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

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

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 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

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 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

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 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

The Ones Who Walk Away: Social Justice, Shame, and the Church

Le Guin’s story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," won the 1974 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, with many readers interpreting it as an allegory about societal injustices that are seen but remain unaddressed.

Miles Woodhull | | Spring 2018

Review: C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce

C. S. Lewis’ work builds on the tradition of previous works to insert his perspective into the existing debate about the nature of the afterlife.

Sara Holston | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 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

“Myth Become Fact”

Throughout history, countless characters have arisen who speak or act in ways that remind one of Christ. In light of this, how could Christianity explain its ideas as unique and more legitimate than others?

Becky Bowman Saunders | St Olaf Avodah | Spring 2015

Created to Creator

I encountered Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem “Pied Beauty” last fall, clasped in the pages of a green and white anthology. I immediately recognized its beauty; it is a playful thing, quick-witted and high-spirited.

Kate Massinger | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2016

On Marilynne Robinson’s Lila

In Marilynne Robinson's Lila, we are meant to see ourselves writ large: pitiful and scared, and not quite sure where we stand with God, or how we found ourselves here, in this house, tending to the garden, living this sort of life.

Kate Massinger | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2016

Augustine Collective Alum Obasi Shaw ’17 Awarded Honors for Rap Thesis at Harvard

Entitled “Liminal Minds,” the album combines such influences as Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper and Geoffrey Chaucer to portray contemporary black life in America. Shaw is the first in Harvard's history to submit a rap album for the senior thesis project.

Augustine Collective News | Augustine Collective | Spring 2017

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

The Diabolically Ridiculous

I assert that up to this point I have made a strong case for why the devil is ridiculous and tragic, but from my description, he does not sound very evil.

John Nystrom | Cornell Claritas | Fall 2016

The Heart of Man is Not Compound of Lies: Redemptive Sacrifice Found in Fictional Literature

Joseph Campbell, a 20th-century scholar of mythology and religion, wrote that myths indicate the universal search for meaning, as well as reflect the journey of each individual.

Lydia Anderson | CalPoly Aletheia | Fall 2016

The Human Idiot and the Superhuman Giant

From these imperfections, one can obtains oxymoronic requirements for a hero to be capable of saving: intimate acquaintance with human suffering and superhuman strength to endure suffering for others.

Amanda Gee | UC Berkeley TAUG | Spring 2016

Who Tells Your Story?

Last month, Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of the Broadway hit musical Hamilton, sent off Penn’s class of 2016 by sharing two stories from his own life.

Connie Miller | UPenn Locust Walk | 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

Bread Alone: Earth, Heaven, and Politics in the Wilderness

Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor takes a materialistic approach to religious life because of the materialism of political life.

Phil Jeffery | The Columbia Crown & Cross | Fall 2015

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

Medieval and Modern Meet: Advent

As a Christian scholar, I read the medieval texts that are my primary area of study with a curious double vision.

Kathryn Mogk | University of Minnesota Between Cities | Spring 2016

Edwards and Thoreau: Typologies of Lakes

In composing their accounts of lakes, Jonathan Edwards and Henry David Thoreau drew from different sources and operated out of clashing ideological frameworks.

Sarah Boss | The Wheaton Pub | Fall 2015

Fare Forward Essay Contest 2015 Winner: Emily Lau

The winner of Fare Forward Essay Contest 2015 is Emily Lau '17 of The Columbia Crown & Cross, for The Desire for a Relational God Behind Kurt Vonnegut's "EPICAC."

Augustine Collective | Augustine Collective |

Jesus and the Problem of Myth

In particular, the idea of a righteous man/god who is sacrificed in order to atone for the transgressions of a nation is present in many cultures.

Max Graham | The Yale Logos | Fall 2015

The Problem of Evil: An Ichthus Roundtable

In addition to our own thoughts, we provide links to a wide variety of pieces on the problem of evil by professional philosophers.

The Harvard Ichthus Staff | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2015

The Real and Ideal in Keats’s Odes

Keats was disenchanted with the ideal world of the “supernatural, art, the mind, and the past,” but “the tone of these last poems makes clear that nature suffices.”

Anna Tipton | The Wheaton Pub | Spring 2015

The Trial of Images

This “physicality” is the key, I think, in understanding the core difference in the way one of the methods is iconic and one is idolic.

Stephen Westich | The Wheaton Pub | Spring 2015

On “Love III” by George Herbert

Love is gentle and kind, quietly observant of the persona’s hesitancy, and his questioning is not interrogative but “sweet."

Judith Huang | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2015

Scriptural Interpretation: A Second Look at the Blanchard v. Rice Debate

The years leading up to the Civil War saw abolitionists and supporters of the antislavery movement clashing with proslavery Americans over specific scriptural passages related to slavery.

Sara Holston | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2015

The Desire for a Relational God Behind Kurt Vonnegut’s “EPICAC”

The story is ostensibly a sad tale of a short-lived machine exploited by humans, yet it is also a story about a creature yearning to connect with what it perceives as a higher order of beings.

Emily Lau | The Columbia Crown & Cross | Spring 2015

You Be the Judge: Shakespeare’s Moral Universe

There is, however, a fundamental difference between the approach of Milton and Dante on the one hand and Shakespeare on the other.

Danielle D’Souza | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2015

Fare Forward Essay Contest 2015

Fare Forward's first essay contest, in conjunction with the Augustine Collective, is now open. All entries must be received by December 1, 2015.

Augustine Collective | |

Review of Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal

"A seemingly happy life may be empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause."

Chenchen Li | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2015

The Trial of God

[In The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky,] the Grand Inquisitor points his finger at Christ and sentences him to death: “To-morrow I shall burn Thee. Dixi.”

Daniel Kang | The Harvard Ichthus | Spring 2015

Heaven on Earth

Imagine if a four-dimensional or higher being acted in our world as the three-dimensional being acted in Flatland.

Peter Chen | Claremont Ekklesia | Spring 2015

A Christian View of History

The strength of the metanarrative of progress and the triumph of the will falls short under examination.

Nathaniel Schmucker | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2014

The Gift of Confession

The desire to confess may seem counter-intuitive. Obviously the seeker-sensitive movement assumed this was the last thing non-Christians wanted to do.

James K. A. Smith | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2014

The Lost Letters

Here lies a pair of letters reported to have been torn from a devil’s handbook. These writings were composed by the crafty demon known as Screwtape, who makes his unforgettable debut in The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. These letters, like the ones before them, shed light on the enigmatic essence of human nature, as […]

Olugbenga Joseph | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 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

Christianity and Personality: Looking Past Myers-Briggs

The societal struggle to define the proper relationship between logical thought and passionate feeling within the human cognitive process is a recurring topic of discourse.

Jake Casale | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2014

Affliction Furthers the Flight in Me

Inspired by the story of the resurrection, 17th century English poet George Herbert wrote his short poem “Easter Wings.” The poem beautifully recreates the restorative power of Christ’s resurrection.

Chih McDermott | The Williams Telos | Fall 2013

A Postmodern Unity

It is not that of two people who describe their experience with God slightly differently, one must be in error. Rather, the nature of one’s experience with God will be different.

David Paiva | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2013

Poetry and the Redemption Story

We are not academics searching to excavate truth from a divine treatise. Instead we are beings intimately woven into a poem in which God tenderly shows us what to love, how to love, and why we love.

Siqi Cao | The Columbia Crown & Cross | Spring 2014

A Nasty, Dreadful Thing

I realized far too late that I should have not only given him, my brother, the eighty dollars, but twenty dollars more than he asked for.

Henry Li | The Harvard Ichthus |

Tunnel Vision

Soon Frankenstein is at the mercy of his ambition, channeling his energies into one creation while ignoring the other—made up of human beings and the earth they inhabit—that he used to love above all else.

Sandy Fox | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2013

Reading Marilynne Robinson: Liberation through Tradition

Is it bizarre that a contemporary creative writer would inspire a college student to start reading John Calvin? Absolutely. That’s the magnificence of Marilynne Robinson.

Danielle Charette | Swarthmore Peripateo | Fall 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

June 2019