to these important questions.

Watch the conversation here: youtu.be/GUlSz2fHhPo?si…

We need to think larger than the institutions that employ us. Building thick Christian communities with multi-generational impact means leaning into and supporting other strategic Christian institutions in your town. One thing that would be easy to do and would have a significant impact if we all did it, would be to find your closest ACCS school and sign up to give $100 per month to them. You don’t need to have kids there to know that this will produce long term fruit in your community.
classicalchristian.org/find-a-school/

NSA’s Blues beat U of I. Well done men.

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Dr. Joe Rigney hosts a live webinar with a Q&A on October 13, 2026, 1–2 PM PST. @joe_rigney

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Join us this upcoming Sunday to hear @LennoxKal speak on Christianity and culture.

Here are several helpful hints on how to be unhelpful while giving career advice to young men.

benmerkle.substack.com/p/how-to-give-…