My upcoming book
An Expedition for Gold: The Code of the Dangerous Man
Genesis 2 hides a puzzle in plain sight. God plants a garden stocked with food and safety, then places the gold — the good gold of Havilah — outside its walls. Why? Because the garden was never meant to be a permanent address. It was a womb. And God uses gold as bait to draw man out of it, into the wilderness, where he can finally grow up.
An Expedition for Gold is a field manual for men who have grown restless in the nursery but have not yet learned the road out of it. Following the trajectory James B. Jordan traces in From Bread to Wine — priest, king, prophet — and reading it alongside Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow Line, the Book of Proverbs, and the story of Othniel winning Achsah by taking the City of Books, the book maps the terrain of masculine maturation through three deaths and three resurrections: from the obedience of the priest, through the hard judgments of the king, to the blessing voice of the limping prophet.
This is not a guide for the “nice guy” of modern church culture, nor for the tyrant who hoards his plunder. It is written for the dangerous man — the beast under control, the servant who rules, the warrior who fights so that he may one day give. Because in the end, the gold of Havilah was never meant for the hoard. It is for the Sanctuary and the Bride.
The book will be published by Athanasius Press.
Read my Theopolis Institute essays here.