Category: Biblical worldview
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Educating for a Christian Worldview in a Secular Age
In our secular age, there exists a plurality of options for how to think about complex questions. Take the question of what it means to be human, for example. For the biologist, to be human is to possess the DNA of the species Homo sapien. In contrast, for the eastern mystic, to be human is…
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Enjoying the Bible as Literature: 5 Strategies for Engaging Students in Reading the Canon
Guest article by Heidi Dean of Christian Schools International (See Jason’s article on CSI “7 Steps to Narrating the Bible”!) In biblical studies we seek to cultivate the habits of reverence, humility, submission to the text, and other qualities of faithful scholarship. But I propose another goal should rise to the top: enjoyment. The enjoyment…
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Training the Prophetic Voice, Part 6: Classical Rhetoric for the Modern World
In my last post, I explored the concept of internalization. Students need to internalize the truth in such a way that it impacts their lives personally. Obviously this will look different for each individual, so there is no formula. I like to think of each person as embarking on a journey during which they will…
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Three Premises for Teaching Theology
In March 1984, British missiologist Lesslie Newbigin delivered the Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary on the topic of the gospel and western culture. In these lectures, which were later compiled into a book entitled Foolishness to the Greeks (Eerdmans: 1986), Lewbigin considers what would be involved in a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel…
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Training the Prophetic Voice, Part 5: Internalizing the Prophetic Message
So far in this series, we have explored the theological and biblical paradigms surrounding our understanding of what it means to speak prophetically. It centers around God’s divine revelation to humanity and then becomes expressed through people who take up the message of God’s truth and speaking truth into new contexts. The model of discipleship…
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Training the Prophetic Voice, Part 4: Jesus as Prophetic Trainer
In my ongoing series on training the prophetic voice, we have looked at several biblical and theological aspects of what it means to speak with a prophetic voice. We have seen how speaking truth is the heart of the prophetic voice, and that God himself is the theological grounding of our conception of truth-speaking. In…
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Educating for Humility: Promoting a Classroom Culture of Excellence in Service to Others
Of the many ills that plague modern society, perhaps one of the most insidious is the wedge we have driven between character and excellence, or ethics and achievement. Contemporary examples abound of “successful” men and women who have earned impressive accolades despite deep recesses in character, and occasionally, because of those recesses. As a result,…
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Training the Prophetic Voice, Part 3: The Schools of the Prophets
In my previous two articles on training the prophetic voice, I laid some groundwork by establishing first that our understanding of prophecy (truth telling) is grounded in the character of God as a truth-telling God, and second that the kind of truth we are talking about is of a moral nature when we are considering…
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Training the Prophetic Voice, Part 1: The Educational Heart of God
The God we worship and serve is an educating God. Our God has chosen to reveal himself to those whom he has created. God’s verbal communication with his creation is expressed in the opening of John’s gospel, “In the beginning was the Word.” Our God is a speaking God, which means he is continuously teaching…
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Class of 2020: The Next Greatest Generation
The class of 2020 has felt the full force of the disruption caused by the Coronavirus. Graduation ceremonies have been cancelled, postponed or held virtually online. Nothing about the spring of senior year went according to plan for the class of 2020. It has been described as catastrophic and traumatic by students, parents and teachers.…