Christianity Commons^™

Culture As Divine Gift: The Future Of In All Things, David Henreckson

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"We have to be on the lookout for God’s Spirit at work in the world, and then be willing to follow wherever it leads us."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­Christian engagement in culture from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

http://inallthings.org/culture-as-divine-gift-the-future-of-in-all-things/

What Is A Human Being?, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Our religious relationship to God is nothing other than the entirety of the life we live, and our life is nothing other than a spiritual or religious act, from start to finish."

Posting about the "God-human-creation" relationship from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/what-is-a-human-being/

How Should We Read The Bible?, Benjamin J. Lappenga

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Embrace the fact that passages have a range of valid interpretations."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­ways to read the Bible from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/how-should-we-read-the-bible/?

How Can We Become Biblically Literate?, Jay Shim

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"The Bible is to be read as a single book of progressive revelation moving from the Old to the New Testatment."

Posting about acquiring Biblical knowledge from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/how-can-we-become-biblically-literate/

Objectivity, Story, And The Bible, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"The power of these stories comes from the unique way they plug into human living."

Posting about the truth of Christianity from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/objectivity-story-and-the-bible/

Answering Your Question: Creeds And Confessions, Wayne A. Kobes

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"The church could well benefit from a clear, contemporary statement of the essentials of the Christian faith in language that speaks to 21st century people."

Posting about the value of new creeds and confessions in the church from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/answering-your-question-creeds-and-confessions/

Enlightenment Philosophy And Theology, Scott Culpepper

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

One of seven articles written by Scott Culpepper for the book Encyclopedia of Christian Education, George Kurian and Mark Lamort, editors. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. 3 volumes (xxxv, 1630 pages). ISBN: 9780810884922.

Answering Your Question: The Bible And Traditional Beliefs, Benjamin J. Lappenga

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Christians must acknowledge that our readings of Scripture are subject to criteria for determining their validity."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­Biblical interpretation from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/answering-your-question-the-bible-and-traditional-beliefs/

Answering Your Question: Tension Between Science And Genesis, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Before we can meaningfully engage with interpretations of Genesis, it may be helpful to think more about the nature of Biblical authority: how is the Bible authoritative, and what does it mean to be obedient to that authority?"

Posting about the issue of origins and the age of the earth from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/answering-your-question-tension-between-science-and-genesis/

Cultivating A Religionless Social Imaginary: Youth Ministry In A Secular Age, Jason Lief

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Is there any hope for those who have abandoned the church and the beliefs of their youth? More importantly, how will the Christian community engage those who turn their back on religious belief and practice?"

This paper will argue that the response and focus of the Christian community should not be to call young people back to the church, or to traditional forms of Christianity, instead the Christian community must embrace a radical form of secularity that is the outworking of protestant Christianity. This is a form of Christianity that navigates a middle road between the two idealist positions: much …

Answering Your Question: Calvinism And Reformed, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"'Reformed' is a larger umbrella term encompassing a strand of thought and church history that emerged in Christianity as a result of the Protestant Reformation."

Posting about terms used to define belief systems from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/answering-your-question-calvinism-and-reformed/

Phenomenology, The Spirits Of The Age, And The (Religious) Task Of Philosophy, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The presenter states that philosophy in general—and phenomenology in particular—remain predominantly academic endeavors, done by professional philosophers, to professional philosophers, for professional philosophers and that the key to changing this situation and so to recover the public nature of the phenomenological enterprise is to reconceive the task of philosophy as the 2 discernment of the spirits of the age in which we find ourselves. To do this, he highlights two distinct elements of phenomenological methodology that enable it to perform such a task: first, its epistemological claim that the matters to be investigated must be both taken on their own …

Augustinian Approach To Holistic Christian Pedagogy, Adam Schultz, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Presenters explain how in their CORE philosophy class they seek to demonstrate that their students' real life-spiritual life distinction is symptomatic of a dualism endemic to contemporary Christianity (section 1), and that their reading of Augustine's Confessions can provide a unified and holistic corrective to it (section 2) and that doing so helps students see a more radical vision of Christian faithfulness, one that calls for a holistic, life-wide response to the work of Christ that will not allow for an easy distinction between ‘spiritual’ life and everyday life (section 3).

Sphere Sovereignty, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"This is the idea that different parts of creation have legitimately different rules, tasks, and duties, given them by God for the proper functioning of the world. "

Posting about Abraham Kuypers views on sphere soverignty from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

inallthings.org/sphere-sovereignty/

Experiencing Our Only Comfort: A Post-Reformation Refocus In The Heidelberg Catechism, Jan Van Vliet

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Last year marked the 450th anniversary of the publication of the Heidelberg Catechism. In celebration of this momentous occasion and as a reminder of the contemporary applicability of this highly-regarded confessional document, this essay examines the earliest and most complete Puritan commentary extant: that of second-generation Puritan thinker William Ames (1576–1633), protégé of William Perkins (1558–1602), the “father” of the Puritan movement. We examine methodological considerations and two topical issues that arise when the venerated Catechism is placed in the hands of a practically oriented, post-Reformation divine for whom theology was none other than “living to God”: Theologia est doctrina …

Biblical Hermeneutics And Hebraism In The Early Seventeenth Century As Reflected In The Work Of John Weemse (1579-1636), Jay Shim

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

This dissertation presents a contextual and historical understanding of hermeneutical works of post-Reformation Reformed orthodoxy, and the flow of exegetical tradition within orthodox theology from the Reformation to the early seventeenth century. Virtually all of the older modern studies interpreted post- Reformation theology and its biblical study as "dogmatic," "deductive," "rationalistic," and "unspiritual," descriptions allegedly made in a comparison and contrast of the characteristics of post-Reformation thought with the theology of the early sixteenth century. These pejorative descriptions typically state that post-Reformation biblical exegesis was a deductive reading of dogmas into Scripture using a predetermined dogmatic analogy of faith. This …

Reformed Theological Ethics Of Speech Communication, Charles Veenstra

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

This project develops and applies a Biblically-based Reformed theological system of ethics for speech communication.

The dissertation includes a review of literature on ethics in speech communication and indicates that: 1) ethics is a significant concern in the field of speech communication, 2) no single normative ethical theory dominates, 3} each normative ethical theory currently advocated faces significant problems, 4) critical pieces applying normative standards are few, 5) little attention is given to ethics of religious speakers or broadcasters, and 6) the normative ethical theory based in Reformed theology, which is the subject of this dissertation, is undeveloped in the …