Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Book Review: Craig G. Bartholomew, Contours Of The Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction, Bob Goudzwaard And Craig G. Bartholomew, Beyond The Modern Age: An Archaeology Of Contemporary Culture. Reviewed By Travis Pickell, Travis Ryan Pickell

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Review of Craig G. Bartholomew, Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017). xiv + 363 pp. ISBN 978-0-8308- 5158-4

Bob Goudzwaard and Craig G. Bartholomew, Beyond the Modern Age: An Archaeology of Contemporary Culture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017). xii + 313 pp. ISBN 978-0-8308-5151- 5

Abraham Kuyper stands as a giant of politics, theology, and social philosophy in the Dutch Reformed context. Serving as a pastor, journalist, educator and university founder, political activist, theologian, author, and prime minister in his time, his legacy continues through the neo-Calvinist tradition (sometimes called ‘Kuyperianism’), …

The Lord's Prayer: A Study In Christian Theology, Kerry Irish

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

Introduction: "It is a sad truth, though not surprising, that Christians with little understanding of their Christian faith often have great difficulty maintaining their faith. It is equally true that the last kind of sermon most Christians want to hear is one full of theology; that is, they do not to want to develop a deeper understanding of Christianity. This is a recipe for a crisis of belief that often leads to giving up one's faith, especially when a personal tragedy occurs such as the loss of a loved one, loss of a job, loss of financial security, disappointment with …

Understanding Face And Shame: A Servant-Leadership And Face Management Model, Jiying Song

Faculty Publications - Department of Professional Studies

Clergy can have a negative impact on churches and other individuals when they knowingly or unknowingly attempt to save face, that is, try to protect their standing or reputation. The desire to gain face and the fear of losing face and feeling ashamed will likely permeate clergy’s decision-making processes without even being noticed. This study explores the essence of face and face management and the relationship between face management and two characteristics of servant-leadership—awareness and healing—in both Chinese and American churches through the methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology. Prior to this study, to my knowledge, no hermeneutic phenomenological research of face …

Roger Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth, And The Formation Of America's Constitutional Order (Chapter Five Of Great Christian Jurists In American History), Mark David Hall

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

In 1822, former President John Adams wrote to the biographer John Sanderson that Roger Sherman was "one of the most cordial friends which I ever had in my life. Destitute of all literary and scientific education, but such as he acquired by his own exertions, he was one of the most sensible men in the world. The clearest head and steadiest heart. It is praise enough to say that the late Chief Justice Ellsworth told me that he had made Mr. Sherman his model in his youth .... [He] was one of the soundest and strongest pillars of the revolution." …

Jesus: His Life From The Perspectives Of Mary Magdalene And The Apostle Peter (Pt.4), Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

The final two episodes of the History Channel’s “Jesus: His Life” focus on Jesus as viewed by Mary Magdalene and the Apostle Peter. As with the previous six episodes, this hybrid documentary focuses on the life of Jesus from the perspectives of particular individuals within the gospel narratives. Over and against more historical-critical and skepticismprivileging series a couple of decades ago,[1] this series largely follows the presentations of Jesus within the four canonical gospels, while still setting them within the contexts of first century Palestine under the Roman Empire. In so doing, the softer view of New Testament historiography pioneered …

Elizabeth Fry—A Note-Worthy Friend, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Her picture is on the five-pound British note. She brought about prison reform in Britain. Her school of nursing inspired Florence Nightingale. She was the first woman to address Parliament. She was visited in her prison-reform work by the King of Prussia. She was a recorded Friends minister who provided Bibles for people, established organizations for social reform, pioneered women’s suffrage, and who was sponsored by Queen Victoria. Her name was Elizabeth Fry—a note-worthy Friend, indeed!.

Transparency And Ontology Of Love (Chapter 14 Of To Know As I Am Known: The Communion Of The Saints And The Ontology Of Love), Mark S. Mcleod-Harrison

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "In his book The Path of Perfect Love, Diogenes Allen suggests that it is because of our inability to perceive the reality of other people and things that we don’t grasp what brings out the fundamental feature of love, viz. the recognition or perception of things beside one’s self. The reader may recall that both Badhwar and Royce made reference, the latter extensively, to the importance of recognizing the reality of the other person if one is to love. Allen focuses deeply on this theme. I will briefly present Allen’s position in section I and turn to a sermon …

Knowing We Don't Know (Chapter One Of When Faith Fails), Dominic Done

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "The first step into something new often looks like trust, not clarity. I began to discover the meaning of those words when I packed up everything I owned and moved from Oregon to the jungles of Vanuatu. Never heard of it? Neither had I when my pastor invited me to go. "It will be great," he said. "You'll be teaching a group of college-aged students who come from all over the country to learn." Impulsive, in my early twenties, and evidently ready for adventure, I said yes, then hurried to the store to pick up a map. I spent …

John R. Mott And John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: Dimensions Of An Unlikely Friendship, Benjamin Hartley

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This research report is based on research performed at the Rockefeller Archive Center during January 2019. The report explores several dimensions to the friendship and professional relationship of Dr. John R. Mott and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. John R. Mott was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 1946 and was one of the most important ecumenical and Christian mission leaders in the first half of the twentieth century. Mott traveled the world to establish student Christian associations in many different countries, and also served in diplomatic missions for the Wilson administration. He refused Woodrow Wilson’s offer to be the U.S. …

Background Of King's Preaching Theology (Chapter One Of King's Speech: Preaching Reconciliation In A World Of Violence And Chasm), Sunggu Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "From birth, King was surrounded and influenced by the black faith community. Both his maternal grandfather and his father were successful African-American Baptist preachers in Atlanta, Georgia. Put simply, "King was a product of the black church in America:" How exactly, then, did the black Baptist church-or the black church in general-influence King's reconciliatory preaching theology? There are at least three significant elements of the black church tradition that influenced King: the freedom tradition, open-ended Christian practices, and the particular interpretative tools of allegory and typology."

Jesus: His Life—Perspectives Of Joseph And John The Baptist (Pt. 1), Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

As the calendar approaches Easter, made-for-television movies and documentaries appear on the History Channel, CNN, the National Geographic Channel, and other venues; and, why not? Christianity is the largest religion in the world, and there’s a great deal of interest within society at large, as well as among the believing faithful. As Robert Cargill points out in the introit to Jesus: His Life, “The Story of Jesus is the greatest story ever told.” Or, as Ben Witherington III notes, “If we want to understand western civilization at all, we must understand the story of Jesus.” In that sense, this eight-part …

Jesus: His Life From The Perspectives Of Judas And Pilate (Pt. 3), Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

As the trailer points out, the distinctive feature of the eight-episode History Channel series, “Jesus: His Life,” is that it looks at the life and ministry of Jesus from the perspective of key figures within the gospel narratives. The first four episodes assessed the life of Jesus from the perspectives of Joseph, John the Baptist, Mary, and Caiaphas; [1] Episodes Five and Six review the life of Jesus from the perspectives of Judas and Pilate. From the top, we are once again reminded of the 1965 epic film title that the story of Jesus is “the greatest story ever told,” …

Christ’S Presence In The Poor And The Church: A Traditionalist Liberation Theology, Ross W. Mccullough

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This paper argues that central claims about the poor in liberation theology do not displace traditional claims about the centrality of the Church but are a natural outworking of them. Christ is present in the poor first in the sense that Christ is present prior to and as preparation for justification, working to overcome our infirmities; Christ is present second in the sense that the poor are God’s special instrument of salvation. Neither manner of being present relies on the rethinking of nature and grace in the 20th century that is sometimes made foundational to liberation theology, suggesting that at …

John Bellers (1654–1725): ‘A Veritable Phenomenon In The History Of Political Economy’, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

What sort of a person would be an inspiration to Karl Marx and a champion of free trade, an advocate of gainful employment and hard work, a herald of providing education and medical care for the poor while also seeing their labor as the greatest resources of the rich, a prophetic voice seeking to curb the ills of heavy drinking and the developing of worthy living quarters for workers, a challenger of dishonesty in public service and in Parliament while also calling for a unified state of Europe and Christian unity, an exhorter of Friends to spiritual discipline, anger management, …

Preaching To Episodic Ears: Practicing A Dramaturgical Homiletic, Sunggu Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This article is a critical attempt to develop a homiletic methodology for preaching to the episodic self of the 21st century. The British philosopher Galen Strawson contends that postmodern people today do not regard themselves as living out their lives in a diachronic or narrative sense, but rather in an episodic-existential sense. This episodic-existential way of perceiving one’s life has recently posed a significant challenge to the current preaching practice that is mostly composed and delivered from the pulpit through a narrative. This article provides a considerate response to that episodic-existential challenge. Specifically, the article proposes a dramaturgical narrative form …

Bodies And Heroes (Chapter In Heroic Bodies In Ancient Israel), Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "In this book I make three overarching arguments about what I am calling the “heroic body” in ancient Israel, particularly as it is represented in the Hebrew Bible but also including relevant iconography and with comparative gestures toward the Bible’s larger Mesopotamian context to the east and also the Greek Mediterranean context to the west."

Gentle Space-Making: Christian Silent Prayer, Mindfulness, And Kenotic Identity Formation, Travis Ryan Pickell

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

The practice of mindfulness has reached an unprecedented level of prevalence in the US and the UK, both in terms of widespread popularity and in terms of institutional support and investment. One potential clue to this phenomenon may be found in the nature of the institutional contexts that are increasingly being filled with mindfulness practitioners and seminars: each is deeply embedded in and pervaded by what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the ‘modern identity’. This article provides an analysis of mindfulness as a practice of moral formation that challenges these late-modern notions of human agency and identity. It does so by …

In Whose Image? Travis Pickell On Mckenny's Biotechnology, Human Nature, And Christian Ethics, Travis Ryan Pickell

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Last semester, a single, hypothetical, issue haunted all our discussions in my co-taught class, “Engineering Humanity: The Promise and Perils of Biotechnology.” “Hypothetical,” that is, until the penultimate week of class when we received word that a Chinese scientist named He Jiankui crossed an ethical red-line, allegedly using CRISPR-cas9 technology to bring the planet’s first gene-edited babies into the world. These twins, Lulu and Nana, had undergone “gene-surgery” (He’s preferred term) as embryos to edit-out a single gene, CCR5, without which He hoped they might become immune to HIV (their father carries the virus). Suddenly, all of our previous hedging, …

"Companions In Shipwreck: J. R. R. Tolkien's Female Friendships" Chapter In Apprehending Love Edited By Olli-Pekka Vainio And Pekka Kärkkäinen, Jason Lepojärvi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

No abstract provided.

Phoenicians In The Hebrew Bible, Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

No abstract provided.

Is Coming Into Existence Always A Harm? Qoheleth In Dialogue With David Benatar, Jesse M. Peterson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Contemporary philosopher David Benatar has advanced the self-evidently controversial claim that “coming into existence is always a harm.” Benatar’s argument turns on the basic asymmetry between pleasure and pain, an asymmetry he seeks to explain by the principle that those who never exist cannot be deprived. Benatar’s import is almost incredible: humans should cease to procreate immediately, thereby engendering the extinction of the species—a view known as “anti-natalism.” According to many of his readers, the ancient Hebrew sage Qoheleth expresses a pessimistic nihilism that runs as thick as Benatar’s. Prima facie grounding for this assertion is that Qoheleth, like Benatar, …

Now You See 'Em, Now You Don't: Perfect People In The Ot (Chapter Two Of God And Human Wholeness), Kent L. Yinger

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

Excerpt: "Recent debates over perfection, or better, Judaism and perfect law-keeping, took off with the publication of E. P. Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism. As mentioned in the introduction, for Luther and most of the Protestant theological traditions in his wake, one of the chief problems with salvation according to the OT law was that no one had kept, or could keep, its commandments sufficiently to be considered righteous. Nearly all were agreed this was because the law required flawless or perfect obedience to all its commands. Since all are sinners, such a demand for perfect obedience returns a …

On Truth & Recognition, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

In ancient Greek dramas, the point of discovery, or the dawning of insight in the understanding of the protagonist, is known as anagnorisis in Greek; recognition in English. Within the story, the audience is made aware of information that the hero does not know, raising tension and suspense within the narrative. Then, in a pivotal encounter with some aspect of truth, insight is given, and recognition holds the key to resolving issues of crisis or opportunity as the story develops.

Jesus: His Life From The Perspectives Of Mary And Caiaphas (Pt. 2), Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Following on the first two episodes of the History Channel’s “Jesus: His Life,” focusing on perspectives of Joseph and John the Baptist, the second installment continues the hybrid approach, reflecting on the life of Jesus from the perspectives of Mary and Caiaphas. The opening episode features Jesus visiting Jerusalem as a twelve-year old, as portrayed in Luke 2. Beginning with Mary and her memory of the infancy and childhood of Jesus, things move forward quickly into the story of his engaging the Jewish authorities in the temple. While nothing else is known about the childhood and early adulthood of Jesus, …

Why The Gospel Of John Is Fundamental To Jesus Research (Chapter One Of Jesus Research: The Gospel Of John In Historical Inquiry), Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

The constellation of the Johannine riddles—theological, historical, literary—and their implications for understanding the Jesus of history as well as the Christ of faith, and thus the historical and religious basis of western civilization, comprises arguably the most difficult set of biblical critical issues and discussions in the modern era: full stop. Just as John’s theological tensions precipitated and contributed to the most intensive and extensive of theological discussions in the patristic era, so John’s literary and historical tensions have contributed to most intensive and extensive literary and historical biblical discussions in the modern era. Understandably, the issues are complex. The …

Reviewed Work: Christianizing Egypt. Syncretism And Local Worlds In Late Antiquity By David Frankfurter, Dana Robinson

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

David Frankfurter’s newest work takes a fresh look at the landscape of local religious activity in late antique Egypt. Frankfurter expands on the theoretical model he offered in Religion in Roman Egypt (Princeton, 1998), which conceptualized the late antique transformations of Egyptian religion as a shift in idiom and social location, from large temple centers to households and local experts, rather than a decline in traditional piety. Here he changes his perspective from the continuity of traditional religion into the Christian era, to examine the creation of a local and regional Christianity in the fifth and sixth centuries.

Quakers And Creation Care: Potentials And Pitfalls For An Ecotheology Of Friends (Chapter Five In Quakers, Creation Care, And Sustainability), Cherice Bock

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

While Friends have a strong tradition of activism around the social justice issues of each era, we also tend to spiritualize our faith, disconnecting it from the material world. Environmental concerns are arguably one of the most important social justice issues of of our time, and in many ways, activism, advocacy, and lifestyle witness seem like natural ways for Friends to engage in social justice in this time in history. This essay will explore some of the historical and theological strengths Friends can draw from our tradition that can help build a particularly Quaker ecotheology, as well as some of …

"Do What You Do In The Wisdom Of God": Theological Resources For Quaker Ecological Action In The Writings Of George Fox (Chapter One Of Quakers, Creation Care, And Sustainability), Rebecca Artinian-Kaiser, Cherice Bock

Faculty Publications - Portland Seminary

In a time when intentional action to care for our planet is of increasing importance, Friends drafted the Kabarak Call for Peace and Ecojustice (2012) to call Quakers to ecological action as an expression of faithfulness. The following work represents one starting point for drawing Friends' awareness to the theology and practice of early Friends in relation to creation by exploring the writings of George Fox. In this essay, we examine Fox's use of the motif of "wisdom," his view of the connection between wisdom and creation, his understanding and experience of the Word of wisdom (that is, Christ), and …