Miguel de Unamuno identifies with Christian thinkers Blaise Pascal and Søren Kierkegaardand includes them in a list of thinkers who embody his tragic sense of life. Unamuno embraces their suspicion of certainty and with them questions classical proofs for God’s existence. Nevertheless, Jan E. Evans argues in this essay that Unamuno’s understanding of the role…
While the Bible offers a dazzling array of metaphors with which to think about the church, contemporary social scientists—informed no doubt by the influential Rational Choice Theory of Religion movement—often engage a market-based metaphor. With help from Gladys Ganiel’s Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland, this article demonstrates why this is an attractive yet deficient frame for examining…
In broad terms, hospitality can be defined as “the friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers” or “the quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way.” The words hospitality and hospital are both derived from the Latin hospes, signifying a guest, stranger, or foreigner—describing the connection between…
This essay follows my earlier contribution in Part I, in which I argued that Christian embodiment is too often one of hierarchical dualism, alienation, and social separation. As those called to live in the reality of God’s redemptive work, we should seek out for ourselves, and inculcate in students, an embodiment of whole-ness, emotional and…
Mary Quinn, Laura Foote, and Michele Williams argue that the growth in online learning and in the number of adult students provides opportunities for Christian colleges and universities to reach a larger segment of this population. The authors note that with this opportunity, care must be taken to keep the integration of faith and learning…
When is illumination, as light shined upon knowledge, no more than sound and fury—signifying nothing? Are there times when illumination is even perilous? I have been on a tear this summer reading books whose copyrights have expired, allowing me to download them for free. I recently read the 1896 novel, “The Damnation of Theron Ware;…
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…
If you follow the latest science news, whether it’s a newsfeed from Science Daily or a casual listen to Ira Flatow on Friday afternoons, you may have learned that Earth, indeed, has a pulse. As reported in the journal Geoscience Frontiers, rigorous statistical analysis for the timing of 89 major geological events of the past…
It seems that not a month goes by without a well-known Christian announcing on social media that they have left the faith. More troubling, but less sensational is that for each celebrity deconversion there are hundreds of unknown believers who deconvert that don’t get the headlines. Deconversion from Christianity is a growing and troubling trend….
Reviewed by Michael Lessard-Clouston, Applied Linguistics and TESOL, Biola University Christians are known as people who are often concerned about language – what we and others read and write, say and hear. Yet until recently scant scholarship on Christian perspectives concerning language existed. Into this void step Michael Pasquale University) and Nathan Bierma (Calvin Institute…
Reviewed by Brian Glenney, Philosophy, Gordon College A tribal shaman, an atheist scientist, and a religious philosopher enter a bar. After getting drinks, the ground begins shaking violently and all three quickly duck under the table. The shaman pours out his beer to appease the angry god. The scientist guzzles his, anticipating the worst, and…
The world seems to be full of disasters, appearing on our TV screens and newspapers on a weekly basis. Some are clearly caused by humans: bridges fall down; buildings catch fire and incinerate many people; dams collapse and drown folk; terrorism and war inflict terrible suffering and atrocities. Others seem to be arbitrary, just “acts…
Shame and guilt are important concepts within Christian theology. In much of the literature, however, these two concepts are lumped together, offering little if any distinction between them. By contrast, evidence-based psychological research on the topics of shame and guilt has flourished over the past 30 years, offering a careful and important distinction between shame…
From Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self to Kristen DuMez’s Jesus and John Wayne, from Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood to Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry’s Taking America Back for God and Sarah Posner’s Unholy, a spate of illuminating (if controversial and contested) cultural histories have been published…
The Bible, in René Girard’s reading, reveals the violent foundations of social order and critiques the scapegoat mechanism used to transform the conflictual mimesis of human culture into unanimous arbitrary victimage. Girard classifies as myth all those conventional narratives that have been used to justify foundational violence, concealing the guilt of the persecutors and the…
There’s been an ongoing, race-to-the-bottom-like debate about what actually constitutes the “last acceptable prejudice” in mainstream culture. Among a list of contenders, I want to focus on one that has been suggested elsewhere—a bias toward rural America and rural Americans. I highlight this bias, not because I have particular empirical support for it, although much…
Back in 1996, my husband and I had a heated debate over the former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan’s use of the term “irrational exuberance” to explain the bull stock market at that time. He agreed with Greenspan that irrationality was the only explanation for some of the ridiculously inflated price to earnings ratios,…
How do we know Jesus was a woman? Answer: because, even after he was dead he had to get up and serve people. Some context may be helpful. I was the only man in a graduate seminar on feminist rhetoric. Along with six other Ph.D. students we were part of a list serve and often…
I recently reviewed John Bernbaum’s fantastic new book, Opening the Red Door The Inside Story of Russia’s First Christian Liberal Arts University for The Review of Faith and International Affairs. After reading the book, I came to the conclusion that John Bernbaum should be celebrated as one of the great Christian creators. The book documents two decades of John’s work…
Christian Scholar’s Review is pleased to announce the launch of “Christ Animating Learning”—an interdisciplinary and interactive forum focused on the relationship the Christian faith shares with the practices of teaching and scholarship. “Christ Animating Learning” launched Monday, with posts appearing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Readers can access it at https://christianscholars.com/blog/ or sign-up at https://christianscholars.com/newsletter/…
