The vocational fragmentation we noted in yesterday’s post summarizing some prominent Oppenheimer biographies likely had deeper roots going back to Oppenheimer’s childhood. David C. Cassidy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century offers important details concerning the impact of Oppenheimer’s upbringing on his sense of vocation. Cassidy contends that Oppenheimer’s parents considered it to be…
To read Philippa Koch’s The Course of God’s Providence in 2021 is to realize that the gap between the world of the eighteenth century and that of the twenty-first century is much smaller in some ways than a reader might have believed had the book been published only two years previously. Prior to the COVID-19…
To read Philippa Koch’s The Course of God’s Providence in 2021 is to realize that the gap between the world of the eighteenth century and that of the twenty-first century is much smaller in some ways than a reader might have believed had the book been published only two years previously. Prior to the COVID-19…
In the past few years, the symphony of women’s voices and the stories emanating from their own, often tragic, experiences in both the sacred and secular world have only grown louder, demanding that the church and society pay attention to women’s grievances and to their cries for equality and justice. By noting both the contributions…
In the past few years, the symphony of women’s voices and the stories emanating from their own, often tragic, experiences in both the sacred and secular world have only grown louder, demanding that the church and society pay attention to women’s grievances and to their cries for equality and justice. By noting both the contributions…
In this essay, Samuel Joeckel and Thomas Chesnes explore whether secularization threatens institutions belonging to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Employing a 2007 survey, they show that, though vigilance should still be exercised, these institutions are hardly descending a slippery slope to secularization. The second part of the essay argues that overzealous vigilance…
In this essay Heidi Oberholtzer Lee argues that we need to teach and model in our classrooms the importance of reading with humility. This serves as a corrective to the promotion of reading strategies that primarily emphasize negativity and scorn, strategies that have been popularized by misapplications of Paul Ricoeur ’s “hermeneutic of suspicion.” More…
This paper draws on aspects of Jean-Luc Marion’s account of “saturated phenomena” to explain Richard Wilbur’s poem “The Eye.” In Being Given and elsewhere, Marion contrasts “seeing,” a mode of perception hospitable to the alterity of the human other, with “gazing,” a mode of perception that presumes to control the other. The paper argues that…
Introduction What is occurring at the interface between religion and science is more important than ever before. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which are the ever-escalating culture wars pitting creationists on the one hand against evolutionists on the other. Evangelicals often find themselves caught in the middle, albeit…
In this paper, David Lauber proposes that a Christocentric conception of God’s patience with the world provides needed guidance in a Christian navigation of the darkness of the current secular age. Lauber uses the recent work of philosopher Charles Taylor, who characterizes the dark homelessness of this secular age. He also looks to the poetry…
When we hear that local Muslims have perpetrated terrorist attacks, many Americans worry whether the “strangers in our midst” will assimilate and become Muslim-Americans. Barbara J. Hampton argues that an examination of the themes of community, gender, and identity in three American novels written by Muslims can relieve the worst of our anxieties. The characters…
Francis Beckwith’s volume of the Christian Worldview Integration Series has much to offer the undergraduate student or novice newly considering the relation of faith and politics. The text’s subtitle indicates Beckwith’s Aristotelian assumption that “man is by nature a political animal.” Contrary to some theological interpretations which might discourage the faithful from political thought and…
It is the perennial discussion topic at Christian university faculty workshops and seminars. It is the seemingly-elusive goal of the Christian college classroom. It is the subject of concern among education policy experts and educational philosophers. Simply stated, the questions raised by those interested in the integration of Christian faith and learning are nowhere near…
Philip Ryken is the President of Wheaton College, where he has served since 2010. The author or editor of more than fifty Bible commentaries and other books, Dr. Ryken provides leadership on the boards of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) and the National Assocation of Evangelicals (NAE). He was recently appointed as…
Tom Lehman is Professor of Economics at Indiana Wesleyan University. Gillis Harp’s “Reconsidering the Liberal Captivity of American Evangelicalism,” Christian Scholar’s Review 41:1 (Fall 2011): 51-66, touching on traditionalist versus classical liberal themes in early American evangelicalism, is provocative, and as an economist I noted several areas of agreement. However, I also wish to express…
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…
The fundamental problems of global environmental governance are scarcity (a relative lack of resources with which to satisfy our relatively abundant goals), tragedy (the necessity of choosing between competing goods or rights, a corollary of scarcity), and risk (a measure of the likelihood of a tragic outcome). This article by Noah Toly examines the origins…
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…
Christian Scholar’s Review is pleased to announce the appointment of two new editors. Effectively immediately, David Lauber will begin service as the theology co-editor and Benjamin J. Wetzel will begin service as the history and political science editor.
A mere four years – something of a lifetime – ago, the Berkley Center asked many scholars and activists to offer advice for the new administration of President Trump. At the time, I argued that the new administration needed to leverage its multilateral assets: that freedom of religion or belief needed American leadership, but that…
