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How Coaching Youth Sports Helped My Thinking about Christian Character

The most important activity that helped refine my view of character education was not taking classes on epistemology and ethics from Dallas Willard. Nor was it taking all my other Ph.D. classes that addressed virtue or moral development. It was coaching youth league sports. Granted, readings in philosophy, ethics, and theology led me to recognize…
June 25, 2025
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AI and the Grammar of Descent

Recently, there’s been even more press than usual about AI proliferation and its associated risks. The hype has been driven, in part, by the now infamous Ross Douthat interview with Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the A.I. Futures Project, in which Kokotajlo suggests that AI could take over civilization—and “then kill all the humans”—by 2027.…
June 24, 2025
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God Made All Nations from One Blood: The Origins of a Biblical Argument against Slavery

In 1526, William Tyndale’s ground-breaking translation of the English New Testament appeared. In this translation, Tyndale used a unique phrase that was not in John Wycliffe’s original English translation. Instead of translating a key passage from Paul’s sermon to the Athenians in Wycliffe’s original way, “ made of one all the kind of men” (Acts…
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Mirrors Transformed by Light:Meditations on the God Who Is Light

I’d like to propose a thought experiment -- one that may transform your understanding of something you see every day. Thought experiments can change the world, or at least your understanding of it. Einstein’s great scientific breakthroughs started with a thought experiment, something like this one. For our experiment, imagine how a mirror works. If…

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The Scandal of Required English Classes at Christian Universities

Every Christian university requires at least one English composition, writing, and/or literature class. Thus, one would think that someone reviewing those course descriptions would find considerable evidence demonstrating how Christianity relates to these basic courses. You would be wrong. We recently analyzed the required gen ed course descriptions at all Protestant and Catholic universities that…
August 14, 2024
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Faustus and Fortnite

The overwhelming ambition and pride of Faustus in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor FaustusChristopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (B-Text, 1616), ed. David Scott Kastan, Norton Critical Editions (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005), 54-122. is frequently highlighted as one of the work's central themes, and rightfully so. However, our students might connect equally, if not more, with…
August 9, 2024
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Vocation and Avocation on the Christian Campus

The last year was big for me as an academic: I received tenure, published a book, and was awarded a sabbatical. Yet my colleagues and students tend not to ask me about these landmarks. They instead know me as a gardener, thanks to the pictures I post to social media. Truth be told, I find…
August 8, 2024
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Humble Worldviewing

One of my courses in seminary—a half-century ago!—had a lasting impact on my thinking. It was about world religions, and especially helpful for me was an assigned text, Christian Faith and Other Faiths, by Stephen Neill,Stephen Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths: The Christian Dialogue with Other Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). then a…
August 7, 2024
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Where the Beauty Came From

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing—to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from.” —C. S. Lewis At age eleven classical music started it all for me. My parents, wanting to divert me from what they viewed as the corrupting rock ‘n’ roll of the…
August 6, 2024
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Sorry Not Sorry*: The Apologetics of an Olympic Non-Apology

I love the Olympics. I have been transfixed by them for over fifty years, starting with the 1972 Munich games, where Olga Korbut catapulted women’s gymnastics to a demanding athletic sport, and a very photogenic Mark Spitz shattered seven world records to go along with the seven gold medals he won in his seven swimming events. My…
August 5, 2024
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A Biblical Precedent for Dissent

Late in the spring 2024 semester, several college campuses were rocked by student (and faculty) protests over the conflict in Gaza. More recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education broke a story about an instructor whose contract was not renewed after he had publicly opposed an increase in parking fees. On the surface, these events could…
August 2, 2024