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Review and Response

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 18, 2025
Review and Response

“Apostle to the Disillusioned” — A Review of Tomáš Halík’s The Afternoon of Christianity

When an influential priest (the Czech, Templeton-­award winning author, teacher, and theologian Tomáš Halík) criticizes “ecclesiastical authorities” while seeking to advance the agenda of another ecclesiastical authority (in-deed, the highest of them all: Pope Francis, to whom the book is dedicated), one can’t help but be hopeful for or at least curious about the future…
November 6, 2024
Review and Response

The Outrageous Idea of Christian Teaching: A Review

The title of this book parallels George Marsden’s The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship,George M. Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). and the emphasis on Christian teaching is a welcome supplement to Marsden’s focus on Christian scholarship. Indeed, Marsden writes the foreword. This book is a significant complement to…
February 14, 2023
Review and Response

The Outrageous Idea of Christian Teaching: A Response to Elmer John Thiessen

Since Elmer John Thiessen is one of the foremost philosophical thinkers in Christian education, we are grateful for his review. Furthermore, considering Thiessen’s contributions and his extensive teaching experience in pluralistic contexts we are similarly grateful for his claim that we “make a significant contribution to providing a more nuanced answer to the question as…
ArticleReview and Response

Art + Faith: A Theology of Making

It may be hard to imagine, but before around 1800, almost every human product in the world was handmade. Every object was unique and wrought with time, sweat, and effort by artisans who had trained decades to master their craft. Most people, therefore, owned very few “artful” objects—maybe a few clothes and a few pictures—many…
July 15, 2022
Review and Response

Pagans & Christians in the City—A Review Essay

If there is, in the corpus of Jesus’ teaching, what might be considered a defining parable, my vote goes to the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13.24-30, 36-43). Here Jesus provides a framework for history and a template for thinking about the progress of the Kingdom of God. The parable covers the…
February 28, 2022
Review and Response

On Christian Teaching — A Review Essay

For those who teach at a Christian school, whether in grades K-12 or at the post-secondary level, there is an expectation that one’s faith is integrally connected with one’s teaching. For many, this takes the form of a philosophical or theological analysis of the academic content, often focusing on controversial issues or a more general…
January 15, 2019