Essay

1065 RESULTS

Reading the Bible . . . and listening for the Spirit

How can discerning readers of the Bible know that they are properly interpreting Biblical texts? With so many interpretative approaches out there, it’s important to be taught some of the common mistakes of private Scripture reading . . . and then to remember both the basic clarity of Scripture, and the Spirit’s work in helping understand divine things.

Neocalvinism . . . No: Why I am not a neocalvinist

Neocalvinism is a tradition detached from the broader and longer, western intellectual tradition. It’s detached from its confessional roots, and from a catholic understanding of church. Most of all, it’s detached from ecclesial community. Is it truly a mere publishing project, with a view to variously showing signs of vitality or allowing evangelicals to recover a Christian mind? Neocalvinism . . . Dan Knauss replies, “Just say, ‘No.'”

Neocalvinism . . . Yes: Do we have a choice?

Hearkening back to neocalvinism’s salad days in the first fifty years of 20th-century Dutch society, Dr. Harry Van Dyke offers up neocalvinism at its best. Van Dyke’s is a vision of neocalvinism as an ecumenical project whereby Christians of various confessions may join together in associations and institutions, to confront and transform culture—in homes, markets, farms, the arts, labour, churches, states, and schools and universities.

Neocalvinism . . . Yes, but . . .

Formerly an anabaptist, in neocalvinism Janel Curry has found an intellectual framework that allows her to negotiate between the pitfalls of both Enlightenment modernism and postmodernism, and find a cohesive solution to the problems posed by both in her discipline. But . . . while positioning herself as a scholar operating from the neocalvinist tradition, Curry offers a warning and issues a challenge to 21st-century neocalvinists.

Neocalvinism . . . Abraham Kuyper? Maybe.

In the thought tradition given impetus by the late 19th and early 20th century’s preacher-politician of the Netherlands, Connecticut Congregationalist Clifford Blake Anderson finds a genuinely public and prophetic theology . . . with certain reservations. Chief among these is the question of how any tradition—including neocalvinism—may be prophetically self-critical.

The Case for Paleo-Urbanism

Is New Urbanism a pale facsimile of North America’s paleo-urban communities in Toronto, New York City, Montreal, or elsewhere? Is New Urbanism merely “gentrification” by another name? Or, are New Urbanists recovering something lost when high-density, urban communities built on the grid with a tuck and milk stop on the corner were abandoned for gently curving crescents, sweeping lawns, and concrete pads leading to double garages of suburbia?

Editorial: City and Country

Over the next months Comment explores the meaning of the city—its social and architectural design, its politics, its arts, its relation to the church—and compares it to country and agriculture. Readers and writers alike may invest in this dialogue, and perhaps gain better understanding of the proper place of both city and country in human lives lived well.

The city and its renewal

Late, long-time U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil thought “all politics is local.” David Koyzis doesn’t think either urban or rural life is normative, but points to how cities could be nurtured to become more livable and sustainable over the long-term.