Recent Reads

This assessment is too simplistic (and lumps together lot of names, an issue in most writings on this topic), but it's helpful to note that many elements of both the emergent church and post-modernism are passing fads. Farewell Emerging Church, 1989-2010 by Anthony Bradley:

From Brian McLaren to Erwin McManus to Rob Bell to Tony Jones to Mark Driscoll and others, the theological lines have been drawn and are settled. We have all moved on. We know who fits into evangelicalism, post-liberalism, Anabaptism, Calvinism, and so on. If you are interested in the emerging movement as church history, pick up a copy of Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Communities in Postmodern Cultures by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger.

...Because post-modernism as movement is also dead as scientific realism emerged as a recent culture-shaping philosophical movement, the generation of Christians struggling to meet the challenges of post-modernism, instead of yelling at it hoping it would go way, are shifting as well to address a world asking different questions. While the effects of the emerging church movement will linger for some time we will begin to see books praising and attacking the movement go out of print.


Help Your Kids in their Faith Without Being Cheesy by Dan Bartkowiak:

Does God Exist is a DVD series from the creators of The Truth Project. The host, Dr. Stephen Meyer, plays a "philosophical survival game" pitting four worldviews against one another in the quest to decide which one gives the best answers.


A Few Good Books by Carl Trueman:

In addition to Kevin DeYoung's great little devotional commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, The Good News We Almost Forgot (Moody), there is also J.I. Packer and Gary A. Parrett's learned and provocative argument for putting catchesis back at the heart of the church, Grounded in the Gospel (Baker). Taken together, these books are delightful, encouraging, and, for those involved in church leadership, challenging, calling us to revisit old paths in new ways, avoiding both the romantic antiquarianism of so much Reformed church life, and the consumerist eclecticism of the ad hoc approach to the past found in emergent quarters.


The Examined Life, Age 8 from the NYT:

A few times each month, second graders at a charter school in Springfield, Mass., take time from math and reading to engage in philosophical debate. There is no mention of Hegel or Descartes, no study of syllogism or solipsism. Instead, Prof. Thomas E. Wartenberg and his undergraduate students from nearby Mount Holyoke College use classic children’s books to raise philosophical questions, which the young students then dissect with the vigor of the ancient Greeks.


Veith links to this article by a Catholic artist and educator David Clayton who makes connections between science, aesthetics, classical education, and then (for good measure) liturgy:

When we apprehend beauty we do so intuitively. So an education that improves our ability to apprehend beauty develops also our intuition. All creativity is at source an intuitive process. This means that professionals in any field including business and science would benefit from an education in beauty because it would develop their creativity. Furthermore, the creativity that an education in beauty stimulates will generate not just more ideas, but better ideas. Better because they are more in harmony with the natural order. The recognition of beauty moves us to love what we see. So such an education would tend to develop also, therefore, our capacity to love and leave us more inclined to the serve God and our fellow man. The end result for the individual who follows this path is joy.


This fellow plays a tune I like. But whatever you think of his rhetoric, CCA excels at this. On Remaking Private Life–At School by Jason Peters:

I wrote in a previous piece that I have been making preparations for a future in which such disciplines as my own will be an unaffordable luxury in most liberal-arts colleges. May no fate willfully misunderstand me: I’m not hoping for the early advent of that future. I would like to continue to teach Coleridge. But not only Coleridge. Cabbage too.


Here are a couple articles on a topic that I posted about some time back.

Theistic Evolution: A Hermeneutical Trojan Horse by Rick Phillips:

I have been interested to follow the web reaction to Dr. Bruce Waltke's resignation from RTS for his Biologos video insisting that evangelicals must accept evolution or be considered a "cult", especially that which lambasts those who would criticize scholars of such eminence as Dr. Waltke. There are, however, some features of Waltke's video, as with Dr. Enns' articles on Paul and Adam, that counter this sentiment. Most significant is the fact that neither of these Old Testament scholars base their arguments on the Old Testament at all. Rather, their claims are based on evidence from outside of their academic competence - science and archaeology - and only then do they turn to the Bible, seeking to harmonize Scripture with the scientific orthodoxy. This is, in fact, the true issue that has people like me so concerned: our supposedly eminent Bible scholars are now going on record to say that we must subordinate the authority of Scripture to the higher and more objective standard of secular science.

The Stakes Have Never Been Higher by Darryl G. Hart:

According to ABC News, and its report on the resignation of Bruce Waltke from Reformed Theological Seminary, both sides agree that the stakes are indeed that high. Higher than the Scopes Trial? But to the idea that if Christians do not accept the idea of evolution they run the risk of becoming a cult, I wonder if Waltke or his supporter Enns, or ABC’s expert interviewee, Balmer, ever considered what belief in the resurrection of Christ makes the church look like before the scientifically knowledgeable world. Granted, the Genesis account of God’s creation of the parents of the human race may from a scientific perspective be hard to believe. I, frankly, am not sure that the naturalistic accounts of human origins are any easier to understand or believe. Be that as it may, do the Christians advocating evolution – and I am not going to give them too hard a time since one of my favorite theologians (sorry, Gary), Benjamin Warfield was one of them – really think the idea of Christ’s resurrection makes Christians soft, cuddly, and scientifically mainstream?


One more list:
100 Free Online Ivy League Courses You Should Take Just for Fun