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  1. Faith and Reason

First Light Last

You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty. —Flannery O’Connor And did you really think there would ever come a timewhen things would go as you’d dreamed they . . . . Continue Reading »

Liberal Islam

Islam,” Mustafa Akyol writes in his latest book, “is not the powerful, creative, sophisticated, beautiful civilization that it once was.” Instead, Akyol argues in Reopening Muslim Minds, Islam is in a crisis, a crisis that cannot simply be blamed on Western colonialism or ­imperialism. . . . . Continue Reading »

Doubting Thomas

H. L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Puritans, and Calvinists more generally, have a reputation for harboring an ungenerous suspicion of even the most innocent delights as sinfulness in disguise. Though this reputation is not . . . . Continue Reading »

The Historical Adam

What historical claims does the Bible make about Adam and Eve? And is belief in a historical Adam and Eve compatible with the scientific evidence? In order to avoid the pitfalls of reading contemporary science into the biblical texts, it is best to treat these questions separately. Only after having . . . . Continue Reading »

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