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Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s Ad Limina ApostolorumEdited by Matthew Levering, Bruce L. McCormack, and Thomas Joseph White, OPThe Catholic University of America Press, 2019338 pages (paperback), $34.95 “This is a book that treats Catholic-Protestant ecumenism as a subject of both fraternal encounter in Christ and rigorous doctrinal argument” (2). So Thomas […]
Monday, 01 March, 2021 by Joshua Schendel
The adventures of the title character of Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder begin when she receives a small envelope in the mail one day. Inside are written only three words, but three words that pose the profound question: Who are you? It is a question at once so existential and theoretical, so basic yet ornate, […]
Monday, 01 March, 2021 by Joshua Schendel
There has been no shortage of ink spilled on the relation of Reformed thought—particularly in its discussions of the divine decrees and predestination—and determinism. So, in that respect, the contemporary rendition of the dispute being carried out by Paul Helm, Richard Muller, Antoine Vos, et. al., is not new. And yet, it is recomposed, we […]
Wednesday, 10 February, 2021 by Joshua Schendel
This latest work of Richard Muller, Grace and Freedom: William Perkins and the Early Modern Reformed Understanding of Free Choice and Divine Grace, is yet another title added to the very long list of his historical studies on early Modern Reformed Orthodoxy. As often noted by those who have engaged his research over the years, […]
Wednesday, 06 January, 2021 by Joshua Schendel
Something is afoot today in the Protestant theological world. Thirty-five years ago in his JETS article, “Giving Direction to Theology: The Scholastic Dimension,” Richard Muller noted that much of Modern theology—and, I add, a good deal of evangelical theology—witnessed the rejection of what it considered to be an “outdated” traditional school theology (i.e., Scholasticism) for […]
Friday, 01 January, 2021 by Joshua Schendel
Nearly four-hundred feet inside a sandstone mountain on the far northerly Norwegian island of Spitsbergen lies the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Housing four-hundred-thousand seed samples, the purpose of the vault is to provide a storehouse of plant species in case of loss of agricultural biodiversity. Literature curricula have served similar purposes in history. One thinks, […]
Friday, 01 January, 2021 by Joshua Schendel
Betray kind husband thy spouse to our sights… John Donne There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. This is what shall be in the end without end. For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the kingdom of which there is no end? Augustine Psalm 46 […]
Thursday, 31 December, 2020 by Joshua Schendel
Over the past couple of months, much has been written—and many a meme created—on the much-anticipated end of 2020. The world, it seems, is ready to have done with it! Ignorance and uncertainty, cowardice and impudence, fear, injustice, cruelty, and violence—long the stain on human history—have crowded our waking moments and haunted our restless slumber. […]
Monday, 28 December, 2020 by Joshua Schendel
When I went off to test myself in the academy, I was full of aspirations of becoming a real scholar: studied, cultured, erudite. But I was not quite so full of intellectual capacity (though I secretly hoped that I would uncover latent capacities with much reading—it didn’t happen; instead I found a quite contrary capacity: […]
Thursday, 12 November, 2020 by Joshua Schendel
What a year 2020 has proven to be. Such “normal” issues that American evangelicals have had to face over the last half century or so—moral decline attended by the subsequent propagation of naive utopian solutions, increasing political polarity, a diminishing public square, social fragmentation, a deteriorating educational system, rising fear and anxiety—seem to have wildly […]
Sunday, 01 November, 2020 by Joshua Schendel
In the book of Proverbs, we are instructed to “pay attention” to the words of the wise and to “give our attention” to wisdom (Prov. 4:20; 5:1), to which many of us will, if we are honest, respond with the words of Augustine, “Behold, my life is a distraction” (Confessions, 11.29.39). In the same passage, […]
Tuesday, 01 September, 2020 by Joshua Schendel
One of the reasons for the wisdom literature in the Old Testament, we are told in Proverbs 1:4, is “to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth.” The discretion that wisdom bequeaths to those who take up abode with her is not simply a bare knowledge of right and wrong (though […]
Tuesday, 01 September, 2020 by Joshua Schendel
