As I am writing this, it is early March. About this time one year ago, I was on a trip with my Greek study abroad program visiting Venice and Ravenna. Both northern Italian cities are known for their (sometimes irksome) contribution to the history of Greece between the fall of the western Roman Empire and …
Author Archives: therese.joffre
Psalm 97:1-12
The Glory of God’s Reign The Lord is King! Let the earth rejoice;let the many coastlands be glad!Clouds and thick darkness are all around him;righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.Fire goes before himand consumes his adversaries on every side.His lightnings light up the world;the earth sees and trembles.The mountains melt like wax …
Jesus is known at the breaking of bread
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table …
Rooted: Discovering Humility and Purpose Through the Liberal Arts
I grew up in a little brown house on the far outskirts of the suburbs that surround Rochester, New York. In the summer, I’d run barefoot through the pines that bordered our half-acre of land and pluck fresh cherry tomatoes from our backyard garden. In the winter, lake-snow drifts would sweep across the cornfield across …
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Impassibility and Passibility: A Trinitarian Epistemology
The development of Christianity was one that scandalized the ancient world, in part for its antithetical practices to Roman society at large, but most of all for its central claim: that their incarnate God had been killed by crucifixion and three days later had been raised from the dead. It was not necessarily the fact …
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Accepting the Call to Care for Creation
Christianity’s goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better. Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power — And How They can be Restored (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 193. All humans have this thing in common: we each …
Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?
In October 2007, under the initiative of Prince Ghazi Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan, 138 prominent Muslim religious authorities published“A Common Word Between Us and You.”[1] The essay called for peace and togetherness between Muslims and Christians in an attempt to find common ground between the beliefs and teachings of the Qur‘an and the Christian …
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Religious Thought and Scientific Theories of Origins: Do Christians Need to be Creationists?
According to Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018–2019, sixty-five percent of Americans identify as Christian.1 This represents a steep decrease of twelve percent within the last decade alone. During the same time period, the number of individuals self-declaring as religiously unaffiliated soared from seventeen to twenty-six percent.2 This is consistent with a larger …
Given to God: Rest as an Act of Faith
Our world has become obsessed with non-stop work. We pride ourselves in so many ways on being busy and having multiple different side hustles and projects. Most students here at Hope probably feel the tug to adapt to this cultural norm of workaholism. But do we feel satisfied with all this work at the end …
Art According to Abraham Kuyper
Introduction A novel saved Abraham Kuyper. The Heir of Redclyffe by Charlotte Yonge possessed not just initial, but ongoing influence for Kuyper, who writes, “[T]hough not in value, [The Heir of Redclyffe] stands next to the Bible in its meaning for my life.”[1] Kuyper writes of a particular scene, “Oh, what my soul experienced at …