The Goodness of Creation’s End: Beatitude and God’s Goodness

Our purpose in what follows is to help answer the following question: what do Christians mean when they confess that creation is good? This question is both timely and difficult. Admittedly, creation’s goodness is not always self-evident to us. Evils in this world are often more apparent to us than its goodness, especially in times…
The Goodness of the Creator and the Creative Act

Our purpose in what follows is to help answer the following question: what do Christians mean when they confess that creation is good? This question is both timely and difficult. Admittedly, creation’s goodness is not always self-evident to us. Evils in this world are often more apparent to us than its goodness, especially in times…
Announcing the 2020–21 Stott Award Recipients

Deerfield, IL — The 2020–21 recipients of the John Stott Award for Pastoral Engagement are Steve Froehlich, Thiago Guerra, Daniel Houck, Matt O’Reilly, Joey Sherrard, and Brad Swope. This year, the Creation Project is focusing upon the goodness of creation, and these churches will be engaging the topic in ways that attend to the intersection…
2020–21 Henry Center Calendar of Events

We are pleased to announce the Henry Center Public Lectures and Events for this academic year. The following six lectures are free and open to the public, and will be hosted exclusively online. Registration is required. Each lecture will be followed by a panel discussion featuring the other speakers from this year’s events. Join us…
Perceiving the Good: Creation, Nature, and Normativity

“God saw that it was good.” As reported by Saint Augustine, the Manichees latched onto the peculiarity of this refrain in the opening chapter of Genesis to criticize the received Christian doctrine of creation. Read in a certain light, it seems to suggest that either God didn’t know what he was going to make before…
Paul, Positive Psychology, and the Good Life

“The divorce of the natural and moral universes is perhaps the worst legacy of the Enlightenment, and the most urgent challenge facing modern humankind.” So said British theologian Colin Gunton 35 years ago. One might reasonably claim that little progress has been made over the last quarter century. Ideas like meaning, value, and purpose are…
Announcing the 2020–21 Henry Fellows

Deerfield, IL — The Henry Center for Theological Understanding is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2020–2021 Henry Resident Fellowship. This year’s recipients are Joshua Jipp, Kevin Kinghorn, Max Lee, and Alexander Stewart. The Resident Fellowship program is the centerpiece of the Henry Center’s Creation Project, a multi-million dollar grant funded by the John…
God and the “Good”

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:31). God is a being who is active even in being. In a gracious demonstration of his will, he brought forth creation, a reality steeped in profound meaning and significance. My purpose is to draw out some implications from God’s…