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 2019

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

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

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

Why Politics?

Have we limited the church’s full support of Christians in “secular” fields, diminishing their calling as ambassadors in “secular” spheres of society?

Isabella Chow | UC Berkeley TAUG | Spring 2018

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

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

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

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 Theodicy of C.S. Lewis

Lewis’s defense of God’s goodness in the presence of evil rests heavily upon the belief that love given out of free will is more valuable than love given out of forced obedience.

Brian Klein | St Olaf Avodah | Spring 2015

Veritas Forum: Satisfaction and the Good Life

In this particular Veritas Forum, Dr. Tim Keller, prolific Christian author and founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, represented the Christian faith, and Professor Mark Lilla, intellectual historian at Columbia University, represented a secular worldview.

Nathan Barlow | The Columbia Crown and Cross | Fall 2016 (blog)

Prophecy, Progress, and Repentance: The Role of the Individual in Human History

Therefore, prophecy is primarily concerned with what may occur if the errant currents of the present are allowed to flow unaltered into the local or temporally proximal future.

Jake Casale | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2016

Restless Seeker: From Absurdism to Hope

Perhaps as Camus had illustrated in the myth of Sisyphus, the struggle itself was enough to fill the heart. Except that with time it was not.

Erjona Topalli | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 2016

When God Speaks Back Today: Divine Revelation After the Bible

Behind these occurrences is the belief that divine revelation is not a thing of the past—that God actively communicates with us in perceivable ways even today.

Marcos Martinez | The Columbia Crown & Cross | Fall 2016

Can God and Free Will Coexist? Examining the Augustinian Solution

If God knows what is going to happen in the future, and his power necessarily brings this event into being, then it seems like all events occur independently of human agency.

Joshua Tseng-Tham | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2016

For the Good of All Creation: A Christian Ecological Ethic

Ecological crisis, whether as dramatic as some predict or not, means we must reconsider the beliefs implicit in a system that exploits humans, creatures, and natural resources.

Nicole Newell | St. Olaf Avodah | Spring 2015

The Sin of Adam: Two Allegorical Accounts of the Fall

Recovering the literal sense of the Greek hamartia—translated in our Bibles as "sin"—we have "missed the mark."

Erin Kast | Swarthmore Peripateo | Spring 2015

Faith and Learning

Does Christianity pose a challenge to intellectual inquiry?

Trevor Davis | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2015

Death and Darwinism: A Patristic Approach

The Fall is the means by which Christian theology accounts for the disparity between the purported character of God and the tragic state of our world.

Christopher Iacovetti | The Wheaton Pub | Fall 2015

The Rhetoric of Worldviews: Narratives of Violence and Peace

On September 16, 2014, an incident occurred at James Madison University (JMU) that soon attracted the attention of national media news outlets.

Jake Casale | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2015

Towards a Divine Understanding of Beauty

Beauty is a question that consistently plagued some of the most influential Christian thinkers in the early centuries of the church.

Jake Casale | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2014

I Believe in Magazines: Proverbs for Publishing

"Because magazines are literally periodical, they create an ongoing community—readers, writers, editors, benefactors. And only communities can change cultures."

Augustine Collective | James K.A. Smith | January 2015

A Response to C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves

By revisiting the Greek to establish categories into which love can be divided, The Four Loves gives a framework for practicing love.

Abby Thornburg | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2013

The Visible and Invisible Church

The invisible church is a term for all believers in Jesus Christ. ... A visible church is a human organization that supports Christians in their varied expressions of belief, trust, in Christ.

Steven Lee | St. Olaf Avodah | Spring 2014

Costly Consolation: Freud’s Illusion and Bonhoefferian Grace

Sigmund Freud once wrote that the idea of religion is “born from man’s need to make his helplessness tolerable.”

Paul Escher | St. Olaf Avodah | Spring 2014

The Problem of Good: Is Christianity Necessary?

Just as people have taken the presence of evil as a reason to question the validity of Christianity, so also people have seen the presence of good as inconsistent with Christianity’s message.

Nathaniel Schmucker | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2013

A Response to Ronald Sider’s Just Politics

Sider attempts to develop a biblical political philosophy. This is best done, Sider argues, not by proof texting from the Bible on every political issue but instead by developing a biblical view of both persons and the world as a whole and applying this view to politics.

Hayden Kvamme | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2013

The Personal Journey of a Faith-Filled Scientist

My college pastor once asked me, “What does Christ have to do with chemistry?”

David A. Vosburg | The Claremont Ekklesia | Fall 2014

Meeting God in the Classroom

God takes delight when we take delight in His creation; if we would prefer to study philosophy instead of medicine, Caribbean wildlife instead of law, or Slavic poetry instead of business, we should ask ourselves if that desire comes from God. If it does, maybe He gave us that desire for a reason.

Calvin Jennings | UPenn Common Subjects |

Eternity in the Moment

To respond to Nietzsche’s criticism, and indeed to contemporary understandings of time and meaning, the Christian needs to point out a model for a life that partakes in its own positive affirmation, but in the right way.

David Nolan | The Williams Telos | Spring 2013

The Moral Gap

It is incoherent to put us under a demand we cannot reach. Yet surely we are under the moral demand. How are we to explain this paradox?

Dr. John Hare | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2012, Volume 6, Issue 2

Historicity & Holy War: Putting the Crusades in Context

When analyzing any historical event, and particularly one so fraught with misinterpretation and exaggeration, it is crucial to look at both its context and its causes. The Crusades did not spontaneously appear from a historical vacuum.

Blake Neff | The Dartmouth Apologia | Volume 6, Issue 1, Fall 2011

The Christian Integration of Morality, Freedom, and Happiness

There is much skepticism about this claim that morality, especially Christian morality, could ever be connected to happiness.

Peter Blair | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2010

September 2019