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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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Equipping New Faculty for Effective Biblical Integration

I was nearly a failure at my greatest dream. Since the age of five (not an exaggeration, and you can verify with my sister), I dreamed of becoming a teacher. I played school pretty much non-stop from as far back as I can remember, and the dream never changed. It was fed and encouraged by…
June 17, 2025
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Integrating Faith and Academic Administration

This summer I will take on the responsibility of chair of the Department of Computer Science at Calvin University. This part-time administrative role comes with many responsibilities: guiding the hiring and reappointment of faculty, scheduling classes, ensuring academic quality, managing budgets, and generally keeping the “trains running on time” in the department. To be sure,…
June 16, 2025
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Equipping Scientists of Faith in a Secular Age, review of Christopher P. Scheitle, The Faithful Scientist: Experiences of Anti-­Religious Bias in Scientific Training

The tired but persistent cultural narrative of the conflict between science and religion continues to impede fruitful discussions by obscuring the meaningful and important role that religious identity plays in the lives of scientists and researchers. The conflict narrative is particularly problematic as faculty and mentors seek to prepare interested Christian undergraduates to attend graduate…
June 12, 2025
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To Know and Be Known: A Framework for the Ministry of Teaching (Part 1)

We live in an age where information is instantly accessible, with near-limitless knowledge available at our fingertips. At no point in history has so much information been within immediate reach. This unprecedented access has sparked important conversations about the relevance of traditional educational structures—and even the role of higher education itself. In 2022, Inside Higher…
June 10, 2025
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Can ChatGPT Do Christian Scholarship? Should We Let It?

A couple of years ago, my son-in-law showed me ChatGPT on his phone. I had heard of it before, but didn’t know what it could do. It seemed pretty cool, and he was able to have it answer some questions and then even use it to write a short sermon that was somewhat suitable for…
June 9, 2025
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Response to the Reviewers

I am very grateful to Christian Scholar’s Review for sponsoring this forum and to the contributors for their kind and constructive remarks. I am especially gratified that the consensus among the commentators seems to be that, while both mainstream academia and American Christianity have changed dramatically in the past three decades, the principles of Christian…
George Marsden
June 6, 2025
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The Outrageous Idea in the 21st Century: Still Relevant

I wish to begin by thanking Christian Scholar’s Review for the opportunity and privilege to comment on the second edition of George Marsden’s Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. I first read this book as a student at Grove City College in the mid-­2000s, where it was assigned in an upper-­level history seminar. I have been…
June 5, 2025
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Legal Scholarship for the Kingdom

The primary claims of the first edition of George Marsden’s book, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, remain as salient and persuasive as they were thirty years ago: First, Christian academics may—I will argue should—be doing their scholarship from a Christian point of view (more shortly on what that might mean in practice), and second,…
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Building the Future of Christian Scholarship

The first edition of George Marsden’s book The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship appeared the same year I completed my doctorate. I eagerly read it and it immediately became a touchstone book for my early career. And so, it was with great enthusiasm that I began reading the second edition. How have the ideas aged?…
May 29, 2025
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Addressing Reductionistic “Nothing but” Scholarship: The Conversation around a New Definition of “Evangelical,” Part 2

I remember teaching a weekend course on American Christian history in the late 1990s. Since it was a weekend course for working adults, I used several videos in those late Saturday afternoon hours when eyes glazed and heads nodded. I found some great videos about the history of American Catholicism and African American Christianity, but…
May 28, 2025
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Addressing Reductionistic “Nothing but” Scholarship: The Conversation around a New Definition of “Evangelical,” Part 1

Christian scholars interested in Christ-animated learning have long observed that one major danger to such scholarship is reductionism. George Marsden helpfully summarized the problem in his book, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, “Once we have a convincing explanation at the level of empirically researched connections we are inclined to think we have a complete…
May 27, 2025