John M. DePoe points out that Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism is often considered to follow similarly to an argument given by C. S. Lewis. However, in this essay he suggests there are significant differences in their arguments against naturalism, which his analysis of their arguments emphasizes. The most significant contrast is the standard…
In this episode of the Saturdays at Seven Podcast, Todd Ream interviews Daniel D. Jensen, the Westmont endowed Professor of Engineering and Director of the Engineering Program at Westmont College. Dan shares about getting into aerospace engineering and his transition from serving on the faculty at the United States Air Force Academy for 21 years to now teaching at Westmont.
Anthropology and other small disciplines enjoyed a period of growth in the late twentieth century and now face reduction and reconfiguration in a ferociously competitive economic and enrollment context. This article describes anthropology’s presence in courses, programs, and faculty positions at Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) member institutions and discusses the vulnerabilities of…
Wendell Berry’s agrarian vision challenges the disintegrated, industrial model of higher education that prevails in our culture. Berry’s hope for the recovery of the university rests upon three requirements: an imagination guided by a unified organization of knowledge; a common, communal language; and responsible work. A university that embodies and unites these three principles might…
Recently, the distinctive role that Christianity plays in shaping teaching has become an important focus of conversation in Christian higher education. To help provide an empirical understanding of current practices, Nathan F. Alleman, Perry L. Glanzer, and David S. Guthrie drew upon a survey of 2,309 faculty at 48 institutions in the Council for Christian…
In the twelfth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Gayle D. Beebe, President of Westmont College. Gayle talks about how his approach to leadership emerged over time along with how leading a community through crises impacted it. They talk about the unique opportunities and challenges that come with leading a Christian liberal arts college in California and how Gayle and his colleagues have fostered a host of third way solutions. They then close by talking about the unique contributions the Christian liberal arts college and the Church make to one another and about the mutually reinforcing benefits of their vibrancy.
In light of increasing challenges and pressures in higher education, small liberal arts colleges struggle to maintain their identity and sense of institutional vocation. In too many instances—and stemming from both external attack and internal loss of purpose—liberal arts institutions sometimes seem to have forgotten what it means to offer a broad-based, interdisciplinary, and transformative…
Can game playing possibly be the ideal of existence? Philosopher Bernard Suits argues that it is, using a twist on the moral logic of Aesop’s fabled grasshopper. While many philosophers have weighed in on this question, none have done so with a Christian lens. In this article, we consider Suits’s body of work on the…
In the thirty-second episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Robin Baker, President of George Fox University. Baker opens by discussing the role of innovation in higher education and how that sense of innovation differs from what one may experience in other non-profit institutions as well as for-profit institutions. As an historian, Baker describes his appreciation for the stories and traditions that define and animate colleges and universities. While he contends change is inevitable, he also contends that those stories and traditions afford change with a purpose or direction. Ream and Baker then talk about the practices and habits that afford administrators, staff members, and faculty members with the ability to orient their respective efforts toward a common mission. They close by discussing how the theological commitments that define the Society of Friends or the Quakers influence the George Fox community and the unique ways that community pursues the relationship shared by faith and learning.
In this paper, Jack Mulder, Jr. argues that those who hold 1) the major Christological and Trinitarian tenets of the historic Christian faith and 2) the view that original sin and its psychological consequences are in some way inherited and not learned (which includes a wide swath of leading figures in the historic Christian tradition)…
It is a noble aspiration that Christian scholars contribute in more constructive ways to discussions in the public arena about the common good. Careful thinking, however, needs to be done about where and how such voices will be cultivated. The university has an essential and indeed imperative role in such formation, but it will need…
Using a student assignment on the philosopher Charles Taylor as a case study, this essay argues that teaching about vocation and calling can help students see that a call from God need not be entirely nebulous, emotional, and individualistic in nature. Rather, although there are important nebulous and emotional aspects to vocation, the concept might…
Every business is a social structure. Critical realist sociology tells us that social structures influence the decisions that persons within them make by presenting restrictions (penalties for violating norms) and opportunities (rewards for taking up advantages offered), that frequently alter those nonetheless free decisions. Thus, a business can encourage or discourage virtuous decisions, and over…
Jeffrey Vogel contends that Austin Farrer’s profound wrestling with the question of how best to speak about the divine-world relationship has ongoing relevance for contemporary theology. Though Farrer ultimately denies our ability to grasp the precise manner of God’s activity in the world, his idea that there is a unity between God’s activity in nature…
Business defines itself increasingly as the pursuit of money, but this move into the “iron cage” signals a process of abstraction away from goods internal to business. Scott Waalkes argues that virtues implicit in the Incarnation counter problems in this move by encouraging virtuous Christian business people to work toward the Kingdom of God through…
It is an understatement to say that confusion abounds over the words “evangelical” and “evangelicalism.” These terms have been used in wondrously different ways by scholars, researchers, church leaders, and journalists. Few would argue with historian George Marsden when he wrote of the “conceptual challenge in … [saying] what evangelicalism is” and when he concluded…
Twentieth century English composer Benjamin Britten demonstrated an unusual capacity to evoke transcendent dimensions of reality. In this essay David A. Hoekema argues that certain works for accompanied solo voices and some non-operatic stage works achieve an intensity of musical and emotional expression that seem to encompass both divine and human realms. Examples of this…
Huge pleasures … sometimes (if we are careless) not even acknowledged or remembered, invade us from [real, lived life]. Hence the unreasonable happiness which sometimes surprises a man at those very hours which ought, according to all objective rules, to have been the most miserable. Introduction In a recent online article entitled “The Pursuit of…
In this article, Amy S. Patterson investigates how political power shapes the AIDS pandemic in Africa. Because Christians in the West often lack knowledge about how political power increases vulnerability to HIV infection and affects policy responses to the disease, the work analyzes the uneven impact of HIV/AIDS on countries, communities, and population groups. It…
An infusion of vocational exploration within the undergraduate science curriculum could provide a path toward more effective healthcare and more significant scientific discoveries. students who pursue these careers often do so because they have a strong desire to help others; yet undergraduate science programs do not typically provide extensive training in communicating with others and…
