August 2014
July 2014
May 2014
April 2014
The Pain of Privilege
Because of this privilege, there are generally two ways Christians at Berkeley come to grips with this reality: the path characterized by guilt and the path characterized by obligation.
David Park | UC Berkeley TAUG | Fall 2013
The Christian Glutton
At its heart, gluttony comes from distrust. More than an issue of self-control, gluttony is rooted in fear.
Alice Su | Princeton Revisions | Spring 2013March 2014
Love Pain
Retaliation is only fair. It is widely accepted that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is only natural. But nothing about the Gospel is natural.
Joshua Joo | UC Berkeley TAUG | 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 2013January 2014
Love Your Enemies: A Radical Call to Christian Pacifism
“But!” you cry – I can almost hear it now – what about saving society from criminals, and children from murderers, and Europe from Hitler, and America from the Terrorists? In sum, what about all the innocent people whom we have a duty to protect from the evildoers?
Nathan Otey | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2013
Abundant Life, Abundant Love, and the Empty Tomb
At the empty tomb, I want to ask the same two questions as at the Cross - why is it necessary, and why is it possible?
Nathan Scalise | Swarthmore Peripateo | Fall 2013
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 2013December 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
A Response to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion
[Dawkins] believes that a God who created the universe would be too complex a beginning to be the most probable cause of the universe.
Yesuto Shaw | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2012
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 2013November 2013
Why Friendship?
It forged a deeper commitment to one another; the sacrament of baptism created a bond of love reminding me that, whatever I might feel as a single person, I did belong to one family at least.
Wesley Hill | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2012
Jesus: Temple Revolutionary
The gospels’ Jesus was not a mystic or martyr in isolation from his time or culture as some have suggested, but rather a Temple revolutionary, whose Temple-centric characterization is consistent with the worldviews of 1st century Israel.
Timothy Toh | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2012
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 2013October 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
‘Here We May Love Truly’
On CS Lewis' The Great Divorce: Apart from the fixed reality of Christ, we cannot help but live in our self-constructed unrealities. Yet to find Christ is to find heaven itself.
Shirley Li | The Williams Telos | Spring 2013August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
The Stranger: Christianity and the Immigrant Story
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” This quote comes from the Gospels, which are based in the ministry of Jesus. When we stop and look at the story of Jesus, we see an understanding of what it means to be a stranger.
by Yared Portillo, with help from Helen Plotkin | Swarthmore Peripateo | Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2013
How Can the Gods Meet Us Face to Face?
The writer and Christian apologist G.K. Chesterson wrote, “Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity,” and Till We Have Faces is this sort of necessary fiction that doesn’t only alter our perspective but has the power to call into question who we are and what we live for.
Micaela Walker | UC Berkeley To An Unknown God | Volume 6, Issue 1, Spring 2013
Why Ask Why?
It is not my point to argue here, only to ask. Is Christianity a philosophical system? Or is it a way of life? Both? Or something else altogether?
Kelly Maeshiro | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2012, Volume 8, Number 3May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
January 2013
Word and Deed
Most important to reclaiming the heart of Word and Deed, we see that the spirit among the early church was one of true, abiding love.
Michael Hammett | Duke Religio | Fall 2011, Volume 6, Issue II
Whom Are We Friends with and Why?
As the ancient philosophers recognized the ease with which we can settle for less from our relationships, the current cultural context challenges us, diverts us from what it means to have a true friend and be one.
Hannah Jung | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2012, Volume 7, Issue 1October 2012
September 2012
Thoughts on New Atheism
Every worldview makes truth claims and faith assumptions to show its uniqueness and superiority over other worldviews, and New Atheism is no exception.
Jabez Yeo | U Penn Lamp Post | Issue 01, Spring 2012
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 2August 2012
Is Anything Worth Believing In? A Review of a Conversation with John Lennox
God could have easily made a universe in which bad things didn’t happen. However, Lennox argues that “the one thing you will not get in an automated, robotic, computerized universe is love, relationship, and so on... In order to have the possibility of love or relationship, you must create the possibility of choice.”
Sarah Banks | The UPenn Lamp Post | Issue 01, Spring 2012
A Review of The Meaning of Life: A Short Introduction
Perhaps we are making the false assumption that the question, “what is the meaning of life?” can have an answer like “what is the meaning of the word ‘apple’?” does. What do we really mean when we ask, “what is the meaning of life?”
Kelly Maeshiro | The Harvard Ichthus | Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 2011
God, Unifier of Mathematical Truths
It is peculiar enough that Christianity was once considered the more elegant worldview, and from this worldview came the rise of modern mathematics.
Willis Zhang | UPenn Lamp Post | Issue 1, Spring 2012
Reflections on the Nature of Faith
Faith is unscientific (not anti-scientific) in the sense that much of the knowledge claimed by faith is beyond the scope of scientific inquiry. Christian faith seeks to obtain knowledge in the context of love and trust, not to function as a substitute for reason.
Henry Waller | Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2012, Volume 6, Issue 2
Mustard Seed Faith
Confirmation bias is a psychological phenomenon which describes our tendency to seek out information that confirms our opinions and beliefs while avoiding information that contradicts what we believe. I take a lot more time on each page when I’m reading C.S. Lewis compared to Richard Dawkins.
Andy Morgosh | The Williams Telos | Spring 2012
In Praise of Wonder
To believe Jesus’s words seems to simultaneously require foolishness and faith. In novelist Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy, it’s an old and learned priest who, when asked for his opinion on a miracle, smiles and says, “I don’t believe it’s possible. I do believe it happened.”
Inez Tan | The Williams Telos | Spring 2012
The Incarnation
Christianity doesn’t preach a distant God who turned a blind eye to mankind, but rather tells of a God who became a man himself. God didn’t simply send a message; He became the messenger. We recall this momentous occasion – the divine incarnation – each year at Christmas.
Jordan Monge | The Harvard Ichthus | Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 2011
The Marriage of Justice and Mercy
Christianity has seeming contradictions like a dog has fleas. This one consistently arises: how can a God of justice be, at the same time, a God of mercy? George MacDonald brings this contradiction to a point: “Those who say justice means the punishing of sin, and mercy the not punishing of sin, and attribute both to God, would make a schism in the very idea of God.”
Andrew Kim | Brown Cornerstone | Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2012
Athens, Amherst and Jerusalem
If it is true that reason and faith are inherently at odds, it seems strange that so much of the story of higher education in the west is essentially the story of Christians creating institutions for the rigorous study of philosophy, theology, and the humanities.
Prof. Craig Nicolson | Five College Slant | Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2012February 2012
January 2012
Faith and Fiction
The relationship between fiction and faith has had its difficult moments. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was abolished by the Catholic Church only fifty years ago, and there were even recent stories of pastors burning Harry Potter books when the series started skyrocketing in popularity. Clearly the people instituting banned books lists and instigating book burnings believe in the capacity for fiction to corrupt. Curiously, in denouncing fiction’s potentially degrading influence, they are also acknowledging its power.
Stephen Kim | The Yale Logos | Winter 2011
Faith and Paradox: G.K. Chesterton’s Philosophy of Christian Paradox
Within its long history, Christianity has been accused of almost every kind of vice imaginable. Strangely enough, its critics have attacked it for contradictory reasons. Some have decried it for its unworldliness and pessimistic outlook on the material world. Others have condemned Christianity for blinding the people, giving false promises of divine mercy and a glorious afterlife. Hell, it is said, is a doctrine breeding despair; but Heaven, they say with equal vehemence, is a doctrine breeding false hope.
Chris Hauser | The Dartmouth Apologia | Volume 6, Issue 1, Fall 2011
The Four Walls of Our Freedom: Organized Religion and the Happy Life
Why accept an organized religion: don’t you want to think for yourself and come to your own conclusions?
Eduardo Andino | Yale Logos |