Thomas Kuhn gained infamy for blowing the whistle on the hallowed status of natural science. He turned the world upside down for anyone who still thinks of science as just the facts ma’am. The truth is far more complex. At any given period, Kuhn argued, members of the scientific community accept a particular way of…

Dear Todd, Thanks for your response to my thoughts about The Quest. I especially like the fact that we have been able to be frank with each other. To summarize what I think is the key point in the exchange, I wrote: As you know from our discussions Todd, I think that when we are…

If you have ever played chess or some similarly structured game with someone of comparable experience, you understand that the quest for certainty can seem particularly elusive. For any one move, the number of possibilities is quite limited, often restricted to a single option or two. In chess as with much else in life, we…

Like Theophilus of Luke’s gospel, many American, inerrantist evangelicals today are expectant “to know the certainty of the things [they] have been taught” (Luke 1:4). As I reflect upon the forum topic, three questions come to mind: 1) How did we get to the point we are now? 2) What options remain? 3) How does…

From conversion to death, Augustine was captivated by Genesis 1–3. He kept writing and re-writing commentaries on these chapters, and they pop up his other works as well (many have noticed, often with puzzlement, that even the Confessions climax into an exegesis of Genesis 1). Then, for 15 years, he labored on a kind of…

Imagine a young man in his late teen years. He has recently moved to the city to go to school. In the course of his study, he becomes convinced that Genesis 1 is no longer consistent with the most sophisticated intellectual trends of the day. He rejects the Christian faith in which he was raised,…