It’s Katherine Johnson’s birthday! From NASA: Date of Birth: August 26, 1918 Hometown: White Sulphur Springs, WV Education: B.S., Mathematics and French, West Virginia State College, 1937 Hired by NACA: June 1953 Retired from NASA: 1986 Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Taraji P. Henson Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools is something that many people would consider one of their life’s most notable moments, but it’s just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson’s... Read more

I’m with you Joshua Becker: A few years ago, I began to intentionally wear the same outfit every day—a dark grey T-shirt and khaki pants. At first, I tried it just as a one week experiment. I wanted to see what people would say and how I’d reflect on this experience. Every day, I wondered when people would finally say it: “Enough Joshua! Why are you wearing that again?” And if they didn’t mention anything, were they secretly thinking it?... Read more

The Writing Life is not it’s all cracked up to be. Let me jump out of the blocks with that one. I do so only because it’s true. Before I give you a choice set of lines from a brilliant writer, I give you a few of my own thoughts on The Writing Life. By the way, my favorite book about writing is by William Zinsser, On Writing Well. Here’s a good (and typical) day, and it would be every day... Read more

We finish off this series on Alister McGrath’s book A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology with a brief look at his conclusions, tying his major themes together. First a reiteration of what a robust natural theology is not (according to McGrath at least): According to McGrath the interplay between science and faith – the development of a robust natural theology – is not the quest for empirical evidence for the existence of God. Natural theology... Read more

Matthew Bates’s awesome book Salvation by Allegiance Alone pressed into the solas of Reformation theology by suggesting that “faith” connotes “allegiance” as well, though all the Reformation offered us is present in his term “allegiance.” Now comes Joshua Jipp, Saved by Faith and Hospitality. This is the year of evangelicalism’s challenge to sola fide, not because “faith” is wrong but because “faith” has been reduced and the dynamic at work in God’s redemptive grace in us has become inert: Faith that doesn’t work... Read more

In spite of the claim of many, the doctrine of the Trinity — so Kevin Giles, in The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity — cannot be derived simply from the Bible, and this he contends is why the complementarian theologians who formed their own Trinity theology got into troubles. It’s the issue of how one does theology. When Christian Smith wrote The Bible Made Impossible it seemed to me then, and even more now, that he could have focused... Read more