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Of Prophets, Priests, and Professors -Part 2

In our previous post, we compared the role of Christian professors with that of the Old Testament prophets as “stewards of truth.” Following the model of the prophets of the Old Testament, we are required to maintain the truth of our respective disciplines, deliver it convincingly in the classroom, and continuously refine it to apply…
July 14, 2026
Blog

Of Prophets, Priests, and Professors -Part 1

Serving as a Christian university professor is not the most celebrated job in America. It is not an ignoble profession, but few of us would describe ourselves as overpaid. Most of us are exempt from federal minimum wage and overtime laws. One would think the years of education required to serve as a professor would…
July 13, 2026
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Flourishing 4.0: God’s Shalom and the Wholeness of Human Flourishing

One of the most ambitious attempts to answer the question of human flourishing appears in Tyler VanderWeele’s A Theology of Health: Wholeness and Human Flourishing. An epidemiologist whose work has helped shape contemporary research on flourishing, VanderWeele engages many of the themes explored by earlier writers—meaning in the face of suffering, justice within community, and…
July 10, 2026
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Flourishing 3.0: The Empirical Turn

What if the attributes of flourishing could be identified, defined, and studied as a social phenomenon, allowing those insights to inform interventions designed to improve well-­being and happiness? What if science itself could be harnessed to advance human flourishing? Many social scientists pursued enthusiastic answers to these questions. The chief architect of what would become…
July 9, 2026
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Flourishing 2.0: The Justice of Shalom

In the immediate post-­war period, the writers representing Flourishing 1.0 primarily examined the crises of flourishing within the interior life—questions of meaning, selfhood, and the courage required to live amid despair. Yet they were also attentive to the broader cultural forces that produced such crises. Tillich, for example, warned that political systems such as Communism…
July 8, 2026
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Four Cultural Movements in the Search for Meaning, Justice, Happiness, and Well-­being: Flourishing 1.0–Staying Human in the Absence of Meaning

What does it mean to flourish? The Israelites in Babylon likely did not imagine that they would prosper in exile. Yet through the prophet Jeremiah, they were instructed to build houses, plant gardens, and seek the good of the city in which they lived, even knowing that the exile would outlast most of them. Flourishing,…
July 7, 2026

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Review: Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism.

The thesis of this monograph is captured nicely by its subtitle: Christian convictions and motivations both energized and obstructed the crusade to end slavery in the United States. Although in its essence the author’s thesis is not novel—the realization that opponents and defenders of bondage both wielded religious arguments is commonplace—Wright offers a provocative analysis…
January 4, 2022
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The Heart of Christmas

The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ… And He shall reign for ever and ever… King of kings, and Lord of lords. These familiar words from the Hallelujah chorus come at the climax Handel’s Messiah. An apocryphal story tells of how King George II was so…
December 21, 2021
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Guest Post – Scorsese’s Christmas Story

After weeks of shooting footage at a town nearby for his latest project, legendary director Martin Scorsese has finally wrapped up filming. This Advent marks the tenth anniversary of another work of Scorsese’s and my favorite Christmas movie: his Oscar-winning Hugo (2011). Although neither Santas nor Scrooges, neither mangers nor mistletoe appear in the film,…
December 20, 2021
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Advent Meditation IV: Tender

Fra Angelico, The Nativity, Basilica di San Marco, Florence, 1441, https://www.wikiart.org/en/fra-angelico/nativity-1441 It is very difficult, today, for the ordinary, defensive and suspicious human being to understand Christ’s radical vulnerability, from his conception to his death on a cross. However, the mysterious Fra Angelico (literally, “the Angelic Friar”), a Renaissance painter who also happened to be a renowned…
December 17, 2021
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Guest Post – Reflections for Graduates from The Little Prince Part 2

A version of this full essay—offered here as a two-part blog—was initially presented by Biola University Associate Professor, Jane E. Kim, at the commencement ceremony for the Torrey Honors College on May 10, 2019. Please see yesterday’s post for Part 1. Secret Number Three: Only those to whom you give yourself become yours. During his…
December 16, 2021
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Guest Post–Reflections for Graduates from The Little Prince: Part 1

A version of this full essay—offered here as a two-part blog—was initially presented by Biola University Associate Professor, Jane E. Kim, at the commencement ceremony for the Torrey Honors College on May 10, 2019. It has become something of a tradition in my program for faculty to draw from children’s books in sharing words of…
December 15, 2021
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Library Trends and the Future of Christian Scholarship

I have been concerned for quite some time that works of Christian scholarship are not ideally accessible in the marketplace of ideas. Early in my career, I documented that evangelical literature was often not available digitally, and I advocated for publishers and others to address such deficiencies.Gregory A. Smith, “Christian Libraries for the Next Generation:…
December 14, 2021
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The Meaning of Dreams: Creation Through Selection

Sidarta Ribeiro, in The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of Dreams, has written a book that artfully blends multiple disciplines of human experience, from sociology to biochemistry, in pursuit of its fundamental question: Why do we dream? Ribeiro argues against the scientific “default” interpretation that dreams are random firings of neurons without meaning.…
December 13, 2021
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Advent Meditation III: Like Calls to Like

Icon of the Visitation https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-visitation-icon-samuel-epperly.html Pantokrator icon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Pantocrator_(Sinai)#/media/File:Spas_vsederzhitel_sinay.jpg Among all the manifestations of Christ’s church, the Eastern Orthodox tradition has been the most gifted in the realm of visual symbolism. Beginning in the early centuries after Christ, Eastern iconographers crystallized doctrinal truths into pithy visual form. The Pantokrator icon (meaning “Ruler of All”), set the template…
December 10, 2021
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Tis the Season….to write letters of recommendation!

It’s that time of year again. Coming at the end of the long Fall semester, the holiday season is always a rough time for the college professor. There are term papers to read and grade, exams to write and grade, lab projects to check and grade. Did I mention the grading? But wait, there is…
December 9, 2021