April 2018
March 2018

Who Do You Say That I Am? – Pseudo-Dionysius on the Divine Names
In brief, the problem of understanding the divine names is the problem of discovering how a superhuman significance could possibly dwell within a language that has developed squarely within the boundary lines of human realities and human concerns.
Nicholas Zahorodny | Swarthmore Peripateo | Fall 2015
On Faith and Docility
The docile spirit is embodied in St. Anselm’s motto, fides quaerens intellectum—faith seeking understanding.
Greg Brown | Swarthmore Peripateo | Fall 2015
Consider Creation
As both a Christian and a long-time lover of nature, this article will seek to present why Christians should promote environmental stewardship.
Marta Galambos | Cal Poly Aletheia | Spring 2018
Leavening and Life after Swarthmore
It turns out that rootedness isn’t actually a function of how long you stay in one place. It has to do with how you live when you’re there.
Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon | Swarthmore Peripateo | Fall 2015
A Call to Work
Through examining the biblical notions of calling and vocation, we will see how these seemingly opposites – a longing for something grand and the reality of the mundane – actually complement each other.
Elizabeth Schmucker | Cornell Claritas | Spring 2017
Conversations that Change Minds
How can we facilitate meaningful dialogue between people with differing ideological beliefs?
Ronald Davis | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 2018February 2018

Searching for the Ear of God
I myself reckoned with the reality I faced: I also thought prayer was sort of stupid. It certainly felt stupid, primarily for two reasons.
Jesse Rines | The Hopkins Dialectic | Spring 2017
Review: C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce
C. S. Lewis’ work builds on the tradition of previous works to insert his perspective into the existing debate about the nature of the afterlife.
Sara Holston | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2016
History’s Jesus: An Exploration of Historical Analysis
Scholars have developed a number of criteria to inform an accurate reconstruction of the historical Jesus. Among Ehrman’s preferred methods are independent attestation and the principle of dissimilarity.
India Perdue | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2017
The Greater Miracle
Hume says that because experience is infallibly linked to natural reality, testimony cannot cast even a shadow of doubt on sensory information, and the two cannot epistemically oppose each other.
Hope Chang | The Columbia Crown & Cross | Fall 2016
Highlights from the Annual Retreat 2018
With over 220 students and alumni from more than 20 colleges in attendance, this year's retreat was by far our largest yet!
Augustine Collective | Augustine Collective News | January 19-20, 2018
Standing United: A Rhetoric Major’s Reflection
Although nothing is necessarily wrong with standing against something that is wrong, the implications of the word “against” reiterates the divided and polarizing environment we are looking to transcend.
Victoria Lai | UC Berkeley TAUG | Fall 2017
Order, Disorder, Reorder
Why does work feel like work? Here is the end at the beginning: work is frustrating. It can be extremely satisfying to produce something, but it can be simultaneously excruciating – but what excellence and beauty can come from deep suffering. Early on in the semester, a man named Jeremy Begby spoke at Cornell.[1] He […]
Emani Pollard | Cornell Claritas | Spring 2017
The Power of the Gospel: Experiences of Christian Slaves in the Antebellum South
The “invisible institution” - as historians have referred to slave religion for years – was able to foster organization in the slave community through enslaved spiritual leaders and the secret religious meetings they held.
Luke Julian | Vanderbilt Synesis | Fall 2017January 2018

The Body of Christ: Notes from an Anatomist
However, if working with deceased bodies provides any insight, I can say this: understanding the water-sacks we inhabit falls far short of knowing the full complexity of personhood.
Aldis Petriceks | Stanford Vox Clara | Winter 2018
Wonder Woman: Is Love Really All We Need?
Wonder Woman has the opportunity to save humanity, but, especially in light of the human cruelty she witnesses in battle, she struggles with the fact that humans freely choose to commit such atrocities to each other.
Hailey Scherer | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2017
Living in a Secular Age
In the end, secularity is a broadening of people’s experiences with where they locate meaning. From this lens, secularity doesn’t look so much like a good or bad thing, but more as an opportunity.
Noah Black | The Vanderbilt Synesis | Fall 2017
The Numinous and the Natural: Christianity and Environmentalism
The Tragedy of the Commons shows us that the destruction of the environment is an issue regarding not only how people relate to one another, but also how we relate to nature.
Jeffrey Poomkudy | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2017
Race and/or the Christian Identity?
All Christians share a place in the intersectionality of faith and race, but these identities need not be subject to an “either-or” debate.
Abi Bernard | Cornell Claritas | Fall 2017
What is Justice?
If Jesus’ loving death on the cross becomes the Christian archetype of justice, our vision has more in common with Socrates’ than with Thrasymachus’ or Cephalus’.
Luke Foster | The Yale Logos | Spring 2016
Interview with N. T. Wright: The Reality of the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church
"If you believe that the evidence for the resurrection to be compelling, why do you think so many people nonetheless reject it?"
The Dartmouth Apologia Staff | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2016
War and Peace in Christian Tradition
What are some wise insights and necessary points of reflection that we, Christian or not, should take heed of when confronted with violence, war and the question of justice?
Erik Johnson | MIT et Spiritus | Fall 2016
Interpreting Inspiration: Linking God, Mankind, and the Written Word
Inspiration in a theological sense is not equivalent to the inspiration a musician or a painter might feel to produce art.
Matthew West | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2015
Redeeming Rest
With a more robust view of time, we can rest as well as work because both add qualitative value to our lives.
Elizabeth Schmucker | Cornell Claritas | Spring 2016December 2017

Proving the Existence of God: Defending Descartes’ Causal Argument
Descartes’ work offers an enlightening perspective on the commonly spouted claim that Christianity is a game of blindness.
Jessica Tong | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2016
In Pursuit of Morality
The indicative and imperative grammar moods convey the fundamental truth in Christianity that how a person becomes more moral is through the foundational work of God transforming the person.
Joshua Jeon | Cornell Claritas | Spring 2016
A Picture Not a Copy: Gadamer Helps Us Honor Art (And Each Other)
At the beginning of Truth and Method Gadamer attempts to rehabilitate art as not merely an aesthetic experience, but as a genuine mode of knowing truth.
Michael Mullaney | The Wheaton Pub | Spring 2016
Reforming Insignificance in the Church
I realize that this type of culture does not predominate all Christian churches, but I do have to acknowledge that these types of communities exist, and I’ve been a victim of them.
Diana Lutfi | UC Berkeley TAUG | Spring 2016
Lending and Borrowing: A Christian Perspective
This paper will delve further into what the Bible has to say about lending and borrowing, how its interpretation has changed over time, and how it can work in today’s society.
Roy Walker | Swarthmore Peripateo | Spring 2016
“Criminal” is the Wrong Word
Today, the United States of America represents 5% of the world’s population, but 22% of the world’s incarcerated population is in an American prison or jail.
Emani Pollard | Cornell Claritas | Spring 2016
Resting in the Land of the Lotus-Eaters
We are able to fully understand and sympathize with the sailors’ situation because seeing their vulnerability, we unconsciously yet fundamentally acknowledge our own susceptibility to the same evil.
Eleanor Duan | UC Berkeley TAUG | Spring 2016
Metaphysics in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot
The question of the purpose of poetry as such is not simply academic or theoretical, but is grounded in understanding how poetry can and ought to relate to contemporary culture.
Nicholas Westberg | The Wheaton Pub | Spring 2016
The Strongest Argument Against Christianity
I think that the strongest argument against Christianity can be made by comparing modern Christians with the Bible.
James Frederick | UC Berkeley TAUG | Spring 2016
Composing Liturgical Space: A Design Thesis
What if there was a way to spatially communicate the progression of feelings we experience within the different parts of liturgy?
Matthew Barley | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2016
What Killed Robert Peace?
Robert Peace’s short and tragic life comes as a shock because many of us assume that poverty can be eradicated with more money, more intellect, more opportunities, and so on
Esther Jiang | Cornell Claritas | Spring 2016November 2017

Prayer, Relationship, and Depending on God
For the longest time, I told myself that it was just a matter of personal choice, that some people felt more inclined to pray out loud than others, and that I shouldn’t be pressured to pray because doing it out of obligation would make my prayers forced and insincere.
Juhyae Kim | Swarthmore Peripateo | Spring 2016
Discerning Fact from Fiction: Christianity’s Middle Eastern Heritage
First, the Western-Christian imagination has in many ways hijacked the Jesus story, and changed it into a distinctly Western narrative that deviates from the history and truth of the real biblical setting.
Sharidan Russell | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2016
The Role of Han in Korean Christianity
Unlike Rome with Catholicism and Germany with Protestantism, the root of Christian growth in Korea is not spiritual but cultural.
Joyce Lee | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2016
More Than Money: Poverty As a Spiritual Problem
"And so poverty as a spiritual problem is what’s going on in the souls of the poor people, and the souls of the people who let poverty continue."
Olugbenga Joseph | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2016
Is the Church Inherently Conservative?
I am not trying to decide once and for all if the church falls on the conservative side of the American political spectrum.
David Paiva | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2016
Review of The Global War on Christians
In the present day, the International Society for Human Rights estimates that 80% of all acts of religious persecution are perpetrated against Christians.
Paul Escher | St Olaf Avodah | Spring 2015
Self, Society, and the Trinitarian Posture
The Christian understanding of human nature instead presents a picture that merges collectivism and individualism into one coherent whole.
Amanda Wang | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2016
Examining the Synoptic Gospel Problem
Although the Synoptic problem is usually put forth as a primarily literary problem, more recent advances in our knowledge of oral traditions have made scholars start to shift the emphasis given to the role of oral memory and traditions in their views of the Synoptic overlaps and differences.
Erik Johnson | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 2017
The Heart of Mental Health
This, then, is the crux of the conception of mental health suggested by the Christian worldview: being mentally well is more than reducing a negative display of symptoms.
Jake Casale | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2017
When in Doubt: The New Testament’s Veracity
When we say the Bible is “God-inspired,” “God-breathed” or “God’s Word” what do we mean? If it does not contain Jesus’s words, is it God’s Word? Is the New Testament verbatim of God? I thought it was.
Kelsey Waddill | The Hopkins Dialectic | Spring 2017October 2017

“Myth Become Fact”
Throughout history, countless characters have arisen who speak or act in ways that remind one of Christ. In light of this, how could Christianity explain its ideas as unique and more legitimate than others?
Becky Bowman Saunders | St Olaf Avodah | Spring 2015
Created to Creator
I encountered Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem “Pied Beauty” last fall, clasped in the pages of a green and white anthology. I immediately recognized its beauty; it is a playful thing, quick-witted and high-spirited.
Kate Massinger | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2016
The Hidden Life of Liturgical Chant in Rachmaninoff’s Music
Rachmaninoff, always inspired by the elder Tchaikovsky, also decided to try his hand at liturgical music, but unlike most of his contemporaries, he found something very affecting about it, and after studying chant in depth, he composed a significant amount for the Church.
Ben Costello | The Hopkins Dialectic | Fall 2016
An Interview with Professor John Inazu
"Well, I think of pluralism in two ways: one is a descriptive fact about the world: we have deep and irresolvable differences between us, and so the question is, what do we do with them?"
Washington University in St. Louis Kairos Staff | Washington University in St. Louis Kairos | Fall 2017