The Emerging Scholars Blog

Faith and Culture Devotional

New from Zondervan, A Faith and Culture Devotional
seems custom-made for ESN members. Edited by Kelly Monroe Kullberg (of the Veritas Forum, Finding God at Harvard, Finding God Beyond Harvard, and, most recently, InterVarsity’s Women in the Academy and Professions) and Lael Arrington (host of the radio show “The Things That Matter Most”), the devotional is designed to be read daily for 15 weeks. Each week, there is one reading from seven different subject areas: theology, history, philosophy, science, literature, arts, and contemporary culture.

If that doesn’t interest you, here are some of the authors of those daily readings: Read the rest of this entry »

Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight

Scot McKnight’s new book, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible, maps out a method of reading the Bible that recognizes both its authority as inspired Scripture and our contemporary context. McKnight observes that we all “pick and choose” the passages of Scripture that we focus on. The keys, he argues, are reading the Bible within its overall Story (picked up from McKnight’s earlier book, Embracing Grace), listening to the person of God speak through the Bible, and trusting both the Spirit and the Great Tradition of the church to help us discern the proper interpretation and application of specific passages. McKnight helpfully distinguishes between reading the Bible through Tradition (which fossilizes the interpretations of the past and elevates the Tradition to authority over Scripture) and reading with Tradition (which honors and listens to the Tradition, but also challenges it when appropriate). Read the rest of this entry »

ESN partner Mars Hill Audio has just released a new audiobook, The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education by Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann.

Here’s a quick description from MHA’s website:

Higher education long ago distanced itself from its originating Christocentric purposes. But today, the condition of Western universities is even more disordered. Institutions of higher education lack any common vision of what is true and what is good for human flourishing. The postmodern university is not only post-Christian, it is post-humanist, and for the same reasons. Humanism, after all, is the product of a culture that believed in the Incarnation.

In their book The Passionate Intellect, Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann argue that the Incarnation is after all the only reliable foundation on which to build a properly humanistic education. “Christians are supposed to be the paradigm for a new humanity founded by Christ and inaugurated by his resurrection from the dead, a decisive event signaling the reconciliation of humanity to God and anticipating the full redemption of God’s creation.” [emphasis added]

Hmm, where else have I recently seen the term “human flourishing?” This book looks very intriguing, and I encourage you to check it out. (And, if you’d like to contribute a review to the blog after you do, just let me know.)

The Christian Classics Ethereal Library is an incredible resource for theological and devotional classics. It specializes in free or low-cost public domain books. For example, don’t have $300 to plunk down for an entire edition of the Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers? Download them from CCEL.

Today, I received notice that CCEL has obtained permission to publish Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford, 2000). Here’s CCEL’s description of this highly regarded book:

Warranted Christian Belief is a philosophical defense of the reasonableness of belief in God and the great matters of the faith. It answers all the common objections how could a good God allow so much evil in the world? Isn’t belief in God is irrational because there isn’t enough evidence, or because it is only wish fulfillment? Doesn’t modern theology show that the traditional beliefs are false? How about postmodernism? You get the idea. These objections are answered in a way that is philosophically rigorous. The treatment is perhaps at a level appropriate for a college philosophy student rather than other professional philosophers.

Here is the full announcement. You can read the book online or download a plain text version for free, or download a PDF for $2.95.

Over at the First Things On the Square blog, Matthew J. Milliner reviews Daniel Siedell’s God in the Gallery, which provides a different approach to art from the Reformed, Rookmaaker-influenced tradition.

Here’s a teaser:

Simply put, God in the Gallery succeeds by dividing, that is, by clearly distinguishing the sanctuary from the salon. The author has no interest in churches aping galleries or galleries playing church. But what keeps Siedell from merely erecting a Jeffersonian wall of separation between church and gallery is his unflinching insistence that the church’s aesthetic framework, grounded in the ecumenical warrant for icons, is strong enough to inform, shape, and underwrite the practice of contemporary art. “The church’s aesthetics and poetics . . . is the ground of all aesthetics and poetics.” And the direction of influence “goes from the church outward toward culture, not from culture to a passive, inert, irrelevant church.”

Over at Books & Culture, Karl W. Giberson reviews The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, edited by (in Gilberson’s phrase) “that arch-villain Richard Dawkins.” Gilberson is being cheeky, and he notes that, in this volume, Dawkins’ love for science and skill as a writer and editor shines through. Gilberson notes that Dawkins “is exceptional in being a member of Britain’s most élite scientific and literary societies, the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature.”

The review is worth reading. I, for one, love a good piece of science writing. But Gilberson raises a good question:

Literature—plays, essays, screenplays for movies, novels, nonfiction—has to be about something. “Literature” has no natural content any more than sentences have natural meaning. So why isn’t there more “science” in literature? Science transforms both our world and our worldview, and yet a solid work of literature is more likely to be about an alcoholic than a scientist.

‘Twas not always so. I still remember vividly being introduced - really introduced - to John Donne and his great poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” which was written to his pregnant wife as he was about to leave for an overseas journey. The time being 1611, and both travel and childbirth being much more dangerous then than now, Donne and his wife had little assurance of seeing each other again. (Indeed, their child was born stillborn while Donne was gone.) Donne’s imagery to comfort his wife was taken directly from science and engineering: metallurgy, draftsmanship, geometry.

Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
    Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
    Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
    As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
    To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the center sit,
    Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
    And grows erect, as that comes home.

Hope I didn’t catch you (and me) at an awkward time, but are you already thirsting for encouragement in Sabbath-keeping this fall term?  As I reflected upon the topic and prayed for the graduate students and faculty with whom I minister, I returned to Calvin College’s helpful Sabbath-keeping resource page for faculty.  Below’s just a taste:

In an academic setting like Calvin where Monday signifies not only the beginning of a new week but the onslaught of classes to teach, tests to take (or give) and general all-around busyness, is it really realistic to rest from your work on Sunday? Is it even biblically mandated for the New Testament church?

In his book, Catch Your Breath: God’s Invitation to Sabbath Rest, Don Postema points out that that “the hectic pace of contemporary life makes the idea and practice of sabbath rest enormously attractive.” Yet this same hectic pace also, on the other hand, makes it incredibly difficult to slow down, let alone cease from the normal concerns of everyday life. In light of these considerations, two key questions must be answered: Why should Christians observe the Sabbath and how?

Two other links which come to mind when I consider the topic are given below.  What resources, practices, and communities have you found helpful in Sabbath-keeping, particularly as a new term begins?

1. A Guided Sabbath, a resource written by Sarah MacDonald & Jay Sivits for Following Christ in 2002
2. Critical Junctures: The Spiritual Formation of Graduate Students and Young Faculty by Bob Trube.

While posting Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions, I was reminded of Neil Postman’s The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School – a book which I believe after a dozen years still remains a must read for those involved in education.  In my review of The End of Education, I conclude:

The End of Education Book Cover

Postman’s The End of Education provides an excellent critique of the current approach to schooling and education, but fails to assert a compelling alternative for the follower of Christ. In the end, a sense of the divine underlies our theories of education and makes religiously neutral education impossible. Contrary to Postman, we should not seek to create our own broad narrative or return to the American Experiment, but instead boldly explore our place in the narrative of the God who is there and is not silent.

If you’re interested in reading my full review, click here. Anyone have thoughts on Postman’s book or the general topic of The End of Education which they’d like to get out onto the table?

Note:  If you’re unfamiliar with Neil Postman (1931-2003), University Professor, Paulette Goddard Chair of Media Ecology, and Chair of the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University, visit the Random House author spotlight which includes links to a number of his titles.  Personally, I found Technopoly:  The Surrender of Culture to Technology hard to put down.

A free study guide for Andy Crouch’s Culture Making is now available from Andy’s website.

I, for one, will be taking part in a book discussion about Culture Making next month with a group of graduate students and faculty here in Greater Cincinnati. Check out Tom’s post about the book if you are curious about it.

Anyone else taking part in a discussion about the book? Or do you have other books you’d recommend for discussion?

Last fall Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale, kicked off the academic year with a Boston Globe op-ed entitled Why are we here? Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions, and we all pay the price.  In response, Comment hosted an excellent on-line mini-symposium with several scholars including Steven Garber (Director, Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture), Dr. James K. A. Smith (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College), and Greg Veltman (Ph.D. Student, University of Pittsburgh).  As you enter the new term and consider the role of higher education, take some time to read and briefly respond to these short pieces and Kronman’s response. …

To whet your appetite, below’s part of Dr. James K. A. Smith’s response to Why are we here? Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions, and we all pay the price:

While I think his diagnosis of the commodification of knowledge in University, Inc. is right on the money; and while I’m all for a more robust role for the humanities in a university education; and while I’m downright enthusiastic about a university education that actually grapples with “the big questions” about what it means to be human and what it looks like to live “the good life” — the fact is Kronman’s lament points out the need for so much more than he proposes. What’s needed is for the university to recover an understanding of education as formation.

But Kronman’s liberalism won’t let him imagine that. In order for education to be formative — in order for education to actually mold and shape students into certain kinds of people who are primed to live out a vision of the good life — such education needs to be shaped by a story, grounded by a tradition, and oriented toward a particular vision of the Good. But that would entail a violation of cherished liberal principles of the modern university — the stories it tells itself about its alleged neutrality, its supposed tolerant largesse, and its respect for human autonomy and self-determination. This is why he demonizes a “religious” education as the worst possible threat. So Kronman really just imagines a liberal, modern bastardization of a formative education: a syllabus that “raises the big questions,” but then leaves the sophomore in the place of lord and master, free to make her own decisions about the good life. (In this respect, his pedagogical memory is selective: the rich tradition of education that he points toward was not just unabashedly formative. It was, at times, positively dogmatic!) — Dr. James K.A. Smith, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College.

Note: Anthony Kronman’s Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life was released last September by Yale University Press.