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

Faith in a Crowded Space

Yet most important to Dante, beyond the universe’s organization and population, is the fact that he was connected to it, and that the whole thing was powered by love.

Tess Fitzsimmons | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2017

The Great Unseen

Both L’Engle’s work and the Bible are based in stories, but using the term 'stories' doesn’t imply falsehood.

Abigail Bezrutczyk | Cornell Claritas | Spring 2018

Augustine Collective Leaders Retreat 2018

Highlights from the Leaders Retreat, April 13-15, 2018

Twenty-eight students representing the core leadership from 15 journals convened in the greater Boston area to share ideas, grow intellectually, and build community together.

Augustine Collective | Augustine Collective | April 13-15, 2018

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

Conversations that Change Minds

How can we facilitate meaningful dialogue between people with differing ideological beliefs?

Ronald Davis | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 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

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

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

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

The Price of Glory

At one point in [Martin Scorsese's film] Silence the Inquisitor sneers at one of the captured priests, “the price for your glory is their suffering!"

Richard Ibekwe | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 2017

Reconciling Faith and Reason

Biblically, faith is defined as “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” It is noteworthy that in both definitions of faith mentioned, there involves a certain element that extends beyond human perception.

Sarah Liu | The Hopkins Dialectic | Fall 2016

The New Dartmouth: From Sacred to Secular

Regardless of the worldview one ascribes to, consideration of the full range of motivations for, and the ensuing effects of, the secularization of Dartmouth is required to fully understand its significance in Dartmouth’s history.

Sara Holston | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2016

Reckless Faith: Pursuing God at Any Cost

During my final year at Middlebury, I was asked by Professor Gebarowski-Shafer to give a brief presentation on Pentecostalism in Korea and hold a question and answer session for her Global Pentecostalism class.

David Park | The Middlebury Vine | Fall 2016

The Purpose of Prayer: Secular Misconceptions and the Reality of Grace

Right off the bat, Jesus addresses God as “our Father.” This quickly establishes that prayer is relational, personal, and even familial.

Madeline Killen | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2016

Theology of Terrorism: Exploring the Roots of Religious Violence

Unfortunately, the question of what “terrorism” actually means is a surprisingly difficult one, considering its near-constant use by the media today.

Joshua Tseng-Tham | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2016

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

4 Take-Aways from the Veritas Forum: Does Science Point to Atheism?

Both panelists agreed on the constant thirst for truth present in both science and religion, and the “obvious tension” in their differences.

Monica Perez | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2015

The Gospel in the First Century

What I found in my studies and hope to summarize in this article is that a deeper understanding of the first-century Jewish world in which Jesus lived makes for a much richer appreciation of the good news that he proclaimed.

Erik Johnson | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 2016

God’s Justice: A Shifting Standard?

If Noah and Abraham were just before God because they were sinless, it would theoretically be possible for any human being at any point in history to be just in the same way.

Dinnie Ee | The Yale Logos | Spring 2016

The Trinity of Physics, Christianity, and Life

I have come to think that science and religion are complementary pictures of truth, answering the questions of ‘how?’ and ‘why?’

Vitaly Andreev | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 2016

The Christian Faith

One way God manifests His nature in us is through our rationality.

Irving Nestor | The Hopkins Dialectic | Spring 2016

The Dilemma of Faith in a Secular Age

Likewise, ours is an age in which believers and non-believers alike struggle with doubt about whether our beliefs are indeed the right ones.

Micaela Walker | UC Berkeley TAUG | Spring 2016

Is Genesis 1 Really About Creationism?

A quick confession: I used to be really, really creationist.

Colin Aitken | MIT et Spiritus | Spring 2016

The Suspense of Faith

But the doubt expressed by Arnold and Russell is not limited to those who decide finally to reject god.

Karl Johnson | The Hopkins Dialectic | Spring 2016

What God Expects: The Paradox of the Standards of the Christian Community

Therefore, the standard to be Christian and to become part of the Christian community is to understand this paradox: we cannot achieve God’s standards.

Cindy Wu | The Cornell Claritas | Fall 2015

Faith and Learning

Does Christianity pose a challenge to intellectual inquiry?

Trevor Davis | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2015

From Gut Feelings to Natural Law

While most people believe in some sense of right and wrong, they may not understand why these values are constructed this way.

Christopher Kymn | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2015

Augustine Collective Journals in the New York Times

Several member journals of the Augustine Collective were mentioned in a January 16, 2016 New York Times op-ed on evangelical students on secular campuses.

Augustine Collective | Augustine Collective |

How to Agape Love

The primary vocation of every person is to love, to strive for an agape love that extends beyond a philia love.

Marina Spinelli | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2015

Christian Faith and Love: A Response to Ludwig Feuerbach

Feuerbach’s belief in the mutual exclusivity of Christian faith and love stems primarily from his objection to Christianity’s claim to exclusive truth.

Sara Holston | The Dartmouth Apologia |

The Call to Love

By saying that God must be loved with the entire mind, Jesus suggests that interpretations of scripture by faith or by logic need not contradict each other.

Trevor Davis | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2015

How Christians Navigate College and Career

I talked with six Christian seniors at Harvard, each with varying concentrations and potential career paths, to understand how Christians at Harvard think about their faith, academics, and future careers.

Brooke Dickens | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2015

The Religious Beliefs of Scientists

At first glance, there seems to be no doubt that scientists as a whole affiliate less with religion than the general public.

Joshua Tseng-Tham | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2015

Consistency and Subtlety

I have come to learn that the physical campus has great influence on the culture of the student body and its ideologies at the Claremont Colleges.

Amira Athanasios | The Claremont Ekklesia | Spring 2015

The Good News

One of the primary tenets of Christianity is that we are obligated to spread the “good news”—in other words, the Gospel. But what is this good news?

Elizabeth Jean-Marie | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2015

Examining Moral Failure in the Bible

When many skeptics critique biblical figures such as David, Abraham, or Moses, they do so with the assumption that any evidence that compromises these figures’ moral authority compromises the Bible’s authority.

Joshua Tseng-Tham | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2015

A House Built on Sand: Spirituality and Intellectual Honesty

College can be a great place to seek a faith that is both communal and individual, brought on by sincere reflection rather than indoctrination.

Pieter Hoekstra | Claremont Ekklesia | Spring 2015

Harvard Ichthus Answers 200 Questions About God At Texts-4-Toasties

"Forty students volunteered to deliver toasties, answer questions [about Christianity], cook, and man the computers in our three stations in Thayer Basement, a Pfoho kitchen, and the Leverett Rabbit Hole."

Augustine Collective | The Harvard Ichthus |

Mathematizing the Mind

A history of uncertainty in the field of Mathematics reveals ways we might scrutinize our own philosophies and faiths through a conventionally “rational” lens.

Hong Suh | The Claremont Ekklesia | Spring 2015

A Few Thoughts on “the Future”

This problematic tension between one’s desires to make an indelible mark upon the memory of this world and the elusive nature of the future is resolved in a very unexpected way within the Christian tradition.

Viktor Palenyy | UC Berkeley TAUG | Fall 2014

Where is God in History?

There remains one point about the narrative of history that is worth rejoicing over, and that is the power of larger, contextual narratives.

Henry Li | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

The Universe: Magical, Meaningful, and Modern

Can a materialistic, physicalist account of the universe answer the fundamental questions of our existence—what does it mean to be human?

Marylynne Sitko | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2014

Strangers in a Strange Land

What exactly does it mean to “seek the welfare of the city”?

Lisa Ann Yu | UC Berkeley TAUG | Fall 2014

A Simple Proposition

How did I know that everyone and everything I’d ever laid eyes on wasn’t just a projection of my own subconscious imagination?

John Nystrom | The Cornell Claritas |

Making Peace with My Worst Enemy

As he talked about forgiving that enemy in your life, I wondered, how could I forgive myself when it was me who was causing the pain and yet not stopping it?

Zoë Wray | Swarthmore Peripateo | Spring 2014

The Rebellion of Faith

Christians do not know concretely how God will produce a favorable outcome from difficult situations, but they trust in Him because of evidence supporting His promise to do so and His overall track record throughout the Bible.

Brionna Atkins | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2013

Calling a New Humanity

What was it about Jesus that allowed him to bring Jews and Greeks together into “one new humanity?”

Enoch Kuo | Princeton Revisions |

Mercy of the Womb

In the English translation of the Bible, a quick search indicates that the word “mercy” appears approximately 261 times, absent in only 16 of the 66 books.

Erin Kast | Swarthmore Peripateo | Spring 2014

August 2018