For a man who died almost two millennia ago, the Apostle Paul is unusually polarizing. For some, Paul is the first and greatest theologian, the author of the “purest Gospel,” an apostle of a luminous and liberative grace.Martin Luther, Die Deutsche Bibel (Weimar: H. Böhlaus, 1931), 7:3. At the seminary where I completed my master’s…

“The Song in the Night,” date unknown. Sermons—Miscellaneous, Q-Z, Box 2, Folder 14, Carl F. H. Henry Collection, Gleason Archer Archives, Deerfield, Illinois. This story, of the angels and the shepherds, opens at night. It is the story of darkness and fright, which ends in exultation and jubilee. Life has many chapters like that, but…

Mano Singham’s paper is about supporting public trust in science. He makes two main points. First, Singham points out that science deniers assume that falsification is the foundation of the scientific method. They use falsification to reject sound scientific theories about vaccination, climate change, evolution and the like. Singham rejects this. Second, he argues that…

The resurrection of the body, writes one seventeenth-century Christian theologian, is the “peculiar treasure” of the Christian church.Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. 3 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1997), 562. The resurrection is peculiar because it is not a product of unaided reason but relies upon a definitive revelation in Jesus Christ. Our only…

Every time I wash my hands these days, I recite either our Lord’s Prayer or the Apostle’s Creed. This ensures that I make it past twenty seconds, of course, but it also reminds me of what is most important. As I do so, I keep thinking about the striking contrasts between the transience and fragility…

A study in genomic sciences that was on most counts not newsworthy has made big headlines in recent days, both in the media’s initial declarations and in the ensuing reaction. The cynic in me suspects that the whole thing was predictable from the very get-go. The study, published in The American Journal of Human Genetics,…

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga argued in his book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, religion, and naturalism (Oxford University Press, 2011), the central thesis: “There is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism.” Now, Plantinga wrote about “theistic religion,” but his main…

The English language borrowed the word genre from French, which was in turn derived from Latin genus.From the genitive generis, which explains the r in French. We use these words to classify things, especially art forms: “The Stray Cats play music mostly in the rockabilly genre.” I know what to listen for when I find…

Big Money, Big Science, and God’s Big World In my last post I presented the objections to spending billions on big science projects such as the Large Hadron Collider. Questions certainly arise in the face of this massive public spending, when we live in a world in which millions of people are hungry and lack access…

The Reverend Dr. James Woodrow Last time I introduced the nineteenth-century idea of professorships devoted to exploring and improving the relations of science and scripture. They seemed like a good idea—but the first such chair ended up causing quite a ruckus. Interestingly, in view of the later Scopes Trial, which ever after gave the American…

I have just been reading about the exciting hunt for the Higgs boson— a rather dramatic way to put it, since the scientists involved were not, actually, hunting for a boson, but looking to discover whatever was out there.Jon Butterworth, Smashing Physics: Inside the World’s Biggest Experiment (London: Headline, 2014). In this case, however, they…

On December 25th, we commemorate the story of the King and the beginning of his mission. To hear it fresh we will tell it a bit strangely. And so this story of a king is also the story of a kingdom. Many hundreds of years before, this kingdom had been divided into two, north and…

As one in the public square regularly, I often find myself in contentious space. I sometimes am the “token” evangelical chosen to defend what many see as indefensible or presenting a perspective some have trouble appreciating. It makes for interesting conversation. What is amazing is that I often find the opposition is not because someone…

Can Science and Scripture be Harmonized? The past history of a question often reveals it to be more complicated than we first imagined. So it is with the seemingly simple idea of fitting together, or “harmonizing,” the truths of science with the truths of scripture. Three Options for Harmonizing “All truth is God’s truth,” we rightly…

There’s been a real need for a biography on Kierkegaard that would be both accessible and enjoyable to a broad audience. In so many respects, Stephen Backhouse’s Kierkegaard: A Single Life fills this lacuna. A Window in Denmark: Approaching Kierkegaard Stephen Backhouse, Kierkegaard: A Single Life (Zondervan, 2016) What Backhouse does so successfully is provide…

In a previous post I mentioned that I drafted an “Elder Affirmations about Creation & Evolution” to articulate for the leadership of our church a set of convictions that we share in common and that might provide an outline for a teaching position for our church. I received several inquiries about this document and thus…

The most common motif for the relationship between science and religion is that of warfare. It is the theme that most grasps the public mind; conflict creates good television and a fight will be considered more entertaining than friendly chatting. This motif is almost taken for granted. As many individuals can testify, it’s likely that…

In my previous post I discussed the value of using ancient Near Eastern (ANE) texts to sharpen and enhance our understanding of the world of the Old Testament. In terms of the Creation Project, I want to explore ANE texts that address cosmology in order to understand better how the ancient Israelites might have interpreted Genesis 1. In this post…

It is one thing to affirm the truth, authority, and reliability (inerrancy) of the Bible in the early chapters of Genesis, which I surely do, but is quite another thing to understand how God intends that we understand them. Some argue, for example, that Genesis 1 (meaning here Gen. 1:1-2:3) clearly teaches that God created…

Some people have labeled me a “public theologian.” This is intended as a compliment because it often comes with a note that they appreciate and have learned from the way I engage. It is a kind observation that reflects the hope I have when I enter “public discussion.” I pray that the result, even if…

As the historian among the contributors to Sapientia, I’ll be presenting instructive episodes in the history of the interpretation of Genesis (and the Bible more broadly) in light of modern geology and evolutionism. There are plenty of them, and I’m looking forward to bringing them to your attention, along with my reflections on their present…

I recently received a phone call from a fellow pastor asking for help. “I’m preaching through Genesis 1­­­–11,” he anxiously explained to me, “and I need some advice on the whole creation and evolution thing.” The sound of his voice let me know he was worried about how this might go down in his congregation.…

For many evangelicals working within academic institutions, the science-theology debate feels like chronic pain from a stomach ulcer. Try to suppress it from consciousness, don’t mention it in public, just press through it; perhaps find some meds to help. Evangelical biblical scholars and theologians rarely present a clear, unequivocal picture and are hesitant about the…

Choose science and abandon faith; or, if you’re a Bible-believing Christian, then stick your head in the sand like an ostrich and deny everything mainstream science is telling us. Such are the stark options for a growing number of evangelical teenagers and millennials whose lives are saturated with science and technology.See David Kinnaman, You Lost…

Proper Caution The Paradiso feels like the riskiest book to read, much less write about. To begin with, we have only enough information about Heaven to spark lots of speculation, much of it pretty fanciful. Mark Twain skewered pious visions of Heaven by pointing out that most men he knew don’t act like they’d even…

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from C. Christopher Smith’s book, Reading for the Common Good, now available from IVP. Reading is a practice that is formative for communities of God’s people, especially when we learn to read in ways that are not driven merely by a desire for entertainment or for self-improvement. (Certainly,…

At the summit of Purgatory: Eden, the Earthly Paradise, the state of original innocence preserved as the field of rest before ascending to the gates of the heavenly Paradise. We’ve already had a climactic trial by fire, where can the story even go from here? A Second Climax? To perhaps the weirdest imaginable place, at least…

“Unless you’re bitten by the fire,” the angel at the top of the mountain shouts joyfully, but Dante, understandably, balks at being called to pass through a wall of flame. Dramatically, he says “I was like a corpse put in the grave, / the words I heard so touched my heart with fear,” opposing the…

Let me try to get from Friends to Dante in a more or less plausible manner. You might know that Ross always had a thing for Rachel, but Rachel never took Ross seriously. This was the dynamic for several seasons until they finally got together. In the “emotional,” climactic moment when she at last returns his…

You’ve probably seen the videos for Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. They usually begin with women describing their appearance  as inadequate or inferior before another woman or a man or an artist do or say something that reveals that, in fact, others see them as quite beautiful. The videos are well-made, sincere, and legitimately powerful…