My hope for exploring and teaching Christian humanism is that it will revive an interest in the humanities amongst contemporary Christians and transform our understanding of the significant influence Christian humanism has had on Western society. In the modern world, it is often purported that there is a conflict between the Church and the Academy. […]
Faith & Theology
We Are Humans; We Are Not Gods
I have been reading through Jorge Louis Borges’ Selected Poems. One of the poems to which I keep returning is one of life’s refrains. The poem is called Límites. It reminds me there is something human about boundaries because boundaries—be they natural or artificial (that is, political)—remind us of our own limits, especially the fact […]
On Education: A Review
I recently reviewed On Education, for Ad Fontes, A Journal of Protestant Letters. On Education documents Abraham Kuyper’s involvement with the Netherlands’ seventy-year political battle over parents’ rights to choose schools representative of their religious convictions. On Education is more than just a helpful resource; it is a uniquely prescient guide for everyone concerned with […]
The Difficult Task of Defining Christian Humanism
Defining Christian humanism is a potentially arduous task for at least three reasons. First, there is the misgivings of Christians and conservatives who, when first encountering the word humanist, tend to meet it with consternation and disapproval because it is associated with atheistic and materialistic views of the world and, just as often, a strong […]
The Problem with Confessing Our Sins
There are ultimately two ways we can handle our sins. The first is the way the Bible instructs us to do it: confess and forsake our sins as soon as we recognize them as such. Consider the various admonitions in the Bible relating to this way of handling sin: “I acknowledged my sin to you, […]
Christian Schizophrenia
I wrote parts of this weeks back and never posted it. And even though many things appear to be getting back to “normal” at this point, I thought it might still be worth sharing. Originally, I was prompted by two events–on their face seemingly unrelated–to write this; but, the more I have thought about it, […]
A Short New Year’s Sermon
Of course, we’re all thinking about the New Year. And with 2020 finally wrapping up, I’m sure there are a lot of folks longing to archive this year as “one for the books.” But what will 2021 be like? Will it be better? We certainly hope so. On the other hand, this election debacle is […]
Some Brief Thoughts on a Free and Virtuous Society
Last month, I attended an Acton Institute conference in Dallas on cronyism and capitalism. It was the first time I had interacted with Acton, and I was anything but disappointed. As far as conferences go, Acton was generous, efficient, and genuinely interesting. The format of the conference was a series of lectures followed by Q […]
A Fool and His Fragrances
Proverbs 17:7 (ESV): Fine speech is not becoming to a fool; still less is false speech to a prince. Proverbs 19:10 (ESV): It is not fitting for a fool to live in luxury, much less for a slave to rule over princes. Proverbs 26:1 (ESV): Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, so honor is not fitting […]
Book Review: Science and the Mind of the Maker
Hard as one may try not to, a reader cannot come to a book without a certain expectation. That expectation is generally rooted in the questions the reader hopes the author intends to answer or expects the author will answer based on the title, the cover, or the blurb on the flap. The trouble with […]