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Like civilization generally, the church moves through history atop the highest peaks and the deepest valleys. While our Western culture presses Christianity to the margins of acceptable public social activity, many have decided to assimilate to the larger culture to stay relevant. This assimilation has caused a decline in social and political capital for the […]
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So wrote English historian and politician Lord Acton in an 1887 letter to Archbishop Mandell Creighton. It was a few years earlier in 1883 when, across the Atlantic, prominent American writer and orator Robert Ingersoll encapsulated a similar sentiment: “nothing discloses real character like the use […]
What’s scarier to you: noise or silence? Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury in the 1950s about a society that is filled, not with silence, but with noise—ear buds in the ears or screens in front of the face. That was how everyone—or almost everyone—in the book lived. Little personal reflection, […]
War is a brutal business. Military historian Victor David Hanson describes war as an event that cuts, destroys, and maims flesh. As we observe and read of the horrors of war, we can become numb to the inhumanity and accept the carnage among combatants as a sad but nevertheless grim reality in a sin-fallen world. […]
Historic Reformed theology, as it was conceived and developed in the early modern period, offers a conceptual depth that continues to captivate scholars and students alike. The tradition’s philosophical sophistication can be seen most prominently in the tradition of Reformed scholasticism, as it offers a robust and nuanced philosophical framework for exploring key theological concepts, […]
Dr. Leland Ryken has done it again. After recently completing a trilogy of devotionals on the best of Christian hymnody, Ryken and P&R have partnered once more to release—in time for this year’s Lenten season—a beautiful anthology entitled Poetry of Redemption: An Illustrated Treasury of Good Friday and Easter Poems. Ryken served for decades as […]
The doctrine of God seems to be the headlining topic in theology right now. An explosion of academic and popular publications are appearing, all aiming to help us to know our Maker and Redeemer more fully. This new interest in God himself is good and right, since the gospel of God aims to reunite sinners […]
Joshua Pauling (JP): Thank you, Sam, for agreeing to discuss the power of story, and your stories, too. You’ve written a best-selling adventure series The Green Ember, (which my children love, by the way) and now a new book Jack Zulu and the Waylander’s Key, co-authored with your son, Josiah. To start, tell me a […]
Ideas have consequences. What we believe, how we imagine the world, these things motivate, and help us make sense of, our actions individually and as a society. They shape the very fabric of our culture. Take a modern example: for decades Chinese leaders openly taught that for the good of the nation each family ought […]
Long before Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook, C. S. Lewis understood where cancel culture led. In The Great Divorce, his fictional depiction of heaven and hell, Lewis paints a picture of serial conflict that leads to further and further isolation in the cities of hell. Lewis had no way of knowing how accurate his description would be […]
Thankfully, in recent years the doctrine of God has made a comeback among theologians, and deservedly so. The doctrine of God describes who God is and what he does; it encompasses God’s attributes, like omniscience and omnipotence, as well as the mystery of the Trinity. Yet many Christians do not dwell on these truths because […]
Unbeknownst to many, the Arminian (or Remonstrant) controversy of the early seventeenth century was not the first major early modern dispute about the perennial philosophical and theological questions touching on the relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom. Such an honor must be given to the Roman Catholic dispute leading to the so-called Congregatio De […]