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

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 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

Silver Spoons: Les Misérables and the Power of Grace

Through the bishop’s actions, Valjean directly experiences the power of godly grace, and is confronted with a serious question: How am I to respond?

Nigel Brady | 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 |

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

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

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

You Have Not Spoken of Me What Is Right: The Brothers Karamazov and the Book of Job

Dostoevsky told his wife that Job was one of the earliest books to make a “deep impression in [his] life,” and its influence on his work is far-reaching.

David Truschel | The Dartmouth Apologia | Spring 2013, Volume 7, Issue 2

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

Language and Its Uses: The Difficulty in Communicating with a Heavenly God

Scripture is littered with evidence that our voices — our interaction with God through language — have divine importance and implication.

Gabriel Brotzman | The Brown & RISD Cornerstone | Spring 2013 Volume II Issue II

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 Is There Winter In Narnia?

Why is there winter? And second, what needs to happen for the life-giving thaw of spring to return? In other words, what is the origin of what is wrong with the world, and what is the solution to it?

Nick Nowalk | The Harvard Ichthus | Fall 2012, Volume 8, Number 3.

Eliot’s Early Poetry and the Search for a Saving Faith

In the three years of reverberations from “The Waste Land,” Eliot still struggled with the same problem, as well as the same solution. He was dissatisfied with despair but simply could not find a better response.

Will Hogan | The Dartmouth Apologia | Fall 2012

On Reason in Milton’s Paradise Lost and John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet XIV” – Theologies on Agency in Christian Faith

Milton states, “reason is but choosing”; reason depends on a person’s free will to be utilized for either man’s pleasure, or God’s glory.

Trina Hyun | The UPenn Lamp Post | Issue 1, 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

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

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

Surprised: Wordsworth on the Coexistence of Joy and Sorrow

William Wordsworth wrote this sonnet two years after the sudden death of his four-year-old daughter, Catherine, but in it he grieves as though not a day has gone by. When he cries out in misery, “How could I forget thee?” it is both rhetorical – indicative of how deeply he loved her – and guilt-stricken, having in fact let her slip from his mind.

Inez Tan | The Williams Telos | Issue 4, Fall 2010

March 2014