This is a special issue of Modern Reformation. With it, we are wading into new waters that—to many today—may seem quite turbulent, even perilous: the relation of science to the Christian faith. As with all the issues of MR this year, we’re taking a historical approach rather than a theoretical one. In particular, we’re looking […]
May/June 2022 I really admire Kendra Dahl’s work, “Restoring Eve,” in the May/June issue. It is a solid effort, but I think it illustrates the problem of putting too much weight on philological exegesis. Maybe we should instead “read the Scriptures like the church fathers”? More time is spent on the philological arguments than is […]
by Herman Bavinck; translated by Gregory Parker Jr. This essay was originally published in Dutch as a three-part series in De Vrije Kerk in 1883.[1] That same year, Bavinck was installed as a professor at the Theologische School in Kampen. What follows is an excerpt from the English translation, which may be found in its […]
Specters haunt the history of church committees. Today’s disciplined clerks, as we know them, harken back to yesterday’s unseen scribes. Every reader of ecclesiastical documents and every lover of polity, decency, and good order remains in their debt. For without them, there would be no surviving record of church business. No committee—therefore no associated team […]
an interview with Wageeh Mikhail Rev. Wageeh Mikhail (PhD) is the engagement director of ScholarLeaders International (ScholarLeaders.org). Prior to this role, Dr. Mikhail served as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Christianity at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt. He has published and spoken widely on medieval Arab Christianity. Dr. Mikhail, please tell […]
*** Some want a god who whispers, or maybe roars. You give us a God who groans. And what is it that generates such glory-craving, guttural moans? We are not ready for this: Our own aches lodged deeper than our bones. Desires behind desires. So the creation itself wails, waiting for some Edenic arrival of […]
When scholars write about the “conflict thesis,” what exactly are they talking about? For several decades now, scholars have tried to make sense of the belief that science and religion are at war. This is what scholars mean when they refer to the “conflict thesis,” the idea that science and religion are fundamentally and irrevocably […]
Roughly half of American Protestants and a majority of self-identified evangelicals currently reject at least a portion (and in some cases, nearly all) of the modern scientific consensus about the age of the earth and the evolutionary development of life. There are myriad biblical and theological issues involved—not to mention broader social, cultural, and political […]
*** In the beginning, long before it mattered, Raw potential knelt in reverent reverie, A lifeless void by brooding Spirit gathered—Colorless, unmade, unnamed, unseen, A vast expanse without a form suspended In time now births this Genesis presumed, And lovingly and tenderly attended As a child—infinity enwombed. So three persons working as one Artist With […]
*** Eerdmans | 2020 | 328 pages | (paperback) | $39.99 For the purpose of introducing the current dialogue between specifically Reformed theology and evolutionary theory (1), this book serves admirably. As to its purpose of demonstrating that Reformed theology and evolutionary theory are compatible (5–6; cf. 266–67), this book will encourage some while others […]
*** In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Explorationby William Lane CraigEerdmans | 2021 | 439 pages (hardcover) | $38.00 Editor’s note: In his most recent monograph, William Lane Craig takes up one of the most pressing issues in contemporary apologetics: the question of the origins of humanity and the historicity of […]
*** I. “No, go away. Your words just suck the life From me and now our sons are scared of you With all your fatal talk of rain and storm. Leave me to weep on all you’ll take from us.” I watch him go, his shoulders curved beneath A weight I can no longer bear. Where […]
