Featured Essay / Culture
For years Rod Dreher (senior editor at The American Conservative) has been writing about his “Benedict Option.” Now his book of the same title has finally appeared. To be honest, I have not been convinced by his articles addressing the Benedict Option and his book fails to convince me too.…
Essay / Culture
A virtue, in order to live up to its lofty title, must contain within itself its own proper resources for opposing the vice unique to it. As Aristotle taught us, virtues rarely travel alone; typically they wander the streets accompanied by distorted versions of themselves;
Essay / Culture
A few weeks ago Biola had the delight of installing our new Provost and Senior Vice President, Dr. Deborah Taylor. Part of the installation involved a series of charges from faculty who had been invited to articulate some of the key challenges ahead of Dr.
Essay / Blog
This week, I submitted the manuscript for the T&T Clark Companion to the Atonement, an edited work with 18 major chapters and 85 shorter essays from scholars around the world, exploring the doctrine of the atonement from a variety of angles. The various essays explore
Essay / Blog
A concerned student recently asked me to use my authority over a friend of theirs (also a student and mentee of mine) to help get them on the right track, for this friend was involved in quite destructive behavior. As we were talking, I was
Essay / Culture
Late in the Spring semester, life at Biola was disrupted by a shocking event: On the whiteboard wallspace over a dorm room door, somebody converted a cross to a swastika. One of the roommates in that dorm room was an African-American student. The best reporting
Essay / Education
Here’s an episode of The Common Room, the periodic vidcast of the Torrey Honors Institute, made possible by OpenBiola. What we try to capture and share in Common Room conversations is a little bit of the ongoing dialogue that makes up the daily life of
Essay / Culture
A recent documentary, The Hunting Ground, explores the tragedy of sexual assault on university and college campuses across the nation. Directed by Oscar-nominated Kirby Dick, maker of The Invisible War, which discusses the epidemic of rape within the military, The Hunting Ground serves as Dick’s
Essay / Education
In my first post, I sought to paint a constructive vision of academic conferences, but that is far from all there is to say—for a conference is a vice-saturated affair, and it’s worth knowing that ahead of time. One of the most superficial and natural
Essay / Education
If you are interested in an academic career, welcome to the world of conferences. For all their weaknesses, these are one of the main heartbeats of the academy. Over two posts, I will do my best to pass along what I have learned, thus speeding
Essay / Culture
This speech was originally given on March 3, 2016, by Professor Eva Brann of St. John’s College (Annapolis), as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series at the Torrey Honors Institute. The following is an excerpt. A link to her full speech is available on Open
Essay / Culture
Online classes and online universities are all the rage. They boast an impressive set of virtues and opportunities. Among them: Take classes in your pajamas (or less)! Why relocate? Learn at your own pace. Keep your day job. Pay less. A lot less (but read
Essay / Education
A note here on how Karl Barth viewed his teaching in the late 1940s in Basle. Barth was deep into writing Church Dogmatics III, and as usual he was developing the voluminous text of the Dogmatics out of the four hours of lectures he was