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Benjamin B. DeVan

Extended Review

Don’t Look Up? Four Views on Heaven: An Extended Review

“Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” opens John S. Feinberg in Four Views on Heaven (23). Trying to circumvent, downplay, or ignore our mortality, as well as demurring to talk candidly about death, has bedeviled humanity from time immemorial, satirized by the likes of Monty Python’s classic “Parrot Sketch” and…
Benjamin B. DeVan
February 14, 2023
Extended Review

Shall All Be Saved? David Bentley Hart’s Vision of Universal Reconciliation—An Extended Review

Benjamin B. DeVan teaches at Palm Beach Atlantic University. In the episode “Honor” for AMC’s series The Walking Dead, teenage protagonist Carl Grimes suffers a fatal wound.“Honor,” The Walking Dead, Season 8, Episode 9, AMC, February 25, 2018. His family tries to make him comfortable and listen to his last words. Carl recounts a vision beneath a shattered stained glass window…
Benjamin B. DeVan
November 12, 2020
Review and Response

God, Jesus, and the Apostle Paul Behaving Badly—A Review Essay

In his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, the eighteenth-century founder of Methodism, John Wesley, strove for biblical commentary that penetrated deeply yet remained concise and clear. Discontent with mere intellectual insights, Wesley yearned to assist the “learned and unlearned” to understand better God’s ways so that they would progress in joy and character development…
Benjamin B. DeVan
January 15, 2018
Reviews

Bringing Sex Into Focus: The Quest for Sexual Integrity

Reviewed by Benjamin B. DeVan, Ethics and Theology, Durham University “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). This aphorism traditionally attributed to King Solomon especially applies to books about sex, which proliferate in print and online faster than the proverbial jackrabbit, and exponentially exceed in number Solomon’s “seven hundred wives of royal…
Benjamin B. DeVan
January 15, 2013
Book Review

Bringing Sex Into Focus: The Quest for Sexual Integrity

Reviewed by Benjamin B. DeVan, Ethics and Theology, Durham University “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). This aphorism traditionally attributed to King Solomon especially applies to books about sex, which proliferate in print and online faster than the proverbial jackrabbit, and exponentially exceed in number Solomon’s “seven hundred wives of royal…
Benjamin B. DeVan
October 15, 2012
Reviews

Reinhold Niebuhr on Politics, Religion, and Christian Faith

God, grant me the serenityTo accept the things I cannot change;Courage to change the things I can;And wisdom to know the difference. This modified version of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer” may be the most recognizable prayer in America, with the possible exceptions of the Lord’s Prayer taught by Jesus (Matthew 6:9-13, Luke 11:2-4), the ubiquitous…
Benjamin B. DeVan
July 15, 2011