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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
Full text linkReview 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’), which has gained considerable influence in the American evangelical Protestant context. If ever one has heard of ‘sphere sovereignty’, ‘principled pluralism’, ‘reformed epistemology’, ‘anti-thesis’ and the impossibility of ‘neutrality’, or ‘Christian worldview’, then one is likely already within the Kuyperian ambit. Anyone who is interested in considering the social and public relevance of Christianity does well to acquaint herself with this school of thought
In Whose Image? Travis Pickell on McKenny\u27s Biotechnology, Human Nature, and Christian Ethics
Full text linkLast 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, imagine if this technology is ever applied to the human germ-line, seemed somewhat naïve
Victor Lee Austin, Christian Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed: Reviewed by Travis Pickell
Full text linkReview of Victor Lee Austin, Christian Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed, Bloomsbury T&T Clark: London, 2012; 177 pp.: 9780567032195, £50.00 (hbk), 9780567032201, £14.99 (pbk), 9780567639998, £14.99 (ebook)
How does one write an introductory text without being overly reductive, on the one hand, or unnecessarily bogging down the reader with finer points, on the other? Imagine trying to make a topic as expansive as Christian ethics intelligible to the ‘perplexed’ among us. Victor Lee Austin, Theologian-in-residence at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue (NYC), admirably navigates between these twin pitfalls in this useful and concise volume
Gentle Space-Making: Christian Silent Prayer, Mindfulness, and Kenotic Identity Formation
Full text linkThe 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 bringing mindfulness into conversation with another contemplative tradition, namely, Christian silent prayer as exemplified in the anonymous fourteenth-century handbook, The Cloud of Unknowing. It then situates these two formational practices within the broader social imaginary that dominates late-modern, North Atlantic life, and ventures a few suggestions about the significance of this overlap for Christian ethics, specifically at the end of life
Choosing My Tradition
Full text linkThe term millennial—as in, that generation born between 1981 and 2000—does not tend to bring to mind the notion of tradition. Millennials, considered as a group, are not particularly known for rigorous adherence to particular traditions. Nor are they known for their “traditional” ways of doing things. That said, a number of commentators have noted a rising tide of interest in tradition in the spiritual lives of young people in this country. For some, this interest takes the form of a self-conscious appropriation of a single theological or historical expression of the Christian faith, as demonstrated, for example, by joining a Roman Catholic, Reformed, or Anabaptist church. More often, it takes the form of a turn to traditional elements of liturgy. In this paper, I examine the self-conscious turn to tradition, particularly among evangelical millennials. In doing so, I hope to articulate the social and contextual factors that encouraged this turn, as well as the desires and dissatisfactions that are being expressed through it. My ultimate aim is to determine whether this turn to tradition carries legitimate prospects for helping young Christians live more faithfully in our late-modern context
Julie Hanlon Rubio, Hope for Common Ground: Mediating the Personal and the Political in a Divided Church. Reviewed by Travis Ryan Pickell.
Full text linkReview of Julie Hanlon Rubio, Hope for Common Ground: Mediating the Personal and the Political in a Divided Church Moral Traditions series (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016). xxi + 242 pp. ISBN 978-1-62616-306-5
It is no secret that we live in a time of intense polarization, perhaps especially in the American political context. This situation may be explained in a number of ways. Some will point to increasing economic inequality or socioeconomic and racial ‘sorting’. Others may point to the concurrent rise of ‘identity politics’ and the ‘politics of resentment’. Others will highlight the effects of technology, including the rise of algorithm-driven social media networks, on public discourse. Still others will highlight the way the internet has democratized media and journalism, paving the way for hyper-partisan news outlets and an endless cycle of claims of ‘fake news’. Yet others will point to other factors. Whatever we take to be the primary cause (in reality, each of those likely contributes to the problem), we cannot deny the effects: we live in a time when it is increasingly difficult to cooperate with, and in many cases even to communicate meaningfully with, those who differ from us politically, socioeconomically, and culturally. It is enough to make one wonder whether genuine politics, the sort described by Aristotle, Thomas, and the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching (CST), is even possible in our time. Are we left with the bleak choice between Machiavellian Realpolitik and the outright rejection of politics, perhaps through a personal or ecclesiological ethic of nonparticipation
Book Review: John D. Roth (ed.), Constantine Revisited: Leithart, Yoder, and the Constantinian Debate. Reviewed by Travis Pickell.
Full text linkReview of John D. Roth (ed.), Constantine Revisited: Leithart, Yoder, and the Constantinian Debate (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013). xvi + 200 pp. ISBN 978-1- 61097-819-4
How are we to understand the historical and theological legacy of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor? Some would say that his conversion signals the initiation of a ‘Constantinian shift’ in the church’s self-understanding, the adoption of a heretical Christendom mentality. This shift, marked by an unsavoury union of church and empire, ultimately meant that the church forsook the peaceful politics of Jesus and adopted the worldly politics of the sword. ‘Constantinianism’, thus understood, equals the fall of the church. And given what we know about his life – he was, after all, responsible for the deaths of his father-in-law, two brothers-in-law, one wife, and one son, to name only a few – it may be asked in what sense we should even concede the name ‘Christian’ to this man. Such a perspective on Constantine and his legacy – which is widespread in Christian ethics today – is most closely associated with the work of the late Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. It is precisely this view that was vigorously challenged by Peter J. Leithart’s Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (IVP, 2010). Leithart’s book had a two-fold aim, at once historical and theological. The historical aim was to rebut popular caricatures of the man, Constantine. The theological aim, which was primary, was to dismantle Yoder’s declensionist ‘fall’ narrative and to offer an alternative political theology in which Constantine provides ‘a model for Christian political practice’ (Leithart, p. 11
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Five Ideas for How Professors Can Deal with GPT-3 ... For Now
Full text linkThe most immediate question that needs to be addressed is pedagogical: how can we continue to teach in the GPT Age?...Beyond the questions of pedagogical best practices, GPT-3 raises deeper philosophical and pragmatic questions about the nature and purpose of higher education
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