What qualities does it take to be a great scientist? You might think of intellect, great experimental technique, original thinking, and endless hard work. Humility may not be the first thing that springs to mind. Nevertheless, humility is a very helpful virtue in science, and I think it has played an important role part in…
Like many of us, Victor Reppert, Professor of Philosophy at Glendale Community College in Arizona, has long been intrigued by the thought of C. S. Lewis, especially his so-called argument from reason (developed by Lewis most fully in chapter three of his book Miracles: A Preliminary Study). C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea, an obvious allusion…
Reviewed by Benjamin B. DeVan, Ethics and Theology, Durham University “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). This aphorism traditionally attributed to King Solomon especially applies to books about sex, which proliferate in print and online faster than the proverbial jackrabbit, and exponentially exceed in number Solomon’s “seven hundred wives of royal…
Reviewed by Mary M. Brown, English, Indiana Wesleyan University All of the five contributors to Making Nothing Happen: Five Poets Explore Faith and Spirituality consider themselves both theologians and poets. Their formal educations and professions favor their positions in theology, but their practice confirms their place in the world of poetry. Gavin D’Costa, Eleanor Nesbitt,…
Reviewed by Donald L. Cassell, Jr., Senior Fellow, Africa Portfolio, Sagamore Institute Susan VanZanten is a literary scholar and professor at Seattle Pacific University. She has written an autobiography that reads like a bildungsroman, a story of formation and growth. Here the growth is not necessarily psychological and moral, but intellectual and unexpectedly emotional. There…
We are grateful for Ben DeVan’s review. He offers two major critiques of Paul Behaving Badly and three smaller, more granular critiques. We will begin with the simplest issues and work up to the more complex. Early in the essay, DeVan notes that the series could be improved by—or at least would benefit from—contributions by…
Editorial note: This reflection from Alvin Plantinga is part of a curated discussion on “Christian Perspectives in Higher Learning.” See David Hoekema’s introduction to that discussion here. First of all let me say it’s a very great pleasure to take part in this panel. Some people, as I have discovered, impolitely referred to us as…
We know ourselves by what is reflected back at us. We see ourselves in the reactions, labels and facial expressions of others. In fact (oh, what danger!) this is primarily how we know ourselves. In a very real sense, we are always naked and helpless before others’ eyes. We depend on them for meaning, for…
As theaters, museums, and concert halls struggle during these covidious times, I worry about the respiratory system of the arts. Only a year and half after I took my current job co-directing the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, which archives the work of seven culture-animating British Christians, the center’s museum and research-room were…
Reviewed by Benjamin B. DeVan, Ethics and Theology, Durham University “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). This aphorism traditionally attributed to King Solomon especially applies to books about sex, which proliferate in print and online faster than the proverbial jackrabbit, and exponentially exceed in number Solomon’s “seven hundred wives of royal…
Work is inescapable; individuals are either working or using the fruits of their (or another’s) labor. Christian theology has been surprisingly quiet concerning this pervasive subject of work. Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor is Ben Witherington’s contribution to the topic. Witherington, Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, begins…
Editor’s Note: The following blog post is provided by Professor Tom McLeish from his 2021 Boyle Lectures. The full version of his lecture was recently published in Zygon together with a response by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, an article by Fraser Watts summarizing the panel discussion, and a second article by Professor McLeish…
The recently released Netflix movie Don’t Look Up is a satirical film featuring a star-studded cast of actors. The film tells a gripping story about a comet heading for earth as a metaphor for climate change, but it also provides a profound commentary on American politics, entertainment, and social media. Leonardo DiCaprio plays an astronomer…
Few other poets writing in English during the second half of the 20th century wrote as well as the Welsh poet R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), and none wrote as well about that interweaving of faith and doubt that forms part of the fabric of most (if not all) thinking Christians’ experience. If you have ever…
“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” Proverbs 25:2 (ESV) In Europe, at the turn of the twentieth century, great advances were being made in atomic theory. In 1904, the British physicist and Nobel laureate Sir Joseph John Thomson, who had discovered the…
During the pandemic, many of our relationships with others, known or unknown, found a new low as we were, for a time, unable to be with them and have our shattered perceptions of them re-calibrated. So here is the challenge of the modern post-pandemic world, especially for the Christian: our social discourse feels intractably conflictual….
For all their economic vulnerabilities, small Christian colleges, and universities might be the ideal environment for fostering interdisciplinary research. Given that the realities of size, scale, scope, and student load can serve to restrict the kind of projects faculty at these institutions can carry out, it makes sense to recognize our strength in this niche…
“This one is broken!” Normally hearing these words from my toddler would make me assume something valuable, specifically something of mine, has been thrown somewhere, but this time I could understand the frustration. Watching my daughter struggle with a small shape sorting toy was to observe the resiliency of the human spirit, or perhaps just…
In a well-known essay on the study of international relations, political scientist Robert Cox made a useful distinction between what he calls “problem-solving theory” and “critical theory.” Cox’s distinction articulates something pretty commonsensical, which is why I assign excerpts from his essay in lots of different classes that have nothing to do with international relations….
Our academic age celebrates the critic more than the creator. One finds this represented in our most discussed theory of the past few decades—critical theory. Contemporary academics tend to look with suspicion upon entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk. This academic tendency is not unusual for this age though. Academic critics during the Industrial Revolution exhibited…
