New Essay Contest!

There’s a new essay contest in town! I want to encourage the much-needed area of Old Testament apologetics. We need more in this area than is currently around (this includes both popular-level and newly researched things). We’re looking for OT topics like “is God a moral monster?,” “contradictions in the OT,” “is God the same in the OT and NT?,” and so on. Essays will be accepted to Possible Worlds from May 1-31, 2014, via e-mailed attachment to: submitpossibleworlds@gmail.com. The top two essays will be published in Possible Worlds and will have their pick of one of the following four books: Christian Apologetics, by Doug Groothuis; Where the Conflict Really Lies, by Alvin Plantinga; Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality, by David Baggett and Jerry Walls; Christian Apologetics: An Anthology of Primary Sources, ed. Khaldoun Sweis and Chad Meister (if you already have these books, we can talk). Please read the guidelines below.

1.     The essay should be relevant to the topic of OT apologetics. It may concern methodology, evidences, or a specific topic.

2.     The essay should be new; it should not be published in its current form anywhere else.

3.     The essay should argue cogently for an easily identifiable thesis. Everything in the essay should be relevant to the thesis.

4.     The essay must be between 750 and 2,000 words. This forces the author to be very focused. The word count excludes footnotes or citations.

5.     Only one entry per person, and my immediate family members are excluded.

6.     Please submit your entry with your name and title of your essay in a Word document (.doc or .docx formats only, please) to submitpossibleworlds@gmail.com.

7.     Depending on the volume of submissions, winners should be announced no later than mid-June.

8.     The first-place winner selects his or her book first, and then the second-place winner selects his or hers.

9.     Please contact the e-mail address above for any other questions or details.

Above all, I want this to be fun! For all those who participate, at the very least, you will have wrestled with and developed a response to an OT issue that you can publish on your own blog. Further, it may be that I receive so many good submissions, that I may ask some of you for permission to publish on Possible Worlds, independently of the contest itself. In any case, good luck, and thanks for participating!