December 2015
August 2014
Screwtape on Prefrosh
Unseat the desire for truth in your patient and replace it with a desire for academic respect, and your job is half done.
Judith Huang | The Harvard Ichthus | Summer 2011 - Special issue for the incoming class of 2015
Re-meeting God
According to the Gospel, God doesn’t want to be on stage all the time. He wants to come down and be with the audience.
Mitch Akutsu | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2014
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
The Cosmic Import of Marriage
The Bible is bookended by weddings.
Markus Boesl | The Yale Logos | Fall 2013July 2014
Responding to a Mother’s Schizophrenia
My mother is schizophrenic. During her moments of irrationality, I am tempted to curse God for inflicting her with such an illness.
Anonymous | Princeton Revisions | Spring 2009
Unexpected Miracles
My third day in Berkeley, I discovered that my next-door neighbor shared my faith. God knew I would need Christian friends as I entered a period of independence, so He provided one for me.
Lisa Ann Yu | UC Berkeley TAUG | Spring 2014
Cantor’s Theorem and Jesu
The Christological claim that Jesus is both human and divine at the same time is analogous to the claim that Jesus is both finite and infinite.
Drew Voight | St. Olaf Avodah | Spring 2014May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
More than Mere Kindness
According to C.S Lewis in The Problem of Pain, “Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.”
Daniel Jin | The Claremont Ekklesia | Winter 2013
String Theory, the Multiverse, and God
It might seem that God and string theory, like Harry and Voldemort, cannot live while the other survives.
Tom Rudelius | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2013
The Indispensable Image: Is the Church Really Necessary?
The question that haunts these chapters is: how will the nations come to know the one true God? Will it be through the futility of idols, or through the faithfulness of Israel?
Nick Nowalk | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2013February 2014
Religious but Not Spiritual
I don’t feel a spiritual energy, a spiritual connection, or a spiritual anything – especially when held in tension with the concrete, empirical, and measurable.
Michael Toy | Princeton Revisions | Fall 2013
Behold, I Stand at the Door
I am speaking up because I want Christians who think that there are no rapists in their midst or that sexual violence is an issue that only affects certain kinds of people to realize how different the truth looks.
Quitterie Gounot | Swarthmore Peripateo | Fall 2013
The Church Fathers and the Rationality of Christianity: An Interview with Dr. Sara Parvis
Clement of Alexandria complained that his fellow Christians thought of philosophy as some kind of ogre and ran screaming when they heard it.
Dr. Sara Parvis, Chris Hauser | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2013
A Reflection on the Ontological Argument
Wrapping our heads around the idea that “to exist is better than to not exist” is critical to our faith.
Charles Min | Princeton Revisions | December 2013January 2014
Jesus: The End of Personal Autonomy and Identity?
Indeed, it appears that at its best, Christianity has severely restrictive, and often arbitrary, rules that limit one’s ability to do as one wants.
Matthew Johnson | The Yale Logos |
On The Book of Mormon: Christianity without Scripture
The Book of Mormon provides a caricature of what religion might look like if it rested only upon its practices and not on the truth of the underlying story.
Shaun Lim | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2013
The Healing of Intimacy
Thus when Adam and Eve hid from each other in shame, they were in effect proclaiming, “I do not acknowledge you as my own, I do not trust you with my body. I do not trust you with myself. There is something to fear from you.”
Shana Dorsey | The Williams Telos | Fall 2013
Tolerance and Social Hope
Both the left and the right are unhappy with tolerance. No one wants to tolerate because that implies being loose with one’s values; no one wants to be tolerated because that means being regarded as deficient in some way.
Jonathan Lin | Princeton Revisions |
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 2013December 2013
A Religious Animal?
How to understand the story of the Fall while accepting that death, too, was there from the beginning of life on earth?
Stephen Mackereth | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2013
Feminism and Christianity
My non-Christian friends were usually on the pro-professional side, championing women’s rights and equal opportunity. And it was my Christian friends who more often than not announced that they planned to stay at home, citing family values and the calling of motherhood.
Natalie Hejduk | Princeton Revisions | Spring 2013
Salvific Suffering and the Dark Night of the Soul
We have begun to “anaesthetize our existence,” writes biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson. Our public discourse often assumes that the most difficult lives are simply not worth living.
Robert Smith | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2013
Beautiful Things
In this photography, we strive to re-envision places of function and practicality as places of beauty.
Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon | Swarthmore Peripateo | Spring 2013
More Than Words
As an American I have been taught implicit and explicit lessons my whole life on what to order my life around, from family, to education, wealth, acceptance, etc. And while all of these things are good things, they all miss the point.
Tiffany Barron | Swarthmore Peripateo | Spring 2013November 2013
Yahweh: God Unbounded
While we must remember Schrödinger’s lesson—God’s true essence is never changed by our classifications—we must also be wary of how our misconceptions of God may restrict how we experience him in our lives.
Amira Athanasios | The Claremont Ekklesia | Fall 2013
Called to Friendship
This article is about friendship; more specifically it is about human friendship that makes possible moral transformation, and it is about friendship with God that makes possible spiritual transformation.
Nick Palazzolo | Swarthmore Peripateo | Spring 2013
A Response to Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason
Thomas Paine, a famed Revolutionary political activist and Founding Father, is also remembered for his attempts to expose Christianity as a fraud in his pamphlet Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology.
Suiwen Liang | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2012
Symbols of God
But how are symbols to be used when the divine—whether as God the Father, the divine aspect of Christ, or the Holy Spirit—is as St. John of Damascus puts it: “uncircumscribed and unable to be represented?”
Rachel Himes | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2013October 2013
Why Jesus?
J.R.R. Tolkien has undoubtedly captivated the heart of many in his Middle Earth saga, The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s ability to resonate with his audience lies in his tale’s appeal to human nature itself.
Mako Nagasawa | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2012
On Money
We accept Paul’s claim that the love of money is the root of all evil, but we know that that verse does not entail us to shun money itself as an evil. Money, at the end of the day, is also part of His Creation, and all things were created for His glory.
Richard Lee and April Koh | The Yale Logos | Winter 2012
The Divine Attributes: Why an Imperfect God Just Won’t Do
Yoram Hazony’s version of apophaticism restricts theists to a kind of fideism, wherein our rational concept “God,” a human construct, is radically divorced from the subject of our faith, the non-conceptual, personal God. The result is confused, even contradictory.
Chris Hauser | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2013
Remember November
While researching for this article, I ventured into internet forums to read what others who have considered suicide have written about their suicidal feelings, and found my sentiments echoed. Many say that if just one person cared it would make them go on living, or that they have been hurt by those whom they love.
Linda Kang | UPenn Common Subjects | Spring 2013September 2013
Christian Materialism in Philosophy of Mind: Combining the Worldviews of Freud and Lewis
If there is a soul, why do mental states have a gradient quality? Why do animals have mental states approaching the same type as human beings?
Jordan Monge | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2012
Becoming Oneself: C.S. Lewis’ Allegory of the Afterlife
Accepting dignity rather than attempting to create it requires faith, for we must trust that what God has designed us to be is greater than anything we could mold ourselves into.
Macy Ferguson | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2013
Created to Serve: The Telos of Work
As a senior, I get asked what one of my close friends calls the “Benjamin Braddock question” rather frequently: “What are you going to do after you graduate?”
Josh Satre | Swarthmore Peripateo | Spring 2013
Why Pray?
Why pray? Does God even hear you? If you’re a good person, why not just enjoy life and forget about archaic religious demands?
Margaret Eichner | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2012
A Story about the Church
There are many of us, aren’t there? Many of us “grew up in the Church” and now peer back into our past with questions, doubts, frustration, and perhaps anger.
Ryan Stewart | The Claremont Ekklesia | Fall 2013
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 |August 2013
The Didion Conundrum
It’s clawing and creeping and unavoidable, and you become so exhausted and feel so generic in your depression that no one speaks of it. No one speaks of the [sophomore] slump.
Margaret Nickens | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2013
Why Wait? An Analysis of Christian Ethical Perspectives on Premarital Sex
The traditional Christian injunction against premarital sex, writes C. S. Lewis, “is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it is now, has gone wrong."
Teng-Kuan Ng | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2012
A Lament for Skepticism
It seems to be a common assumption that religious believers are somehow irrational for holding the beliefs that they do. The claim, simply put, is that there just isn’t enough (or any) convincing evidence for the truth of many Christian beliefs, such as the belief in God, especially in light of the discoveries of modern science.
Enoch Kuo | Princeton Revisions | Summer 2013
On Writing
In writing—in any creative act—we image our God, who spoke each minute detail of the world into existence, and in taking time to craft story out of words, we affirm the inherent value of embodied life that Christ so beautifully redeemed through the Incarnation.
Debbie Knubley | The Wheaton Pub | Fall 2012
Deconstruction and the Nature of God’s Grace
The Christian Church often either exuberantly embraces postmodernism or rejects it fully. Both of these extremist views show a willingness to put too much hope in human philosophies, a willingness which Saint Paul warns against in Colossians 2:8.
Caroline Suresh | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2013
The Messy Theology of Justice
Love is not about the show and discipline of religious habits, but about the raw, arduous, and messy everyday work of justice.
Hana Lehmann | Swarthmore Peripateo | Spring 2013July 2013
My Chains Are Gone
Soon, though, I caught myself identifying and sympathizing with [Milton's] Satan. It was, at first, a very disconcerting realization. And yet, the more we read, the more I reflected that I was familiar with Satan’s Hell.
Chih McDermott | The Williams Telos | Spring 2013
Grasping for Grace: The Strangeness and Difficulty of Faith in T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday”
Instants of intellectual ecstasy are close to what the Romantics meant when they contemplated the Sublime, which Edmund Burke classified as the “strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.”
Danielle Charette | Swarthmore Peripateo | Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2013
No Fear In Love
Whatever it was, it convinced me that thinking of myself less meant thinking less of myself.
Kristen Fu | UC Berkeley To An Unknown God | Spring 2013