In the early 2000s, Oprah featured what became one of the most popular books of the last twenty years, one that transformed a culture eager to abandon the old mores of hard work and bygone Judeo-Christian scruples in favor of an easier, technologically shaped personal fulfillment. The book was called The Secret, and in it the author, Rhonda Byrne, claimed to have discovered mysterious — though eminently practicable — knowledge from ancient, learned men.2 These sages knew how to harness the power...
May 04, 2022•52 min
Agelessness appeals in a culture which will do anything to disguise or deny the fact that we’re all, minute by minute, day by day, getting older. Agelessness appeals in a culture in which the elderly are often mocked and marginalized. And yet, as Christians, we must ask, is agelessness really God’s plan for us? To answer that question, we must recapture a biblical theology of aging. As we explore what the Bible says about aging, we discover that God has written purpose and meaning into the life ...
Apr 27, 2022•57 min
The New York Times recently published an opinion essay from Mary Zigler, Florida State University law professor and author of Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present, titled, “Anti-Abortion Groups Once Portrayed Women as Victims. That’s Changing.” Ziegler claims that opponents of legal abortion have gravitated away from offering legislation grounded in arguments framing women as additional victims of abortion. Reasoning from that claim, Ziegler believes that conservative stat...
Apr 20, 2022•43 min
This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Cole Burgett about his online-exclusive article, “When the Hurlyburly’s Done: A Review of Everything Everywhere All at Once” **Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for Everything, Everywhere All at Once ** https://www.equip.org/article/when-the-hurlyburlys-done-a-review-of-everything-everywhere-all-at-once/ Locked articles are online exclusive content that are only available to subscribers. There are three subscript...
Apr 13, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Scientific materialists recognize that an intellectually satisfying worldview must account for the entirety of human experience. A previous article explored how various contemporary authors attempt to explain the quintessentially human intuition that our existence has meaning, purpose, and value, and argued that their efforts inevitably fail. In addition to providing a foundation for the indispensable intangibles that make life worth living, a viable worldview must include plausible explanations...
Apr 13, 2022•41 min
The purpose of this podcast and accompanying article is to understand the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. Eternal generation is not a philosophical speculation, nor a theological deduction, but an exegetically grounded doctrine. The church fathers appealed to several biblical texts in both the Old and New Testament in support of their conviction that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father. The concept of begetting is a metaphor drawn from the embodied experience of human fath...
Mar 30, 2022•1 hr
The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a film that probably works best as a companion to the compelling 2000 documentary that inspired it. While watching that documentary is not a prerequisite to enjoy the film on its own terms, the movie will certainly appeal best to people who have a working knowledge of the hilarious and tragic hijinks that ensued in America in the 1970’s and 1980’s. What the documentary — by nature of its medium — lacks in pathos, this film more than makes up for by giving viewers a look...
Mar 23, 2022•59 min
“I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent,” the pastor paused for breath and stretched out his hands to the congregation, trying by the power of his will to disbar the sleep from their eyes, for it was only seven in the morning, and a miracle that any of them were there at the appointed time. His voice called across the empty pews, “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word...
Mar 16, 2022•51 min
To say that director Matt Reeves’s approach to the Batman character is scaled back would be an understatement, but this doesn’t come at the expense of audience expectations. The whole affair plays out across its walloping three-hour runtime like an acoustic cover of some of Batman’s greatest hits. The clever gadgets are present, but they’re not gimmicks; they are practical, accessible tools that make sense not only in the context of the narrative, but also in the context of the dirty, grimy vers...
Mar 09, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Philosopher and Christian apologist William Lane Craig’s latest work, In Quest of the Historical Adam, is an impressive, bold interdisciplinary exploration into the historicity of Adam (and Eve). Analyzing key texts in the Old and New Testaments, Craig concludes that Scripture presents Adam as a historical person and progenitor of humanity who introduced moral evil into the] world through disobedience. Craig adopts an evolutionary perspective on humanity’s origin. To reconcile a human evolutiona...
Mar 02, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Boba Fett is a Star Wars icon. A brutal bounty hunter first seen in the original Star Wars films with limited lines and on-screen presence, Boba Fett has been the center of fan adoration and speculation since the very beginning of the franchise. But how did we get from the rough-and-tumble bounty hunter to whom Darth Vader instructs, “No disintegrations” to the Boba Fett who intends to “rule with respect” as he reigns on the late Jabba’s throne as a crime lord on Tatooine? Has Boba Fett gone sof...
Feb 23, 2022•1 hr 3 min
By giving Jesus and his disciples clear and discernable personalities, The Chosen rises above the traditional (some would say “wooden”) Christian adaptations of the gospel story to offer viewers a thoroughly engrossing series. Of course, this means creative licenses are taken when fleshing out the gospel characters. But the most intriguing character to get a refined personality is, of course, Jesus (Jonathan Roumie) himself. The Chosen picks through the gospels with a fine-toothed comb to find e...
Feb 16, 2022•51 min
In a recent New York Times editorial entitled The Anti-Abortion Movement Could Reduce Abortions if It Wanted To, lawyer and journalist Jill Filipovic makes the case that an unhealthy preoccupation with birth control at the expense of limiting abortions exposes some ugly truths about the pro-life movement. According to Filipovic, pro-lifers are more interested in controlling women’s bodies than they are in pursuing measures that reduce the number of abortions, those measures being free access to ...
Feb 09, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Revoice 2021 Together met in October 2021 in Dallas to encourage what they call “sexual minorities” within the church to obedience, to reach out evangelistically to LGBTQ people, and to minister to “sexual majority” Christians. The conference featured Eve Tushnet, Preston Sprinkle, Greg Johnson, Misty Irons, Greg Coles, and many other speakers, as well as panels on gender minorities, racial minorities, and women. With an emphasis on community support (reflected in the theme “together”), the spea...
Jan 31, 2022•1 hr 50 min
A brief podblast update on what’s upcoming on the Postmodern Realities Podcast and the Christian Research Journal. As mentioned in the podblast, although getting a print subscription is the best value to get access to online-exclusives, we have launched two new options of a monthly or annual online exclusive content subscription that includes viewing to online-exclusive articles and select recent print articles. To see these new options please click here. https://www.equip.org/product/online-ear...
Jan 26, 2022•7 min
In some ways, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) represents the zenith of the modern pop-culture superhero craze. While it’s certainly better than any film of this sort has any right to be, it’s also not as good as that Rotten Tomatoes score would lead you to believe. There is a certain logic that is absent from the core mechanics of how the “multiverse” is supposed to work. But what Spider-Man sacrifices in the way of coherency, it more than makes up for in the way of generating pathos. The real dr...
Jan 19, 2022•42 min
For us to have a robust free will, there must be an amount of divine hiddenness, or what John Hick called “epistemic distance.” Divine hiddenness is the teaching that for humans to act out of free will, God’s existence (or presence) can’t be too obvious. Not surprisingly, this is a doctrine that many Christians misunderstand and over which skeptics howl. Many Christians ask, and even sometimes complain, that God should make His presence more apparent. Skeptics complain that if God really loved u...
Jan 12, 2022•34 min
In 1999, the world was in a different place. Y2K loomed, personal computerized technology was still coming into its own, and September 11 was just another day. And into this world the Wachowskis came running and gunning with their runaway Academy Award-winning hit, The Matrix, changing the landscape of what brainy, science-fiction, action-adventure movies could be, seemingly overnight. Now, more than two decades later, that original film still holds up as one of cinema’s most innovative and brea...
Jan 05, 2022•53 min
Should Christians make New Year’s resolutions? And if so, what kind? Are there any guiding biblical principles that might inform and shape such a task? This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Anne Kennedy about her article in the 44:4 issue of the Journal, entitled, “I’ll Start My Diet Tomorrow: A Christian Makes a New Year’s Resolution.” For a special limited preview of this print article please click here! https://www.equip.org/article/ill-start-my-diet-tomorrow...
Dec 29, 2021•53 min
For more than four decades, organizations like Exodus International, Courage, and Homosexuals Anonymous have provided counsel and support to people who realized they were attracted to the same sex, considered homosexuality a sin, and wanted help dealing with their desires. These groups and the people they served made up what’s often called the “Ex-Gay Movement,” a phenomenon which has always gotten its share of supporters and critics. Its critics have tended to be pro-gay, some producing books a...
Dec 22, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Nearly thirty years after his death, Isaac Asimov’s acclaimed Foundation series—long deemed unfilmable—has been adapted for the screen. Co-created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman for Apple TV+, season one of Foundation recently concluded with its tenth episode, and seven more seasons have been proposed (season two is already confirmed). The production itself is an impressive feat; Asimov’s mythology is remarkably expansive, encompassing an entire galaxy over the course of a millennium and in...
Dec 16, 2021•47 min
Squid Game (Netflix, 2021–) is a Netflix mega hit, as Kevin Schut writes “within the first month of its release, Netflix subscribers had logged more than one billion hours watching Squid Game and it quickly became the number one series Netflix had ever released.” It’s “another entry in the gory, dystopian genre of forced human death games, like Guns Akimbo (2019), The Hunger Games (2012), The Running Man (1987), The Most Dangerous Game (2020–), all the way back to the ancient Roman arenas, at le...
Dec 08, 2021•1 hr 3 min
“In any case,” writes Rachel Held Evans in the middle of her posthumously published work, Wholehearted Faith, “I wonder sometimes whether we’re playing at death and calling it life.” In characteristic and prescient candor, at the time of her death, Held Evans was in the act of asking the peculiar and essential questions that strike to the heart of what it means to be a creature created by God. She was circling around the most elemental issues of Christianity, of death and life, of love and truth...
Dec 01, 2021•1 hr 3 min
The back half of 2021 ushered in a new wave of subversive blockbusters in the aftermath of COVID-19. No Time to Die made a series of unprecedented choices with the character of James Bond, while Dune began a quiet, methodical deconstruction of the science fiction epic. Now, along comes Eternals to stand apart from the Marvel Studios catalog as the most interesting and solemn film of Marvel’s cinematic universe. Watching this film—and, apparently, the critics agree—feels a lot like watching Man o...
Nov 24, 2021•44 min
God calls individuals into His family in Christ and privileges them to share the good news. When seeking to help people whose lives have been emotionally fractured, followers of Christ must tenderly handle the reality that families existing in a fallen world can break. God’s family is composed of imperfect people, but there will be a day when His people together emerge “holy and blameless” (Eph. 1:4; Col. 1:22; 1 John 3:2).1 These truths not only strengthen a believer’s compassion but can serve ...
Nov 17, 2021•45 min
For science fiction readers, the very mention of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune evokes a flurry of emotions. Some love it, some hate it. Some consider it the best science fiction novel ever written, others consider it the genre’s antithesis. Regardless, no history of science fiction worth its salt can go without at least mentioning the book, and the indelible influence it’s had on numerous genre classics that followed it, from Star Wars (1977) to Pitch Black (2000). Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 film...
Nov 10, 2021•48 min
The classical Christian consensus that only men should be set apart in Holy Orders to preach and celebrate the sacraments has been the target of withering critique at least since the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s. Many Christian communions have succumbed to the pressure to ordain women and to give them authority over congregations, dioceses, and denominations, accepting new and revised interpretations of biblical passages that for centuries undergirded the traditional practice. Along...
Nov 03, 2021•56 min
No Time to Die is the final outing for actor Danial Craig’s run as 007. Looking back on Daniel Craig’s tenure, it’s hard to imagine a time in which he did not don the tuxedo. Though he has not appeared in the most films (that distinction goes to the late Roger Moore, who appeared in seven), he is nevertheless the actor who has held the role the longest, with fifteen years having passed since his debut in 2006 and his fifth (and final) film in 2021. So thorough has been his reinvention of the cha...
Oct 28, 2021•45 min
African Traditional Religion (ATR) encompasses all indigenous African philosophies, worldviews, and religious practices south of the Sahara Desert. Though by no means a fixed religious system, sub-Saharan African cultures by and large share many similar views of God, the ancestors and spirits, honor and shame, magic and witchcraft, and rites of passage. While God is not considered to be near, or “close by,” he is nevertheless part of a hierarchical yet holistic spiritual world, mediated to human...
Oct 21, 2021•41 min
There are few things more heartbreaking than watching a beloved son or daughter raised in the Christian community wander or walk away from the faith their parents faithfully demonstrated in the home as that child grew up. Wayward literally means “turned away from,” and this outward-facing posture can wreak havoc on family relationships. Parents of wayward children often struggle with feelings of helplessness, guilt, fear, worry, anger, and depression. Wayward children often feel misunderstood an...
Oct 14, 2021•46 min
