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Jesus the Great Philosopher: Recovering the Wisdom for the Good Life by Jonathan T. Pennington, Associate Professor of New Testament Interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was released last month by Brazos Press. It’s a book that will appeal to a variety of readers, from students to professors, from theologians to philosophers, from Christians…

In the early eighties I was a junior at a large research university in British Columbia. One quiet Friday evening, in the century old residence hall, a friend and I were sitting in the empty hallway while she tried to teach me how to play poker. About an hour into her unsuccessful attempts, she leaned…

Dear Prof. Van Wijs, I finally finished my PhD and have begun a new position assistant professor of computer science at a Christian university in my home state. As I face my upcoming classes, I find myself feeling anxious about teaching. I have several new courses to teach, and several are outside my primary area…

During the 1992 election, James Carville coined an infamous aphorism: “It’s the economy, stupid!” I thought of it as I read Tim Meuhlhoff’s CSR blog for October 19, which beautifully argues against an economic model of discourse, by which one pays or exchanges “evil for evil or insult for insult.” Communication for Christians, especially in…

In honor of the 350th anniversary of the death of the great Christian educator John Amos Comenius, David I. Smith and Perry L. Glanzer have authored a series of posts to honor Comenius’ work. Smith's post appeared yesterday. Our willingness to accept problematic falsehoods from popular pagan authors can have dire consequences. One of the…

November 15 marks an important anniversary that will pass unnoticed for most, at least in North America. It is the day on which the author of the following words passed away: It is desired that not just one particular person be fully formed into full humanity, or a few, or even many, but every single…

During this election season, pundits, pastors, as well as politicians have spoken often about the character of our nation. Last month in The Atlantic, David Brooks wrote about cultivating moral character in the midst of collapsing trust, and more recently Pastor John Piper wrote about the importance of leaders as influencers, observing that the calling…

With the ability to captivate our hearts, awaken imaginations and paint pictures of what it means to be a good person, stories help form (and malform) character and influence behavior.For a recent and thoughtful account of how character is formed consciously and unconsciously, see James KA Smith’s Cultural Liturgies books series: Imaging the Kingdom, Desiring…

Recently, I visited a Japanese garden with my students. It was a good way to socially distance while enjoying some embodied, face-to-face experience with each other. Mostly, we talked about Japanese garden design: for example, how it integrates Buddhist and Shinto architectural elements, how it highlights precious natural objects (such as exceptional trees or rocks),…

One of the first questions I ask students in my Christian Legal Thought seminar is what they expect Christianity might have to say about law. A common answer is that Christian teaching can provide guidance about what the legal rules should be.  Many of my students have been taught the importance of having a Christian…

Jenell Paris’ post this week introduces a new book for which she wrote the introduction Christian colleges and universities vary one from another, but share a central commitment to Christ, and to teaching students in a “Christ-animated” manner. As an anthropologist, I rely on interdisciplinary study to deepen my knowledge of Scripture so that I…

Mark Zuckerberg wants it. Elon Musk says we need it because of robots. Joe Biden rejected it. Ben Sasse thinks we should be talking about it. Milton Friedman sort of liked it, and even Charles Murray thinks it may be a good idea. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke favorably about it as a potential…

Failing to recognize who we really are, image bearers of God (Gen. 1:26), causes us to lose our moral way. The Christian virtue of gentleness is a perfect test case. For hundreds of years, due to the Christian moral tradition, men and women alike were encouraged to be gentle (as reflected in the use of…

When I was 26 years old, the night before my water baptism, I prayed and asked the Lord to reveal to me my calling. He impressed this verse strongly on my spirit: “The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to…

I ended my last post suggesting “the relevance of cinema to Christian orthodoxy.” What exactly does this mean? On one level the answer is easy: award-winning films have portrayed dedication to Christ with respect, such as The Mission (1986, Roland Joffé) and the recently streamed A Hidden Life (2019, Terrence Malick), about a martyred Austrian,…

For three centuries, the novel was the literary genre that expressed and shaped the modern condition more than any other literary form. A long prose narrative that focused on the ordinary life of an ordinary person, the early novel was the perfect form to express the newly emerging autonomous, ambitious individual. Of course, since the…

Two comments about courses of study separated by more than 80 years have me thinking again about the relational fabric of my classes in the time of COVID. One of the comments arose from the learning experiences created by German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the seminary he led at Finkenwalde in the late 1930s. Bonhoeffer…

At a time when it seems we can’t agree on anything, 98% of Americans state that incivility is a serious problem; while 68% agree it’s reached crisis levels.  From cyberbullying, to hate speech, workplace harassment, demonizing political language, verbal abuse, and intolerance the vast majority of us (87%) no longer feel safe in public places…

Generally, prior to a decade ago, when people heard “Title IX,” they thought of women’s sports. Now, we’ve equated Title IX with sexual violence. However, the topic of Title IX should not be reduced to either of these aforementioned issues. As the law states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of…

One of the most powerful metaphors in Christian social thought is the idea of stewardship. It comes right out of Genesis, with the idea that God gives humans a job to do on earth, and in doing that job, we are serving God. The idea is used widely in writing about the environment, economics, and…