With this issue 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. We have also given ourselves a bit of a gift, sprucing up…
Over the decades, Christian environmental exploration and activism have focused on some issues far more than others. Interest in international missions, the continuation of farming as an honored profession in many Christian communities, and the availability of clear Biblical guidance have driven a solid and thoughtful presence in the realms of food production and sustainable…
This essay was published in 2012 in the book Practically Human: College Professors Speak from the Heart of Humanities Education edited by Gary Schmidt & Matthew Walhout (Grand Rapids: Calvin College Press, 2012, 133-145). It asks why we invest time and resources in learning other languages and seeks to look further than pragmatic motivations based…
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…
Simon LeVay’s book is the latest and most effective among the growing corpus of books and articles arguing for an exclusively biological explanation of sexual orientation. The broad and methodologically uneven array of evidence pointing to biological contributions to the origin of sexual orientation, heterosexual and homosexual, continues to amass, sprawling across diverse disciplinary areas…
This last week, I spent 45 minutes during a lunch trying to grasp for basic words. I did not know what was wrong with me. I could not ask a simple question of the person at the table, “What was your major in college?” Soon, I could not remember my lunch partners’ names. Fortunately, my…
It is cliche at this point to observe that humanistic learning is declining in American colleges and universities, including Christian ones. There are new data points each year, but the conclusion is always the same: faculty positions supporting particular arts and sciences majors, such as classics, history, philosophy, etc., are being reduced. It is easy…
How would Jesus do mathematics? He would most likely connect the discipline to his daily experiences (whether in carpentry or in discipleship) and would seek out a community of like-minded individuals rather than work in isolation. I would like to think that he would support the mission of the Association of Christians in the Mathematical…
Jordan J. Ballor is a research fellow with the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty and executive editor of the Journal of Markets and Morality. He is the author of Covenant, Causality, and Law: A Study in the Theology of Wolfgang Musculus and visiting professor of business at Kuyper College. He is…
This post is a slightly edited version of a recent editorial published in the International Journal of Christianity and Education. Birds are excellent indicators of environmental health and ecosystem integrity…Results from long-term surveys, accounting for both increasing and declining species, reveal a net loss in total abundance of 2.9 billion [95% credible interval (CI) =…
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;…
Play is pervasive. It is a quintessential creaturely activity that is observed and experienced in virtually all human cultures. Play pokes through and manifests itself in so many different forms of life that, if Christians fail to think about play, it means eliminating or subtracting a significant swath of human behavior from theological reflection. Brian…
Understanding the role that exercise ought to play in a Christian’s vocation requires a clear understanding of what exercise is: Is it a form of work or of play? In this paper, I argue that although exercise evokes play in a number of ways, it is principally a form of work because it is extrinsically…
On The New York Times’ Bestseller List for weeks, Eric Metaxas’ biography has introduced thousands to one of the most important chapters in church history since the Reformation and one of its most fascinating figures. Given most reviews, evangelicals seem the most enthusiastic about it. Many have discovered a friend they never knew they had….
A Christian master teacher can render challenging technical material in understandable, thought-provoking prose, arguing for her thesis in an edifying way that deepens the reader’s understanding, all while sustaining a theologically- and biblically-grounded engagement with her topic. Jenell Williams Paris gives evidence of being such a Christian master teacher in this attractive volume replete with…
Gillis Harp is Professor of History at Grove City College. First, let me express my sincere appreciation to Tom Lehman for his thoughtful and detailed response to my article. I am gratified to know that he found much of my portrait of historic evangelicalism “spot on.” It is also encouraging that he agrees that American…
In this essay David W. Aiken argues that Bernard Lonergan’s contribution to recent Christian thought continues to be undervalued despite its depth, integrative scope, and relevance to contemporary issues. One such issue concerns whether methodological naturalism in the natural sciences warrants a reductionistic metaphysics, anthropology and epistemology. Lonergan’s holistic account of human intelligence and its…
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…
Lived religion Today’s elite athletes have much at stake in sports. Climbing up the rankings within youth, collegiate and professional sports is no doubt daunting, where the victor has the best chance of advancing and everybody will seemingly do whatever it takes to win. Competition can produce uncertainty and anxiety in the lives of athletes,…
Alan Wolfe once made the observation that among religious traditions, the intellectual standing of evangelicalism “ranks dead last.” In a somewhat bereaved tone, Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson contest the very nature of what stands for credible thinking among the majority of American evangelicals, almost one-hundred million strong. How have leaders lacking scholarly gravitas attained…
