Regardless of how one understands our relationship to the animal kingdom, many of us are interested in what distinguishes us biologically from animals, especially the animals most similar to us: chimpanzees, gorillas, and the like.Read more…
Review: Thinking Through Creation
With Thinking Through Creation, Chris Watkin succeeds brilliantly in providing a short, clear and accessible volume that sets the reader on a path towards his stated goal of developing a biblical “interpretive grid” to understand culture (p.3).Read more…
Book Review: Embracing the Body
Summary: An invitation to move beyond guilt and shame around our embodied selves to discover the goodness of our bodies and how God made us, meets us, and works through our bodied lives.Read more…
Imago Dei: Witness and Work (Part 5 of 5)
As someone who is involved in ministry vocationally, I have found that I have an interesting perspective on how many in the church understand the significance of work and its intersection with faith. I have encountered something of a double standard relating to the value of work for people who are in ministry positions and for believers involved in “secular professions.”Read more…
Imago Dei: Vision and Value (Part 4 of 5)
Whether we think of the image of God as being related to human beings’ unique rationality, their place as representatives of God’s reign, their potential for relationships, or their ability to make moral choices, the fact remains that the Christian faith claims each human life has great worth that cannot be dismissed and ought not to be forgotten.Read more…
Imago Dei: Culture and Creativity (Part 3 of 5)
The Christian church has left a profound impact on the world’s culture, at some times operating from a position of power, at others acting from the margins of society. Read more…
Imago Dei: Canon and Context (Part 2 of 5)
What does it mean to be made in God’s image? Read more…
Imago Dei: An Introduction (New Series)
This is to be the first in a series of five blog posts on the subject of the imago Dei, focusing particularly around a book called The Image of God in an Image Driven Age: Explorations in Theological Anthropology, edited by Beth Felker Jones and Jeffrey W. Barbeau (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016).Read more…
Science Reader Question: Becoming Made in God’s Image
This conversation on the relationship between an evolutionary natural history and man’s creation in the image of God reminds me of a saying in the world of software engineering: “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”Read more…
Devotions: Bearing the Image of God (4)
“Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:49). The goal of a redeemed image of God in humans is complete and finalRead more…
“Uncommon Decency” in the context of Pluralism
Christian hearts must be open to other people. God wants that of us. That is what I have just been arguing. But just how open are we supposed to be? We live today in the midst of many lifestyles, many systemsRead more…
Devotions: Bearing the Image of God (3)
The Scriptures tell us that as Christians we have a new nature that is “being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10). And Paul points out in 2 Corinthians 3:18 we are progressively being transformed intoRead more…
Cultivating empathic sensitivies vital to “Uncommon Decency”
Civility requires that we reduce the psychological distance between ourselves and others. We need to develop a sense of commonality with people who initially strike us as very different from ourselves. One important means of doing this is by cultivatingRead more…
Devotions: Bearing the Image of God (2)
Genesis 3 tells the tragic story of the famous (or infamous) fall of the first humans into sin and corruption. Because of a choice that took them out of their assigned place in creation, under God but like God, theirRead more…
Devotions: Bearing the image of God (1)
Thank-you to Carl Shank for his earlier Devotional series on Wisdom. I look forward to this Devotional series on Bearing the image of God, a topic which the Emerging Scholars Network will give focused attention to in the coming months as weRead more…
“Time” to be imitated?
The Marks of a Christian Scholar: A Vocational Description (Part Three)[1] Mark Eckel, ThM PhD, Professor of Leadership, Education & Discipleship Capital Seminary & Graduate School, Washington, D.C. By guiding attention we take in our hands the key to theRead more…
Owning education
The Marks of a Christian Teacher: A Vocational Description (Part Two)[1] Mark Eckel, ThM PhD, Professor of Leadership, Education & Discipleship Capital Seminary & Graduate School, Washington, D.C. The true function of the teacher is to create the most favorableRead more…
Getting a “Big Head”?
The Marks of a Christian Scholar: A Vocational Description (Part One) Mark Eckel, ThM PhD, Professor of Leadership, Education & Discipleship[1] Capital Seminary & Graduate School, Washington, D.C. “The Christian scholar-teacher must be a person who believes in Christian higherRead more…
Devotions: Wisdom – Convergence
“And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it . . .’ (Genesis 1:28) The crowning glory of creation is humankind made in the image of the Creator God. Rather than a myth orRead more…
Does Genesis 1 Teach Modern Science?
In my last blog post we saw that the main message of Genesis 1 is that God is the creator of all. Not only is this a central theme of Genesis 1, but it is also a central theme of theRead more…
The Message of Genesis 1
As I discussed in the previous post of the Christianity and Science series, much of the controversy surrounding Genesis 1 revolves around two issues: the timing of the events of creation and the mechanism of creation. Did God create over a period ofRead more…
Jim Sire on “Finding common ground with someone radically different”
The Worldview Question-and-Answer series with Jim Sire continues with the question: How can we find common ground when someone has a radically different world view from our own? — Micheal Hickerson, ESN Blog Contributor James W. Sire’s response: As aRead more…
Headed to Graduate School: Witness in the Academy
Thus far in two prior posts I’ve suggested that the end-point of a graduate education is to “become a person” in the Biblical sense – that is, to grow into the image of God. This holistic vision will encompass withinRead more…
Headed to Graduate School: A Time of Re-imaging
In my prior post I encouraged students who are headed toward grad school to begin their journey with a lofty end-point in mind: to grow into a person. In the Biblical sense, personhood has to do with fulfilling one’s potentialRead more…