Pulling together each Christian Scholar’s Review issue is a labor of love and a labor-intensive team effort. Usually, at the end of my prefaces, I thank one of our transitioning team members, but I’m not sure how many people make it to the end of my quarterly missives. So, this time around, I start with the end in mind.
With this issue, we mark two significant transitions. First, Steve Oldham, former provost and current professor at the College of Christian Studies at the University of Mary Hardin–Baylor, has been our very capable book editor for the past four years. During his tenure, Steve curated 79 intellectually engaging reviews. Matthew D. Lundberg, director of the de Vries Institute for Global Faculty Development and professor of religion at Calvin University, has skilfully stepped into this role over the past few months, continuing Steve’s adept editorial style.
David Lauber, one of our two theology associate editors, was recently promoted to Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies at Wheaton College. Given his heavy administrative work, he is stepping away from his work with us. David was always timely and thoughtful in his selection of reviewers and decisions. Karin Stetina, professor of theology at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, continues as co-associate editor.
Introducing This Issue’s Articles
The metaverse is an increasingly popular theme in modern cinema, featured in Groundhog Day (1993), Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), and multiple movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These movies explore how movement between multiple realities enables people to transform themselves and the world around them. However, they do not identify the first cause for such changes. Our first author, Bryan Mead, assistant professor of English at East Texas Baptist University, makes the case that C. S. Lewis used the metaverse in the Narnia series as well as his space trilogy of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength to note that God is the source of the metaverse as well as its transformative powers. As Mead writes, the multiverse reminds us that “our conceptions of time and space are limited, and that this linear conception of time we live under is only temporary. And it is a recognition that the only One who can save us is the One who lives beyond, but still enters into, time. While humans certainly have a role to play in shaping their individual and social morality, Lewis’s work reminds us that it is God’s direction and help which makes any such moral change possible.”
Tianji Ma, director of intercultural ministries at Overseas Missionary Fellowship International, will be introducing to many of our readers the renowned contemporary Chinese and Christian novelist Shi Tiesheng (1951–2010). While generally unknown in the West, his work The Temple of Earth and Me is compulsory reading for secondary school Chinese students and, as Ma points out, is considered by many literary critics to be one of the best Chinese prose writings of the 20th century. Shi also lived with a life-long disability, having lost the use of his legs following an accident at 21. Ma pulls together a deeper exploration of how Christianity and Shi’s disability influenced his work. He wrote in this article that “there have been very few explicit research contributions about Shi from a theological perspective. This short contribution shall serve as a further building block: especially from a Christian religious point of view, it seems desirable to bring Shi Tiesheng, undoubtedly one of the most renowned and unusual authors in contemporary China, and his works into the limelight of theological research.” I confess that I was ignorant of Shi’s work and influence. Reading this piece has helped me to be a more thoughtful global Christian.
According to Gordon-Conwell’s senior research professor of church history, Garth Rosell, one of the marks of Evangelical Christianity is a shared vision for the spiritual renewal of both church and society. While this is viewed as a responsibility of all Christians, is there a common view of how God works to transform culture? William Dyrness, professor of theology and culture at Fuller Seminary, thinks not. In his article “Toward a More Responsible Spirituality of Culture: Where is God at Work?” he reviews the different approaches Christians today take to explain how God works in the world. He writes, “Is it possible, indeed does not Scripture make it necessary for us to believe that God is still at work, despite the perceived failure of Christians to have significant impact? And if this is so, how do we discern where God is working and what this means for Christian involvement in culture? . . . Where might God be working out the reality of new creation in the more public issues of culture, and how might we join God in this work?” Dyrness argues that God desires human intervention to mediate his continuing work. Close to the end of the article, he writes, “If the goodness of creation supported by God’s two hands lies in, with, and behind our cultural practices, then wherever the character and future of some cultural product is being considered, there is also a spiritual battle being fought, and this is a battle in which God is clearly present. The results of such skirmishes can result in great evil or in enormous good; both are possible outcomes.”
Generative AI continues its unknowable infiltrations into almost every aspect of our lives. Most of us now have institutional statements in our syllabi warning students about appropriate and inappropriate AI use in their research and writing. But what changes are necessary in writing pedagogy during this time of transition? How do we work with students so that they develop into experts with rich knowledge networks rather than just giving the appearance of such expertise? In our fourth article, Traynor Hansen, assistant professor of English and writing and director of campus writing at Seattle Pacific University, addresses these questions by suggesting that the question is not “How do we protect our students from generative AI?” but rather “How do we, as Christian educators, respond to a world where generative AI is now part of the pedagogical equation?” Hansen suggests relying on the tools we already have at hand, namely the values of sabbath rest and delight articulated by theologian and philosopher Norman Wirzba that can “reorient a collective response to generative AI tools and inform a commitment to an apprenticeship approach to writing pedagogy.” He ends by giving practical advice on faithfully integrating generative AI into classes.
In Book Reviews
While much has been made of the alignment between Evangelicals and the Republican party, it still begs the question of how we navigate our dual kingdom citizenships. Andrew Kaufmann, associate professor in the Department of Politics, Government, and History at Bryan College, addresses this by reviewing three recent publications with a review essay titled “The Calling of the Christian as Citizen: Exploring Three Perspectives.”
Daniel K. Williams, Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship (Eerdmans, 2023)
Daniel Bennett, Uneasy Citizenship: Embracing the Tension in Faith and Politics (Cascade Books, 2024).
Ephraim Radner, Mortal Goods: Reimagining Christian Political Duty (Baker Academic, 2024).
As Kaufman notes, each of these authors takes a very different point of view. Nevertheless, he writes, “While the specific nature of the problem of Christian political engagement is a matter of dispute among these authors, that there is a problem at all is a clue that Christians should pay attention to what they are doing in politics. Christians cannot acquiesce to the status quo, pretending that nothing is wrong with their participation in the public square. Christians must ask soul-searching questions, like whether they are part of the problem that these authors describe. Our complicity will not be easy to see or solve, since our lives are mired in irony.”
In Other Reviews
Kollin E. Fields, assistant professor of history at Greenville University, reviews N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies (Zondervan Academic, 2024).
Peter Kerry Powers, director of the Center for Public Humanities and professor of English at Messiah University, reviews Tiffany Eberle Kriner’s In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest Farm (Eerdmans, 2023).
Miles Smith IV, assistant professor of history at Hillsdale College, reviews Joel Looper, Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity (Eerdmans, 2024).
Gregg Twietmeyer, associate professor of kinesiology at Mississippi State University, reviews Paul Emory Putz’s The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Gayle Doornbos, associate professor of theology at Dordt University, reviews Lanta Davis’s Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation (Baker Academic, 2024).
Timothy A. Gabrielson, associate professor of biblical studies at Sterling College, reviews Amy-Jill Levine’s Jesus for Everyone: Not Just Christians (HarperOne, 2024).
