Over the last 20 years I have been involved in a lot of writing projects, but this is only my third big book. I am often a slow writer and each book took years of gestation and labor. These metaphors are intentionally chosen because I feel like all three of these books are my children,…

In his fascinating book on the Sermon on the Mount, Jonathan Pennington seeks to read the Sermon as Christianity’s answer to what he calls “the greatest metaphysical question that humanity has always faced—How can we experience true human flourishing?” (emphasis original, xxxiv). He offers this question as an overall reading strategy for the Sermon—a strategy…

I am grateful for Jonathan Pennington’s wise and insightful study. I learned a great deal from it, and was delighted by its delivery on the promise in its subtitle: to offer a theological engagement with the biblical text. Indeed, Pennington extends the conversation more widely still, drawing Matthew into intelligent and fruitful conversation with both…

“Look at sun that shines upon your brow; look at the grasses, flowers, and the shrubs born here, spontaneously, of the earth. Among them, you can rest or walk until the coming of the glad and lovely eyes— those eyes that, weeping, sent me to your side. Await no further word or sign from me:…

“A life for eternity.” Twenty years ago, that’s how Dallas Willard’s classic The Divine Conspiracy described the life of discipleship pictured in the Sermon on the Mount. He further explains: “that is, a life for eternity because it is already in the eternal.” Willard sees in the sermon Jesus’ answers to the two biggest questions…

First, my sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to read and comment on my book, and to Hans Madueme for organizing this exchange. In his well-known book The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins asked, “Were we [humans] designed on a drawing board . . . our parts assembled by a skilled engineer?” Here, beneath…

This book rehearses familiar arguments for Intelligent Design; namely, that some things are too improbable or complex to have arisen by evolutionary (natural) mechanisms. There is essentially nothing new here, though instead of discussing the bacterial flagellum, or the eye or the immune system or any other complex biological system (for the whole of biology,…

Lining the coast of France at Normandy are magnificent white cliffs. Carved into those cliffs by countless waves crashing into them over many millennia are multiple arches. Monet and many other painters have found themselves drawn to painting this striking coastline. The painting to the right was produced out of the mind of Monet. We…

I admit that when I received the invitation to review this book, I was unfamiliar with Axe and his work, though I have since learned that he has been on our campus from time to time and engaged with both faculty and students here. I want to be clear from the outset, however, that I…

Doug Axe and I share a number of similarities: we both profess faith in Jesus Christ; we both did our graduate training in cell/molecular biology in the late 1990s and early 2000s; we both rejected and opposed evolution during that time; and we both embraced the ideas of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement as a…

Chance or God? This is perhaps the central theme of the science-religion interaction in evolutionary biology. Most people—even hardnosed atheists—agree that the natural world looks as if it were designed. The question is, what is the explanation of that apparent design? The central argument of Douglas Axe’s book, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our intuition that…

Writing also on behalf of Peter Rasor, I want to thank Hans Madueme and the editors of Sapientia for hosting this symposium on Controversy of the Ages: Why Christians Should Not Divide over the Age of the Earth (henceforth, Controversy). I especially want to thank the reviewers for helping me see ways a revised Controversy…