Christianity Commons^™

Cultural Logics In Agriculture: A Critical Christian Perspective, John Hill Price, Travis Ryan Pickell, Paul Capel, Kyungsoo Yoo, Dominic Christiensen, Marie Culhane, Tyler Dick, John Deen, Erik Watkins

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Imagine a precocious, driven, and empathetic undergraduate student. She has discovered a passion and a talent for biochemistry, and wants to apply to graduate school to pursue agronomy, with the goal of returning to her rural community home after graduation. She loves science and nature; she is also a committed Christian. She has a vague sense that these things are connected, but she isn’t sure how. And to be honest, the people around her in college do not always believe these two parts of her identity are compatible. Nevertheless, she plans to pursue graduate studies and hopes her faith will …

Hayek And Tawney: A Forgotten Conversation On Economics And Christian Ethics, Roger J. Newell

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

The dramatic British election of 1945 and an unlikely best-seller on economic philosophy provides the setting for a respectful conversation, rather than an acrimonious debate, between two long-time colleagues of the London School of Economics, the economic theorist F.A. Hayek and the economic historian R.H. Tawney. Their dialogue highlights divergent approaches to key moral issues embedded in economic thought, including the nature of freedom, the role of the state, and the reasons for poverty. The article examines the way in which Christianity underpins Tawney's approach to these questions and how, for Hayek, a network of secular beliefs performs a parallel …

Prologue For Arts And Preaching: A Handbook For Practice, Volume 1, Sunggu Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

No abstract provided.

Review Of Steven Nemes, Theological Authority In The Church: Reconsidering Traditionalism And Hierarchy, Isaac Choi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Nemes correctly identifies the key difference between Protestantism and its Catholic and Orthodox siblings as not being about justification, transubstantiation, or the Marian dogmas, but as rooted in the question of theological authority: are there individuals or groups in the church who have “the standing to tell other persons (not) to do or believe something for the sake of friendship with God” (xiii)? Nemes’s contention is that only God has such authority, and he makes the case for this claim in this book primarily by appealing to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. The analysis of the New Testament …

Mixed Messages: Reflections On Multiethnic Identity And Narratives In Youth Ministry Pedagogy, Joel Mayward

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Drawing upon the work of Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Paul Ricoeur, this article presents a personal and scholarly reflection on the author’s multiethnic identity and how such identities may benefit youth ministry pedagogies and perspectives. The author explains Anzaldúa’s notion of nepantla alongside Ricoeur’s concepts of “narrative identity” and “social imaginary,” then demonstrates how these two thinkers’ perspectives can be interwoven and applied by educators and youth ministry practitioners. Ultimately, in sharing about his “mixed” heritage, the author contends that multiethnic individuals can serve as bridge-builders between cultures and generations.

C.S. Lewis On Female Scholars: A Reply To John D. Rateliff, Jason Lepojärvi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

In John D. Rateliff’s study ‘The Missing Women: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lifelong Support for Women’s Higher Education’, Tolkien’s support of women is unfavourably contrasted with the supposedly dismissive attitude of C.S. Lewis. Rateliff offers three pieces of evidence in support of his argument that Lewis held a contemptuous attitude towards female research students in particular: a private letter by Lewis written in mock late-medieval English; Lewis’s comments about Damaris Tighe, the heroine in Charles Williams’s novel The Place of the Lion; and the character Jane Studdock in Lewis’s own novel That Hideous Strength. This paper argues that Rateliff’s evidence is not …

Review Of In This World Of Wonders: Memoirs Of A Life In Learning, Isaac Choi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Over the last 50 years, Nicholas Wolterstorff has been one of the leaders of the renaissance in Christian philosophy, while also contributing significantly to reflection on Christian education. He has written several earlier autobiographical accounts, one focused on spiritual themes, “The Grace That Shaped My Life” (1993), and a speech to the American Philosophical Association on specifically philosophical aspects of his training and career, “A Life in Philosophy” (2007). At 17 and 14 pages respectively, the aforementioned publications were much briefer than this 334-page memoir. A third can be found in parts of his book Journey toward Justice (2013), where …

Truth U, Justice U, Jesus U, Joseph Clair

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "College and university professors in the liberal arts (humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences) are almost entirely left-leaning, liberal, or progressive, and this is especially true among faculty in the humanities and social sciences. Insofar as political party affiliation is representative, the statistics are stunning- roughly 12: I Democrat to Republican in the humanities and social sciences nationally, and this ratio is even more pronounced in certain selective schools (Brown University takes the cake with 60:1).1 Students who attend liberal arts colleges or universities (that is, non-trade, nonvocational schools that require core curricula and keep an array of majors …

Nativity Of The Lord, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Can you imagine the feelings of Mary and Joseph, forced by a foreign government to travel a hundred miles for a census in the midst of winter, when Mary is about to give birth?

First Sunday After Christmas Day, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Luke's Christmas story not only features babies and parents, it also focuses on the elderly. When I was a student at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, one of my fellow students asked me to help with his preaching on the encounter with Simeon and Anna in the temple. We sang "Old Friends," by Simon and Garfunkel, and then he preached on this passage from Luke.

D. Elton Trueblood: Dean Of American Religious Writing, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

It is with great delight that HarperCollins has given the Trueblood family permission to republish any of Elton Trueblood's books that they should choose. Harpers had published thirty of his books between 1936 and 197 4, and Elton's momentous volumes earned him the title of "Dean of American Religious Writing" in the middle-to-late 20th century. I had already edited and published his book on Lincoln under a new title, with a new foreword by award-winning journalist Gustav Niebuhr, timed to coincide with the Lincoln movie that came out in 2012. 1 Elton's most important book, A Place to Stand, then …

"Foreword" To A Place To Stand, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Known as "the Dean of American Religious Writing," D. Elton Trueblood did for American audiences something similar to what C.S. Lewis achieved in Britain. He helped believers em­ brace their faith and to give an account for the hope that is with­ in them (I Peter 3: 15). Author of thirty-one books, followed by a half-dozen collections of his essays, Trueblood also encouraged generations of other emerging writers so that his influence was multiplied many times over. Addressing such issues as the vitali­zation of the church and the equipping of the laity for ministry, he did more to inspire "thinking …

The Christian Liberal Arts Tradition Can Appeal To Christians And Non-Christians Alike, Joseph Clair

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

College and university professors in the liberal arts (humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences) are almost entirely left-leaning, liberal, or progressive, and this is especially true among faculty in the humanities and social sciences. The trend is even more pronounced in certain selective schools. Students who attend liberal arts colleges or universities often adopt more liberal or progressive points of view as a result of their education. There are many great literary depictions of this transformation and the ensuing alienation that often results when such students return home from college. (My favorite is in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation,” where …

Misreading C. S. Lewis On Friendship: The Charges Of Sexism, Secrecy, And Snobbery, Jason Lepojärvi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

C. S. Lewis’s published writings comprise some forty-odd books in multiple genres, hundreds of essays, and thousands of letters. The theme that arguably rises above other themes is love, and within the family of different kinds of love, the love of friendship holds prominence. Although Lewis is often credited for accessible writing, there exists a number of popular misunderstandings about his ideas of friendship in particular. Several writers—theologians, philosophers, and literary scholars—have leveled serious charges against Lewis’s understanding of friendship. This article will evaluate three of these charges in more detail, those of sexism, secrecy, and snobbery. The article shows …

Bonhoeffer: Pacifism And Resistance Revisited With Help From Karl Barth, Roger Newell

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This essay will look at some details of Bonhoeffer’s reflections on pacifism and resistance, with special attention to the influence of Karl Barth on his path. I will also look at the implications for our own troubled times as the Church again responds to war in Europe.

Love And The Winter: C.S. Lewis, Nigel Biggar, And Marc Livecche On Enemy Love, Jason Lepojärvi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Abstract: In this paper I tackle two difficult questions about enemy love, with C. S. Lewis as my guide. First, how do we forgive a person who has deeply injured us? Second, can the Christian command to “love thy enemy” be reconciled with the military task of killing one’s opponent in war? After defining “love”, “enemy”, and “enemy love”, I discuss these two questions in light of the things that most endanger enemy love: resentment and violence. According to Lewis, the virtue of forgiveness and the religious habit of prayer play a crucial role in overcoming resentment. As for violence, …

Times As Task, Not Timing: Reconsidering Qoheleth's Catalogue Of The Times, Jesse M. Peterson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This essay examines Qoheleth’s Catalogue of the Times poem in Eccl 3:2–8. I argue that the two most common scholarly interpretations of the poem’s overall meaning fail to sufficiently account for its literary context and that an underdeveloped alternative reading is to be preferred. When we read the poem in light of two other closely related passages, 1:4–11 and 3:9–15, it becomes clear that a poem ostensibly about “time” is much less concerned with “timing” than is typically thought, but instead signifies Qoheleth’s frustration with the inevitable equilibrating tendency embedded into every human task.

Suspending Belief In Credal Accounts, Andrew Del Rio

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Traditionally epistemologists have taken doxastic states to come in three varieties—belief, disbelief, and suspension. Recently many epistemologists have taken our doxastic condition to be usefully represented by credences—quantified degrees of belief. Moreover, some have thought that this new credal picture is sufficient to account for everything we want to explain with the old traditional picture. Therefore, belief, disbelief, and suspension must map onto the new picture somehow. In this paper I challenge that possibility. Approaching the question from the angle of suspension, I argue that all possible credal accounts face serious challenges. They either (i) falsify central claims that uphold …

"Crossing Borders" The Life And Work Of Peder Borgen In Context, Torrey Seland, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Crossing Borders: The Life and Work of Peder Borgen in Context documents his personal sojourn and contributions to church and society, in addition to covering the scholarly contribution of a world-class biblical scholar and theologian. Too rarely is a scholar’s personal story considered as the back-drop, or even the foreground, of one’s academic work. In that sense, Torrey Seland’s detailed biography is inextricably linked to Borgen’s bibliography: a multitude of connections that contextualize the intrigue and significance of an exemplary scholar’s work.

Brilliance And Blindspots: New Light On C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves, Jason Lepojärvi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This paper is a critical re- evaluation of C.S. Lewis’s classic study of Christian love, The Four Loves (1960) that celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020. After discussing important and neglected differences between the celebrated book and the largely forgotten radio talks which predate it, the paper asks and answers three important questions: Are there really four loves? What is the definition of love itself? What exactly is Charity? Lewis’s answers to these questions are more eclectic than is generally assumed. The paper offers an appreciative rereading of The Four Loves that seeks to correct or at least challenge a …

Absence Of Evidence Against Belief As Credence 1, Andrew Del Rio

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

On one view of the traditional doxastic attitudes, belief is credence 1, disbelief is credence 0 and suspension is any precise credence between 0 and 1. In ‘Rational agnosticism and degrees of belief’ (2013) Jane Friedman argues, against this view, that there are cases where a credence of 0 is required but where suspension is permitted. If this were so, belief, disbelief and suspension could not be identified or reduced to the aforementioned credences. I argue that Friedman relies on two different notions of epistemic rationality and two different kinds of evidential absence. I clarify these distinctions and show that …

Review Of The Asymptote Of Love By James Kellenberger, Jason Lepojärvi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Review of The Asymptote of Love From Mundane to Religious to God's Love by James Kellenberger

ISBN: 9781438471778

Published 2018

We Walk By Faith, Not By Sight: A Year Of Wilderness Wondering, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

As the earth completes yet one more lap around the sun, we might reflect on the year as a season of turmoil—unprecedented in recent memory—and yet it has also not been without its blessings. Some of these have been granted despite the chaos and setbacks, but others have come precisely because of them.

Why Undermining Evolutionary Debunkers Is Not Enough, Andrew Del Rio

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Denying the conclusion of a valid argument is not generally permissible if one suspends on one premise of the argument and believes the other premise(s). This can happen when one’s only critique of an argument is to undermine one premise. There is incoherence there. Here I examine how this is relevant to the debate on evolutionary debunking of our moral knowledge. I argue that one significant line of response to the debunker is unsuccessful: merely undermining the debunker’s empirical claim. It is not rational to respond this way and believe one has moral knowledge. First I present evidence that prominent …

Democracy Of The Dead? The Relevance Of Majority Opinion In Theology, Isaac Choi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

No abstract provided.

Introduction And Appendix A: Arts And Preaching, Sunggu A. Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

No abstract provided.

Between Text And Sermon: Exodus 20:1-17, Sunggu Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

The Ten Commandments might be understood as a moralistic list of “do’s” and “don’ts.” That is, many people see the Decalogue as a reminder of ancient religious legalism. Thus, the usual impression of the commandments is unfavorable, and no true “good news” of the gospel or joy of Christian faith seems to be found in these verses.

However, when we carefully consider the historical context, we may find the very opposite. We may instead recognize the real joy of discipleship embedded in the commandments. With the historical context in view, the commandments may be considered an anti-imperialist (or post- colonial), …

Balderdash! A Dozen Critically Flawed Biblical Scholarship Views Destined Deservedly For The Dust Bin—Part I, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

It goes without sayings that biblical studies, and especially New Testament studies, comprise a field that isan inch wide and a mile deep. This is no accident. Indeed, the Bible is the most significant and widely readbook in human history, and it has served historically as the primary basis for much of western politics,philosophy, literature, art, and ideology over the last two millennia, let alone Christian theology and religion.This does not mean, though, that all readings of Scripture pass muster in terms of sound exegetical analysis.While an ancient text may indeed “speak” to a later reader or community in ways …

The Lord's Leadership - Psalm 146, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

As I was praying for our divided nation and our God-beloved world, my eyes were drawn to Psalm 146, which begins with an invitation to praise the Lord. In the Hebrew, the combining of two words —one for praise and the other for Yahweh—exhorts people to lift up the name of the Lord. And that happens through what we do and say, as well as who we are. That is what the word, Hallelujah, means: “Praise the Lord.”

The Pilgrim's Voice: A Prelude To Korean American Prophetic Preaching, Sunggu Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

“Where are you from?” Korean North Americans are asked this question often when they first meet people from the dominant culture in the United States. The question carries political, sociological, and cultural implications. But on hearing it, what it seems to imply or what the speaker seems to insinuate is, “You are not an American. You don’t belong here. When do you think you will go back to your original country?” Thus, the question both reflects and sustains the highly racialized idea of Korean Americans as “perpetual strangers.” This racialized view of Korean Americans also reveals the dominant culture’s hegemony, …