Reviews

Alan Wolfe once made the observation that among religious traditions, the intellectual standing of evangelicalism “ranks dead last.”Alan Wolfe, “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind,” Atlantic Monthly, October 2000, http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/10/wolfe.htm, accessed March 1, 2012. In a somewhat bereaved tone, Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson contest the very nature of what stands for credible thinking among…

In my beginning years in Christian higher education, I had the pleasure of meeting Phil Eaton, current president of Seattle Pacific University (SPU). His desire to shape more fully and deeply the lives of college students directed our conversation. He recounted the strategies his institution was pursuing to prompt students to reflect on their lives…

In my beginning years in Christian higher education, I had the pleasure of meeting Phil Eaton, current president of Seattle Pacific University (SPU). His desire to shape more fully and deeply the lives of college students directed our conversation. He recounted the strategies his institution was pursuing to prompt students to reflect on their lives…

Transhumanism is a scientific-philosophical movement that desires to use biotechnological enhancement to bring humanity into a “posthuman” state. According to the movement’s website it “seek to make dreams come true in this world, by relying not on supernatural powers or divine intervention but on rational thinking and empiricism, through continued scientific, technological, economic, and human…

One of my favorite Far Side cartoons shows a young Patrick Henry pounding on the dinner table, exhorting his parents to “Give me the potatoes, or give me death!” The cartoon works because we so readily associate Henry’s name with his stirring speech on the eve of the American Revolution. Unfortunately, Henry’s call for “liberty…

A new release by Gordon College’s Thomas Albert Howard, God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide is a thoroughly researched examination of the contrasting religious paths between Europeans and Americans. Professor Howard, winner of the Lilly Fellows Program Book Award for 2007 for Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German…

Six and a half years have passed, but I can still recall the look in his eyes. I met the Rev. Msgr. Gerard H. McCarren through a circle of scholars focused on the work of John Henry Newman. Father Gerry as his friends know him served (and still does) on the faculty at the seminary…

William Chillingworth proclaimed in 1638, “The Bible, the Bible only I say, is the religion of the Protestants” (12); this is the sense in which Timothy George’s treatment of the Reformers’ handling of Scripture is played out for the reader. This book is the introductory release from InterVarsity’s upcoming commentary series, which will edit and…

Co-authors David Lyle Jeffrey and Gregory Maillet set out in their book Christianity and Literature: Philosophical Foundations and Critical Practice with a relatively modest purpose, envisioning their task “as that of suggesting ways that a Christian worldview can provide a pertinent and fruitful approach to literary study as an academic discipline” (27). They wish to…

It is always with excitement and trepidation that I approach a description of my discipline from those in other fields. Technically, as a cultural anthropologist, ethnography is not my “discipline,” as other social sciences, such as sociology, political science, and even economics, have adopted and adapted ethnographic methods to great effect, but it is definitive…

On The New York Times’ Bestseller List for weeks, Eric Metaxas’ biography has introduced thousands to one of the most important chapters in church history since the Reformation and one of its most fascinating figures. Given most reviews, evangelicals seem the most enthusiastic about it. Many have discovered a friend they never knew they had.…

Does God Make a Difference? is a worthy book to which readers will react differently depending upon the extent to which they have been exposed to Warren Nord’s general arguments. In the foreword Charles Haynes reminds the reader that this is Nord’s final book. Nord in his opening remarks also seems to be aware that…

One of my more enjoyable duties as chief academic officer is to interview all finalist faculty candidates. Over the years I have developed a routine. First we spend time getting acquainted as persons. Colleges are, first and last, communities of people. Next we explore the candidate’s educational and professional stories, paying special attention to professional…

How does the work of Yale philosophic theologian Hans Frei contribute to questions within the vocation of the Christian scholar? Does Frei furnish original insights to the discourse maintained by Christian Scholar’s Review? How might Frei’s eccentric writing style, as well as his more philosophical tendencies within his theology, provide hope and remedies for Christian…

More than two decades ago, James M. McPherson’s landmark Battle Cry of Freedomhailed a new era of interest in American Civil War studies.James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Curiously missing, however, from the standard works on the Civil War before the mid-1990s was sustained…

Cultivating the Spirit is a book “...about the spiritual growth of college students” (1). This pithy description may lead some who work in faith-based institutions or in “religious” campus roles to add it quickly to their reading lists. After all, as the argument may go, students’ spiritual formation is central to what these folks prize.…

Simon LeVay’s book is the latest and most effective among the growing corpus of books and articles arguing for an exclusively biological explanation of sexual orientation. The broad and methodologically uneven array of evidence pointing to biological contributions to the origin of sexual orientation, heterosexual and homosexual, continues to amass, sprawling across diverse disciplinary areas…

Work is inescapable; individuals are either working or using the fruits of their (or another’s) labor. Christian theology has been surprisingly quiet concerning this pervasive subject of work. Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor is Ben Witherington’s contribution to the topic. Witherington, Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, begins…

As a young lad, Gerbert Aurillac entered the monastery, receiving a Church education. He served as a schoolmaster teaching future bishops, became a tutor and counselor to kings and emperors, advanced to abbot, then to archbishop, and eventually was elected Pope Sylvester II in 999 A.D. With a resume like that in the tenth century,…