September 2019
God-talk and the Suffering of the Guilty
They have committed crimes most would see as purely evil and are responsible for the most severe moments of suffering in many people’s lives. Yet I hold that they, too, are sufferers.
Noah Black | Vanderbilt Synesis | Fall 2018
Faith and Reason in Life of Pi: God as the Story with the Tiger
Pi’s roots in faith and science are crucial to understanding the philosophical question of his incredible story.
Alienor Manteau | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2019August 2019
July 2019
The Life of Faith in Reason: A Hegelian Perspective
Faith is a calculated step in reasoning when gaps in our understanding are present.
Philipp Hauser | Vanderbilt Synesis | Spring 2019
On the Origin of Controversy: Religion and Science
In one survey by sociologist Elaine Ecklund, 40% of scientists in America were found to practice some religion.
Abby Franklin | Duke Crux | Spring 2019
Social Science and Other Miraculous Signs
Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now doesn’t cite selfish genes to prove God’s irrationality. It cites social-scientific data to prove God’s irrelevance.
Lauren Spohn | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2019
Jennifer Frey on Virtue and the Meaning of Happiness
"To me, the interesting question about happiness is this: what might actually fulfill you? What is the highest good you can seek?"
Grace Liu | Vanderbilt Synesis | Spring 2019June 2019
Reading a Liturgy of Confession: Liturgy as Forma Formans
The form worship takes reveals has certain assumptions about how people learn built into it. Reading liturgy from a formalist perspective, one that pays attention to form, reveals much about what those assumptions are.
Caleb Molstad | University of Minnesota Between Cities | Spring 2019
Suffering, Wholeness, and the Human Condition
I enjoyed talking with her, though I felt strange whenever the conversation moved toward my life goals, as if we were entering a realm, a country - the future - which only one of us would ever witness.
Aldis Petriceks | Stanford Vox Clara | Spring 2019May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
Character Doubling in Marilynne Robinson’s Home: Salvation, Predestination, and Grace
The doubling of Jack and Glory reminds us that stereotypes and outward appearances are no indication of the state of one’s soul. There is always far more to the story.
Jenna Watson | The Wheaton Pub | Fall 2018
There’s No Place Like Heimat: How the Culture We Consume Reflects Our Desires
Heimat is an example of the universal desire that we share when we long for an ideal home with comfort and acceptance.
Elizabeth Schmucker | Cornell Claritas | Spring 2019February 2019
How Much Is a Little Girl Worth? Justice, Forgiveness, and Sexual Assault
For all the attention paid to Denhollander’s faith and forgiveness, some forget why she was actually in the courtroom: to support “the maximum possible sentence” possible for Dr. Nassar.
Aldis Petriceks | Stanford Vox Clara | Winter 2019
Hope
If good and evil intrinsically oppose each other, how can they coexist in the presence of an omnipotent and omniscient God?
Noelle Michael | Vanderbilt Synesis | Fall 2018January 2019
Should I Doubt My Religion Because There are Others?
Relativism appears to be the most moral response to the plurality of religions. Empathy seems to require affirming as many perspectives as we can.
Haidun Liu | The Columbia Crown & Cross | Fall 2018
Reduce, Reuse, Redeem?
But for the Lenten season of 2018, the Church of England did something a little different: it gave up plastic.
Abigail Bezrutczyk | Cornell Claritas | Fall 2018
The Place of Belief in a Pluralistic World
A speaker was coming to UNC who had been an anti-protester at Charlottesville’s Unite The Right rally in August of last year, and my friend and I began a conversation about what ideologies should not be tolerated in society.
Brodie Heginbotham | UNC To the Well | Fall 2018December 2018
Alvin Plantinga’s Problems with Materialism
Plantinga decided to concentrate his intellectual efforts on engaging philosophical materialism - a philosophical viewpoint that often discredits religious reasoning before a discussion even begins.
Max Graham | The Yale Logos | Fall 2018
Pursuing Unity in Diversity
Instead of ignoring the reality of our physical differences and the history of oppression and racism caused by these differences, my hope is that awareness of our common misperceptions about race can be the first step in recognizing and understanding what racism itself is and how we can combat it.
Grace Liu | The Vanderbilt Synesis | Fall 2018
A Theology of Quantum Mechanics
With a scientific mindset, it can be difficult to rationalize spiritual interfaces with physical reality. By the end of this article, we should have at least a framework of reason in which to approach these questions.
Ronald Davis III | MIT et Spiritus | Fall 2018
Positivism and the Burden of Proof
To distinguish scientific from non-scientific questions, positivists used the verifiability principle, on which a question could be considered scientific if and only if it could be verified empirically.
Will Vickery | The UT Austin Texas Trinitas | Fall 2018
Towards a Stained-Glass Home: Diaspora and the Goodness of WashU
I long for a true home where I can rest and belong in a deep, abiding way that enfolds and transcends all my identities, experiences, values, and relationships. I haven’t found that yet, but I long for it with all my heart.
Miles Woodhull | The WashU Kairos | Fall 2018
Prayer and the Brain: A Meta-Analysis of Neurological Activity During Christian Prayer
This review aims to converge the neurological and theological perspectives instead of using one to support or reject the other and vice versa.
Julie Cho | Claremont hearhere | Fall 2018November 2018
Identity-ing: Embracing Identity in Flux
What do we do when we find - suddenly or gradually, in relatively trivial things like boba or in weightier things - that we are not who we used to be, or we are not who others think we are?
Liz Cooledge Jenkins | Stanford Vox Clara | Fall 2018
Millennialism and its Discontents: The Theology of American Foreign Policy from 1630-1789, Part 1
Millennialism—a Christian theological belief according to which scriptural prophecies can be deciphered to interpret the past, benchmark the present, and predict the future—remains one of the most underappreciated factors that has shaped American foreign policy.
Luke Dickens | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2018
Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home by Pope Francis
The wide scope of topics that this document covers conveys the fact that we do not live in isolation; all of our actions subsequently influence others; environmentalism relates to the economy as much as it does to planting trees.
Anne Marie Crinnion | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2017
Aching Desires
The more compelling idea is how closely together Augustine links a horrible act with good desires – desires for love, comfort, security, and justice.
David Bussell | UNC To the Well | Fall 2018
White as Snow: A Comparison of Two Prayers of Repentance
By examining two famous prayers of repentance, that of the fictional King Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and that of the historical King David in Psalm 51, I hope to shed light on what repentance is and what it is not.
Paul Jeon | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2018October 2018
Let us Love and Sing and Wonder
How did hymns come about and how have they changed through history? Why were they significant and how are they relevant today?
Richard Ibekwe | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 2018
Faith and the Invisible: Taking the Leap
Reason allows us to consider the visible world around us, and to decide what to believe about reality. Faith enables us to take the leap into believing it.
Hailey Scherer | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2018
Strength in Weakness: A Call to Authentic Vulnerability
We learn early on that we should always appear as if everything is fine all the time. The demand to be effortlessly perfect leaves no room for openness about our struggles or imperfections.
Sarah Proctor | Duke Crux | Fall 2018
The Strange Persistence of Guilt: A Q&A with Wilfred McClay
"Guilt is a key aspect of what might be called our moral nervous system. It alerts us to our failures, and pushes us to make them right in some way."
Lynette Long | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2017September 2018
A Clash in the Cosmos: Reflections on Madeleine L’Engle’s Classic Novel
A Wrinkle in Time might open with an ominous dark and stormy night, but the novel goes on to triumphantly remind us that love and light will ultimately prevail.
Naomi Kim | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2018
The Myth of Pure Objectivity: A Retrospective from 2011
If my asserted values permit more harm to the environment than yours allow, what are we to do? Why should I listen to you?
Lee Farnsworth | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2018
Justice in Pain, Suffering, and Silence
Throughout Martin Scorsese's Silence, we begin to question why God allows pain for even those seeking to work for God or in the very least let us hear His voice instead of just silence.
Bryan Lee | The Columbia Crown & Cross | Spring 2018
The Picture of Gray Pleasure
Solomon, son of Israel’s King David, lived hundreds of years before the fictional Dorian Gray, yet his life looked very similar.
Abi Bernard | Cornell Claritas | Spring 2018
Who is God?
The Old Testament is a combination of books that predict, point to, and await the arrival of God in the flesh, and the New Testament is the documentation of God’s appearance and life on earth.
Armen Festekjian | | Fall 2017August 2018
Against (Our Own) Heresies
[Heresy] starts with a narrow selective reading of scripture that is then over-emphasized and serves as a tangential point for one’s own desires.
Erik Johnson | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 2018
An Interview with Jonathan Moo
"I think the reason Christians care for creation can be summarized by loving God and loving our neighbor, and in the process discovering who we were created to be."
Siobhan McDonough | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2017
Give Just A Thought
But truthfully, one cannot be wholeheartedly empathetic without spending quality time with a person currently or formerly having experienced homelessness.
Jade Thompson | The Columbia Crown & Cross | Spring 2018
An Interview with Illustrator, Author, and Professor, John Hendrix
"Looking at a lot of your art and illustration, sometimes your palette and creative choices can be a bit gruesome. What role does this play in your art, and do you think it comes from your faith or somewhere else?"
WashU Kairos Editorial Team | The WashU Kairos | Spring 2018
What Did Jesus Say About Ethnocentrism?
For brevity, I’ll also focus on only one component of racism, called ethnocentrism: the belief that one’s own ethnic culture is superior and/or favored by God.
Sam Elder | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 2018
Discovering God: Plantinga and the Sensus Divinitatis
Reid argues that there are certain ideas, namely those which our nature leads us to believe, that we must accept as true. Those beliefs can be considered to be basic, the foundations of our further knowledge.
Jeffrey Poomkudy | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2018
The Lovely Embrace of Pain
Another principle characteristic of Lucretius’ view is that it ultimately seeks painlessness. For this purpose, Lucretius urges isolation. However, there are two critical issues with this goal-orientation.
Jamie Har | Cornell Claritas | Fall 2017
Scientias Religionis
In this article I hope to shed some light on those areas in which behavioral biology actually has a lot to say about the religious experience.
Hailey Reneau | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2017
Is Tolerance Enough?
As we look closer at the definition of “tolerance,” we begin to understand why it may be a rather imperfect word, inadequate to face the current climate.
Grace Liu | Vanderbilt Synesis | Spring 2018July 2018
DAMN: Kendrick Lamar’s Radical Lament
Kendrick Lamar is currently one of the world’s most talented lyricists, a generational storyteller, and a Christian grappling with eternal condemnation.
Kion You | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2018
Are We Ready for a Renewed Sexual Ethic?
According to the mores of contemporary sexual ethics, both Grace and Ansari were playing by the rules.
Sean Kim | The Columbia Crown & Cross | Spring 2018
God’s Heart Towards Individuals With Disabilities
Most of us believe that inclusion of individuals with disabilities matters. However, Christianity takes this belief a step further and in a different direction.
Mimi Cole | Vanderbilt Synesis | Spring 2018