“Hypocrites!” Jesus leveled this harsh judgment with a single word, and he was just ramping up. After describing the people’s remarkable ability to predict the weather, he chastised them: “You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?”…
The publisher and editors of the Christian Scholar’s Review are pleased to announce the recipient of its annual award for best article. The winner of the Charles J. Miller Christian Scholar’s Award for volume 41 is Jim Halverson, professor and chair of History and Intercultural Studies at Judson University. His article, “Restored Through Learning: Hugh…
Reviewed by David A. Hoekema, Philosophy, Calvin College “In spite of the indispensable use of images in our yearning to make sense of reality, there has not been sufficient attention to the aesthetic in the debate between theism and naturalism” (3). This opening comment conveys the motivation for a wide-ranging and provocative book by a…
Reviewed by Jerry Pattengale, Assistant Provost, Indiana Wesleyan University If Craig Dykstra’s comments on a higher education book prompt a pause, his endorsement of one on vocation should arrest your attention. In this case, his jacket comments both summarize and champion The American College Presidency as Vocation as “a great addition to the expanding literature…
The publisher and editors of the Christian Scholar’s Review are pleased to announce the recipient of its annual award for best article. The winner of the Charles J. Miller Christian Scholar’s Award for volume 42 is Rick Kennedy, professor of history at Point Loma Nazarene University. His article, “Educating Bees: Humility as a Craft in…
Reviewed by Brian R. Bolt, Kinesiology, Calvin College When he wanted to make a point that could be understood by the widest possible audience, the apostle Paul’s metaphor of choice was sport. In sport Paul saw unrivaled tenacity, commitment, sacrifice, affinity, and intense love – all attributes he sought to stir in the hearts of…
Since assuming the general editorship of the Christian Scholar’s Review in 1999, I have been blessed to work with dozens of wonderful associate editors, scores of expert reviewers, Kim McMurtry, our formatter, and Elaine Friedberg, our copy editor. I have especially enjoyed working with David Hoekema, our publisher, Jerry Pattengale, our associate publisher, and Todd…
Todd C. Ream is Professor of Higher Education, Taylor University, and Distinguished Fellow, Excelsia College. By almost any measure, Theodore Martin Hesburgh, C.S.C. (May 25, 1917 –February 26, 2015) was among the greatest university presidents of the twentieth century. Some historians may even go so far as to argue Hesburgh stands amongst the greatest university…
Recently, while analyzing interviews from seniors at our university, we came across a curious and disturbing finding. In three consecutive interviews, non-white students talked about how they had not attended church during their time at the university, and it showed in their own admitted lack of spiritual growth and sense of belonging at the institution. Puzzled, we…
A new school year is beginning, and I’m thinking about how to teach cultural history. There are a lot of reasons to get “meta” right now, as a cultural historian. (Specifically, I’m a professor of Art History and Visual Studies.) First, there’s mode of delivery, and the cultural implications of that. If “the medium is the…
Since most faculty are trained in thoroughly secular universities and disciplines, it can take some work to figure out what difference Christian faith can have in the practice of your discipline. I have noticed that there is a particular difficulty of this kind for economists. In this blog post, I describe the background for that…
As co-director of the Marion E. Wade Center, the world’s most comprehensive archive of books and autographs by and about C. S. Lewis and six of his most important influencers, I have delighted in reading unpublished correspondence and manuscripts by Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), whose radio plays about Jesus nurtured Lewis’s spiritual life. Among the many…
“Those who cannot remember the past,’ the philosopher George Santayana, famously said, ”are condemned to repeat it.” Literature is one way of “remembering” the past in a way that exceeds the limits of our own memory and experience. If there were one work of literature that might help us today to avoid repeating a violent and painful past…
When I was 26 years old, the night before my water baptism, I prayed and asked the Lord to reveal to me my calling. He impressed this verse strongly on my spirit: “The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to…
In honor of the 350th anniversary of the death of the great Christian educator John Amos Comenius, David I. Smith and Perry L. Glanzer have authored a series of posts to honor Comenius’ work. Smith’s post appeared yesterday. Our willingness to accept problematic falsehoods from popular pagan authors can have dire consequences. One of the…
For Christians, most virtue words do not actually describe virtues unless they are directed properly. To put one’s faith, hope, or love in the wrong being or thing is actually a vice and not a virtue. That’s why when attempting to measure Christian virtue, it is always hard to find appropriate psychological scales. Hope in…
Einstein once wrote: “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand in rapt awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle….
For ten months my laboratory has sat empty and dark. But it is never quiet. An aggressive air handling system has covered the vacant benches with humming and whirring through nearly a year of distance learning. My institution went fully online in March, like most other schools, but we continued to be primarily online throughout…
Although I am a college professor, I must confess that my most important education during college did not come from professors. As an undergraduate majoring in history, political science, and religion at Rice University, I had some great classes with outstanding professors—one even won a Professor of the Year award among faculty for the entire…
In my early academic career, I assumed being a pastor was a liability to my teaching. Perhaps it was my own perception of the academy or the true prevailing ethos, but my pastoral background seemed like a hindrance. I was too practical—not intellectual enough. I was too biased—not objective enough. However, after a few years…
