The Easter season is a natural time for Christians to reflect on miracles, as the resurrection of Jesus is the central miracle of our tradition.Read more…
The Day of Resurrection
From death to life eternal, from earth unto the sky, our Christ hath brought us over, with hymns of victory.Read more…
What is the “Good News” of Jesus Christ? Part 5
Jesus had to die on a cross because he was Israel’s representative King.Read more…
A New Easter Poem
Today we feature a new Easter poem by ESN author and scholar of early modern literature David Parry. Christ is risen!
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Science Corner: Does Science Rule out Resurrections?
I don’t think understanding the mechanism by which God accomplishes his goals makes them any less miraculous.Read more…
Browning’s “Karshish the Arab Physician”
Robert Browning’s “An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician” is another fine example of dramatic monologue in which the character speaking reveals things about himself he is unaware of, but through the irony of self-disclosure, the reader readily sees. Read more…
Holy Week: Contemplating an Uncanny Calendrical Coincidence
This week, we’ll have what may be the last opportunity in our lifetimes to experience the intersection of Good Friday and the feast of the Annunciation. We invite you to read Kevin Birth’s thoughtful exploration of this calendrical coincidence below, and to consider meditating on John Donne’s poetic exploration of the same coincidence tomorrow, on Good Friday itself. Read more…
Book Review: Is Your Lord Large Enough?
In “Is Your Lord Large Enough?”, Peter J. Schakel turns to the writing of C.S. Lewis on topics concerning the formation of Christians and provides a “digest” of Lewis’s writing around key topics drawn from his letters, fiction, and non-fiction books and essays. Read more…
Science in Review — The Thanksgiving Turkey gets the LEGO Worm
For those among the Plymouth settlers who were believers, the American continent may have seemed to be the closest analogue of the world yet-to-come as they would experience, particularly when it came to food.Read more…
DEATH be not proud, though . . .
Death and Resurrection
He was a young man, and I could see fear in his eyes as he gripped the railings of the bed and struggled to breathe, sucking in heavily through the plastic mask feeding him oxygen. His body was wasting awayRead more…
Becoming a Thoughtful Christian in the Secular Academy: Part II
Last week I wrote about my journey as a developing follower of Jesus in a secular university. I told you that I’d become a stronger Christian during my time in the academic world, and now I want to tell youRead more…
Rituals of Annotation
I am not exactly sure of what prompted me to do it, but I began keeping a tally of all the pronouncements I have done. A pronouncement is that act in which a doctor officially declares a person to beRead more…
The Pursuit of Suffering
I watched the grainy, blocky video in silence. My friend was singing “Landslide” and I felt a certain tautness in my eyebrows and a peculiar heaviness in the corners of my mouth. By now it had become a familiar feeling,Read more…
Introductions: Dissection of body and soul
Medical school is mostly boring and the parts that are not are often tragic, which is why few people write about the experience. Prospects facing newly-minted residents and attendings are not much better, as the overwhelming secularization of a disciplineRead more…
Advent and the Second Coming
This is the first week in Advent. What is Advent you ask? Simply, it is the four Sundays before Christmas (see my post from last year). As a separate liturgical season, Advent has its own areas of focus. Perhaps theRead more…
Easter Isn’t Over
Over the weekend, a friend asked me a good question about the resurrection: Why does it say “He is risen“? Shouldn’t it be “He has risen”? Most modern translations actually use “He has risen” in places like Matt. 28:6. But “HeRead more…
A few minutes with Updike’s “Seven Stanzas at Easter”
Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall. — John Updike. Seven Stanzas at Easter. 1960. AccessedRead more…
The story is a great read!
Maybe I shouldn’t have been spending so much time thinking about Hell, see Deep Shift: Hell? (no doubt a natural extension to our discussions regarding resurrection), when Religion of hatred: Why we should no longer be cowed by the chatteringRead more…
Why Does the Resurrection Matter?
Yesterday, most Christians around the world celebrated the resurrection of Jesus (for Orthodox Christians, Easter isn’t until this coming Sunday). On Facebook, Nicholas Kristof asked “How literally do you think most Christians today interpret the Resurrection? And if one doesn’tRead more…
Greeting: Christ is Risen!
Response: Truly, He is Risen! First, as we read the Easter stories, we note the strange absence of Scripture in them. When you read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ last days — of his arrest, his trial, and his crucifixionRead more…
The Day in Between
In between Good Friday and Easter, I’m taking time to prayerfully consider Bart Ehrman on the Colbert Report and the Twelve Voices of Easter (audio files). Ever had a conversation which seemed to have the assumption that the Bible isRead more…