Skip to main content
Category

Blog

Blog

Making Sense of Christ Confounded

In my last contribution to CSR, I tried to articulate, as briefly as possible, the “phenomenology of grace.”Mitchell, A. C. (2025, July 22). Revelation and Remembrance: Prayer and the Phenomenology of Grace. Christian Scholar’s Review, Christ Animated Learning Blog. How do persons sense, discern, and abide the world as it’s presented to them? How do…
October 7, 2025
Blog

Learning in AI Time: Institutional Virtues in an Era of Artificial Intelligence

In his 1939 sermon Learning in Wartime, CS Lewis considered whether education should continue amid high-stakes global conflict. Is learning something that should be suspended during a war, saved only for times of peace and predictability? Or does the acquisition of knowledge, learning, thinking, and prudential judgment become more important during moments of upheaval? Predictably…
October 6, 2025
Blog

Is Holiness a Virtue?

One of the primary things we learn about God in the Bible is that he is holy (Lev. 11:44-45; 19:2; any reference to the Holy Spirit). Moreover, we learn that as image bearers of God, we are to exhibit God’s character by being holy as well (Lev. 11:45; I Peter 1:15-16). Yet, holiness is a…
September 26, 2025
Blog

A Review of Judith Wolfe, The Theological Imagination: Perception and Interpretation in Life, Art, and Faith.

We typically relegate the imagination to the realm of make believe. By creating fantastical worlds and playing pretend, the imagination in this view seems like an escape from reality. But as Judith Wolfe’s The Theological Imagination explains, the imagination is not an escape from reality, but what shapes our reality. Following in the philosophical tradition…
September 25, 2025
Blog

Returning to Religion in Shakespeare Studies – A Review Essay (Part 3)

Darren Dyck, in Will & Love: Shakespeare and the Motion of the Soul, takes the turn to religion in a different direction by demonstrating how the medieval mode of theological romance in Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer provides the interpretive key to Shakespeare’s preoccupation with the volitional motion of love. By “theological romance,” Dyck means the…
September 24, 2025
Blog

Returning to Religion in Shakespeare Studies – A Review Essay (Part 2)

David Anonby also begins Shakespeare on Salvation: Crossing the Reformation Divide with a reasoned defense for his engagement with religion in Shakespeare, invoking some of the same scholars that Oser does in his introduction. Anonby describes those in the turn to religion who have challenged the “secularizing narrative of the theater” (4), before turning to…
September 23, 2025
Blog

Returning to Religion in Shakespeare Studies – A Review Essay (Part 1)

Editor's Note: Due to an earlier failure of the e-mail distribution of this three-part post, we are reposting it over the next three days.   It has been approximately twenty-five years since the “turn to religion” in Shakespeare studies. When I informally polled a few colleagues in history, psychology, and social work about a turn to…
September 22, 2025
Blog

Test Everything

“…but test everything; hold fast what is good.” — 1 Thess. 5:21 (ESV) I teach computer science students how to program computers, and testing is a crucial component of learning to program. In fact, the modern approach to software engineering advocates a Test Driven Development where testing is simultaneously intertwined with the writing of code.…
September 16, 2025
Blog

Higher Education’s False Egalitarianism

One of the strangest features of contemporary higher education is its false egalitarianism. Teachers and students, by definition, are not equals with respect to the practice in which they are engaged, though of course they may be equals in other respects. If the student were on the same level as the teacher, he wouldn’t need…
September 15, 2025
BlogReviews

A Review of David I. Smith, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom

David I. Smith’s most recent book, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom, represents yet another of his significant and vital contributions to Christian education. Commencing with an invitation to wisdom for teachers and their students, Smith offers philosophical insights along with practical strategies for authentically integrating faith into teaching practices.…
September 5, 2025
Blog

A Call to (Christian) Excellence

One way to understand the evolution of popular management publications over the last 50 years is to see it as beginning with a reaction to the struggles of American manufacturing in the 1970s. Shocked by the oil embargo and an invasion of cheaper, more efficient foreign imports, US car manufacturers attempted to adapt quickly but…
September 4, 2025
Blog

Are You Trying to Create Experts or Mentor Students toward Excellence? The Two Are Not the Same

One factor behind the recent populist revolt in North America and other parts of the world stems from an increasing distrust of various experts (esp. medical scientists, journalists, and general scientists). There are numerous reasons for this distrust—some of them consistent with a Christian theological perspective, but other reasons have led to a problematic undermining…
September 3, 2025
Blog

Not a Prize to Be Sought,but a Calling to Be Lived (A Response to Paul R. Yost)

With God are wisdom and strength, he has counsel and understanding.” —Job 12:13 I greatly appreciate Paul Yost’s poignant and generous review of The Crucibles that Shape Us.Gayle D. Beebe, The Crucibles that Shape Us: Navigating the Defining Challenges of Leadership (InterVarsity, 2024). He accurately amplifies what I hoped to identify and communicate while noting…
August 29, 2025