What is college like? In television and film, there seem to exist mainly two kinds of college. The first is a charming, upstate school with lots of sportscoats and wine and cheese mixers. The second is a big state school, with plenty of fraternity parties. The movies set in prestigious institutions are primarily about the…
Author’s Note: This is a slightly revised version of the Presidential Address delivered to the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Southern Section, in November 2004. At that time, the iPhone was but a gleam in Steve Jobs’s eye. As we theorize about the many ills facing our nation’s youth (and their possible…
It’s almost three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. I’m trying to finish up a bit of writing [this blog post] while constantly keeping an eye on the top right-hand corner of my computer screen. Three o’clock is right when my daughter’s school day ends. Readers of Power Women might very well recognize these words. They…
Besides lecturing at the University of Bordeaux, Jacques Ellul opened his own home for seekers of many backgrounds to explore their questions about Scripture, faith, power, and the relation of the kingdom of God to the social and political order. Among those at Ellul’s dining room table was Willem Vanderburg, who, being blind, sought Ellul’s…
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….
In this essay Julie W. Morgan and Richard K. Olsen explore the utility of a dialectical perspective for approaching and engaging in communication as Christians. After defining dialectics from both historical and critical perspectives, the authors then outline generic dialectics imbedded in almost any communication. The authors draw on the works of Leslie Baxter and…
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)…
The recent publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sixth report reminds us again of the challenges facing humanity in regards to human-caused climate change. Although the challenge has been part of our discourse since at least the seventies, this report echoes concerns regarding humanity’s relation to nature that go back much further….
In a dissertation proposal defense a few years ago, one of my colleagues declared to the nervous student, “Your paper sounds like a good Ed.D. but not a good Ph.D. You’re getting a philosophy degree [in the ancient sense of the word], so you need to make a contribution to theory.” First, I thought, “Do…
In a recent essay in First Things, Mark Bauerlein offered an account of the last half century (or more) of literary studies that is dazzling (in both its breadth and depth) and devastating (in its accuracy). While the history described in the article, “Truth, Reading, Decadence,” centers on developments in the field of English, the…
One of the problems Christians face in engaging today’s environmental challenges is appreciating the depth and breadth of our heritage. I’ll confess to a gap in my teaching. In the past, when I was assigning supplemental readings for environmental studies courses, I tended to stick to titles, like A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, that are…
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…
This article initially appeared in Current. I was on a train heading from Alexandria to Cairo. Next to me sat my friend Grace, a fellow student in the American master’s program we were just finishing. She was a Kenyan who had a radiant smile and a prominent accent that sent her English dancing and curling…
It’s already July, and while for many people July means summer is just getting started, most college professors are already starting to think about the new school year. The start of a new school year is always nostalgic for me. I have loved school all my life—which is why I never wanted to leave it….
What makes you feel worthwhile and valuable? This past year, I added this question to the qualitative portion of our Baylor Faith and Character Study with 18 seniors (for more about the study see here). I came across it when rereading Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development regarding some of…
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[s] to make [humanity’s] 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…
Reviewed by Tawa J. Anderson, Philosophy, Oklahoma Baptist University The discipline of contemporary Christian apologetics is rapidly gaining prominence. Earlier works by Cornelius Van Til, E. J. Carnell, John Warwick Montgomery, and Francis Schaeffer strongly influenced a new generation of Christian philosophers and apologetics. Lee Strobel’s popular lay-oriented apologetic works both sparked and marked a…
In his 2009 essay, “Finite Care in a World of Infinite Need” (CSR 38.3 [Spring 2009]: 327-333), Stanley Hauerwas suggests that, given the unlimited health care needs and limited health care resources in the U.S., Christians need to imagine an integrally Christian practice of medicine, which may include refusing potentially life-saving treatments. In this response…
Christian Scholar’s Review is pleased to announce the celebration of its 50th anniversary. On Thursday, October 28, 2021, CSR will release its 50th anniversary issue (51:1) at a reception following an address offered by Joel A. Carpenter, Calvin University’s Provost Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow with the Nagel Institute, as part of Baylor University’s annual…
Reviewed by Douglas Jacobsen, Church History and Theology, Messiah College I will not keep you in suspense. This is a brilliant book that should be read by everyone who is interested in the global dynamics of contemporary Christianity. The Christian world has changed dramatically in the last two centuries and Jay Riley Case’s goal is…
