In his gloss on the Creation account in Genesis, the author of John’s Gospel narrates the Christian origins of existence: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was…
Like many others, last fall I read with interest, in Christian Scholar’s Review, scholars’ reflections on George Marsden’s The Soul of the American University Revisited and Marsden’s response. The experience was—in no particular order—encouraging, convicting, and depressing. At different points, I, likely along with others, saw reflections of both the successes and challenges of my…
If there is, in the corpus of Jesus’ teaching, what might be considered a defining parable, my vote goes to the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13.24-30, 36-43). Here Jesus provides a framework for history and a template for thinking about the progress of the Kingdom of God. The parable covers the…
This article briefly summarizes some recent psychosocial research that describes the posture of grievance from which many young adults operate today. It then recounts three stories of classroom encounters that illustrate how this posture affects the way young adults read classic Christian texts. Next, it analyzes this “hermeneutic of grievance” itself, showing how this reading…
Is it possible to speak properly of God without falling prey to fideism, projectionism, onto theology and the neoscholastic notion of analogiaentis? In Speaking of God, D. Stephen Long argues that a constructive antidote to these modern theological ills (chapter 1) requires a more explicit Christological basis. More specifically, “if we are able to move…
I deeply appreciate—and am just a little surprised—that Christian Smith (CS) would take time to respond to my review essay, “The (Re)Turn to the Person in Contemporary Theory.” And let me clarify, right from the outset, that I would be as disappointed as CS if, on the basis of my few critical comments, readers somehow…
I am grateful for James K. A. Smith’s (hereafter JS) very thoughtful review (see Christian Scholar’s Review 40.1 [Fall 2010]: 77-92) of my book, What is a Person? (here-after WiaP?). Much of his exposition gets the book and my larger intellectual project right, which I greatly appreciate. But some of his critical arguments I think…
One increasingly popular interpretation of the scientific study of man is that, just as physical scientists have discovered the principles and causes of matter that have enabled engineers to create faster, more efficient machines, sociobiological scientists will someday discover the basic principles and causes of human thought and action to enable engineers to create better,…
I am grateful to Stewart Goetz for his thoughtful engagement of my short article (“The Pursuit of Happiness: C. S. Lewis’ Eudaimonistic Understanding of Ethics,” hereafter, “Pursuit”) within this wide-ranging and insightful account of C. S. Lewis’ ethics. I also thank the editors of this journal for the opportunity to respond, in order, hopefully, to…
When I was growing up in the 1950s in a small town in southwest Missouri, I knew the end was near. That thrilling sense of imminent doom partly stemmed from my parents’ ardent premillennialism; we expected the Rapture any moment. But it also stemmed from the daily newspaper. And with good reason. The communists—commies, we…
When I was growing up in Edmonton, Alberta, I knew the end was near. “The thrilling sense of imminent doom”…the fear of communists…the expectation of“Rapture [at] any moment” informed my life, just as it did Grant Wacker’s, though, perhaps, with less referencing of McCarthy and Eisenhower and more of Brezhnev, Khomeini, and the Red Army…
In this essay Gillis J. Harp notes that some American Evangelicals find it difficult to conceive of a species of conservatism that preserves a moral political economy and some notion of a paternalistic state protecting the less fortunate. Yet this is the kind of conservatism that characterized the thinking of one key strand within the…
During the last volume year the total number of submissions was eighty-one—slightly above normal—and I remain pleased with the quality of manuscripts we are receiving. Our acceptance-to-publication timeframe is approximately twelve months. The greater part of my free time over the last year has been working with my co-editors—Perry Glanzer, David Hoekema, Jerry Pattengale, Todd…
New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham has been working toward a full treatment of Bible and ecology for some years, with articles appearing in a variety of peer-reviewed publications in the areas of biblical studies and theology. It is therefore noteworthy that he has chosen to make that fuller argument for the first time in a…
What makes for good leadership? There isn’t a straightforward answer. The study and practice of leadership is a bit like Baskin-Robbins with thirty-one or more different flavors. There is valid data to show that effective leaders lead from the front with charismatic personalities. Other, equally valid, studies show that effective leaders function more in the…
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…
The August 9, 2021 edition of Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) featured a story in the field of structural biology entitled “How Transcription Gets Its Start.” Transcription is the biochemical process that occurs in every cell in the human body when protein synthesis is initiated. It is a complex series of steps that begin in…
With the release of this first issue of our fifty-first volume, we celebrate fifty years of God’s faithfulness to Christian Scholar’s Review. As with any anniversary we look to our past, consider the current status of Christian scholarship, and look forward with thanksgiving and some trepidation to the next fifty years. Looking to the past,…
Time will tell whether the trust we inherited is one we stewarded well in the name of Christian scholarship. For now, we will pause, celebrate 50 years of efforts made by countless individuals, and then prayerfully develop a strategic plan designed to guide CSR for years to come.
Susan M. Felch is Emerita Professor of English at Calvin University and the former director of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship. She was the Executive Editor of the Calvin Shorts series and is the author or editor of numerous books including The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2016); Teaching and…
