Links to stories coming soon.
In the meantime, click image above for a PDF.

- Editor’s Note -

Job’s Lament
by Cameron Kirk-Giannini ’11

– Opinions –

Benevolent, But Not Omnipotent
Jonathan Page

What is Boldness?
Tony Shen ’10

The Vulnerable God
Ruirui Kuang ’11

– Features -

The Inspiration of the Hebrew Bible and the Morality of God’s Commands
Peter van Inwagen

Credit to the Poor: Microfinance and the Christian Faith
Tyler VanderWeele and Kenneth VanderWeele

– Books & Arts -

Review of 36 Arguments for the Existence of God
Chelsea Carlson ’13

– Fiction & Poetry -

Goodhue
Albert Chen ’11

Zoo
Patrick Spence ’12

Jonah
Jeremy Pollacks

- Last Things -

On Lamentation
Jordan Monge

You are well known for advocating a view called theistic evolution. Could you tell us briefly what theistic evolution is and what guiding principles led you to this view? What is the relationship between God and evolution? Did God somehow “guide” it? What would you say to Christians who don’t believe in evolution?

How certain is the scientific evidence for evolution? Is it a “cop-out” not to interpret the Genesis creation story literally? Theistic evolution, or BioLogos as I prefer to call it, embraces the evidence of biological evolution. That evidence grows more overwhelming every day, especially on the basis of the study of the genomes of many organisms, providing the kind of digital record of descent from a common ancestor that Darwin could never have imagined. But that answers the “how” question about the marvelous diversity of life on earth, it doesn’t answer the “why” question. In my book The Language of God, and soon to
be further explored in a web site addressing the most frequently asked questions about science and faith (www.biologos.org), the case is made that evolution was God’s mechanism for creation, including the ultimate development of human beings. As for the marvelous and profound Genesis creation story, it has much to teach us about the nature of God and the nature of humans. But thoughtful and highly educated believers like Augustine in 400 AD did not consider it appropriate to interpret Genesis 1 and 2 literally, so it is perplexing indeed that many conservative Christians have found it necessary to do so for the last 150 years.

Can you describe the argument for a moral law that drew you to Christianity? Why was it so convincing? Do you think that evolution can adequately account for morality? What would the consequences for faith in God be if evolution could account for morality?

One of the most notable characteristics of humanity, across centuries, cultures, and geographic locations, is a universal grasp of the concept of right and wrong, and an inner voice that calls us to do the right thing. This is often referred to as the Moral Law. We may not always agree on what behaviors are right (and this is heavily influenced by culture), but we generally agree that we should try to do good and avoid evil. When we break the Law (which, if we are honest, is frequently), we make excuses for ourselves, only further demonstrating that we feel obligated to the Law. Evolutionary arguments, which ultimately must support reproductive fitness as the overarching goal, may explain some parts of this human urge toward altruism – especially if your sacrificial acts are offered to your relatives, or to those from whom you might expect some future reciprocal benefits. Martin Nowak has recently extended those models to show that evolution could even favor altruism directed at all members of your own group. But these evolutionary models all require hostility to outgroups within your species. Somehow we humans didn’t seem to get that memo – in fact, we especially admire examples where individuals act sacrificially for others from outgroups that they don’t even know – think of Mother Teresa, or Oskar Schindler, or the Good Samaritan. Dismissing these acts of radical altruism as some sort of evolutionary misfiring, which is the usual response from an atheist, ought to at least be viewed skeptically as a bit of a “just so” story. And if these noble acts are frankly a scandal to reproductive fitness, might they instead be a pointer toward a holy, loving, and caring God, who instilled this Moral Law into each of us as a sign of our special nature, and as a call to relationship with the Almighty? Don’t get me wrong, or interpret this argument as an example of “God of the gaps”. If evolutionary mechanisms turn out to be sufficient to explain the Moral Law, that still doesn’t rule out God’s hand in the process. After all, if God is the author of evolution anyway, it would make sense that a holy God who cares about good and evil would have
used the evolutionary process to instill the Moral Law into humanity.

In your book, The Language of God, you explain how your intellectual quest to confirm your atheism resulted in belief in the God of the Bible. What were some of the most significant turning points along this journey? Why did you leave atheism for Christianity?

I realized that there were compelling signposts to God in nature. Here are just a few examples: the fact that there is something instead of nothing; the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” (Wigner’s phrase) to explain the behavior of matter and energy; the need to answer the question “what came before the Big Bang?”; and the finetuning of physical constants in the universe to have just the value they need to make complexity possible. With my eyes opened by the first chapter of C.S. Lewis’s book “Mere Christianity”, I also realized that there was no simple materialistic explanation for the existence of right and wrong, nor for our universal human calling to be moral beings. While these are not proofs of God’s existence, and I believe no such proofs will be found, the combination of these arguments led me to realize that atheism is the most fundamentalist and least rational of all of the worldview options. In Chesterton’s words, “Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative.” Having come to the point of seeing the existence of God as a compelling conclusion, I then was curious to discover what God was like. For that purpose I studied the world’s religions to see what they had to say. When I encountered the person of Jesus Christ, my life changed. I could see that this was a man like no other – who not only claimed to know God, but to be God. I was astounded to learn that the historical evidence for Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was compelling. And I realized that Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross provided a solution to my increasing distress at never being able to approach a holy God because of my own unholiness.
____________________________________________________________________________
Francis Collins is a former leader of the Human Genome Project, current director of the National Institutes of Health, and founder of The BioLogos Foundation.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42).

The reasons for gathering as a church have not changed since the first believers were inspired at Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. When we gather together, we are still to devote ourselves to teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of the bread, and to prayer. Three of these are easily understandable — of course we must learn how to live the Christian life from those more experienced than us, support each other in this great undertaking, and reach out in prayer to our Creator and Redeemer.

But why the breaking of the bread? Why is this so tremendously important? The Eucharist can seem like a relic of pagan ritual meaninglessly preserved into the present. Firstly, the Eucharist is a physical memorial of the concreteness, the bodiliness, of Christ’s death and resurrection. Mystery surrounds what happens during the breaking of the bread, but at the very least, physically eating reminds us that Christianity is not just a religion of airy philosophizing, but is founded on material facts about something that happened to one particular body two thousand years ago. And if the Eucharist is something more than a memorial, then here, too, there is another intermingling of the material and the spiritual and ultimately holy. The bread and the wine do not just touch our bodies, but touch our very souls, transforming us with God’s living power.

Secondly, in eating and drinking the Bread and the Wine, which literally, spiritually, or symbolically have become Christ’s Body and Blood, we enter into the body of believers that spans across the world and time. We join with all who hav ever received the Eucharist in remembering Christ’s death, celebrating his resurrection, and awaiting his coming in glory, united in our single hope under our single Lord. Because the great mystery of our faith, our salvation, was accomplished by a bodily death and resurrection, the whole physical world has been charged with significance. As we eat the bread and drink the wine, we look forward to a time when the whole church will be perfectly united, and Christ will be all in all.

Anne Goetz ’11 is an English concentrator in Pforzheimer House. She is the Books and Arts editor of The Ichthus.

Jessica Jinju Pottenger — Princeton Revisions

As humans, we suffer from forgetfulness and unfaithfulness. Without discipline and cultivated habits, our hearts stray from our commitments and we often find that our own willpower is not enough to keep us from sin. We need community to keep us accountable to ourselves and to the God in whom we profess faith.

The author of Hebrews knew that human nature was unfaithful when he wrote, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25). The Christians the author of Hebrews was addressing were suffering terribly, and needed a kind of support that could only come from the Spirit and from each other.

In today’s world, those struggling with spiritual matters often find themselves in a similar situation to that of the early Christians in Hebrews. Life is difficult, and it is impossible to endure it alone. Without having a community that meets regularly, it is tempting, often too tempting, for individual Christians to wish they were back in Egypt, to wish they were not wandering the desert waiting for God to deliver them to the Promised Land.

Going to church is, in short, a necessary part of Christian living because living cannot be done alone. Living for Christ often means enduring untidy, tangled relationships with each other, and lovingly working them out. Going to church is a necessary but not sufficient condition to such a lifestyle, as the mere act of going, while important, should only lead up to the climax of getting involved with each other and in each other’s lives so that we can truly encourage each other towards Christ. Just as iron sharpens iron, so too do members of a community sharpen each other – and it is only out in the messy and difficult world that God can work to break us and make us like His Son.

Jessica Jinjiu Pottenger ’10 is majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School of International Relations and Public Policy at Princeton University. She is a senior contributor to Princeton’s Christian magazine Revisions.

Sarah White — Dartmouth Apologia

“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:46-47)

Since the days of the early church as recorded by Luke in the book of Acts, the church has had both an internal and an external orientation. On the one hand, the church has served to present the gospel as well as to minister to the worldly needs of the entire community. On the other hand, the church has a special ministry to its members to encourage their growth in relationship with Christ. This can be seen in the verse quoted above, which describes both the intramural

fellowship of the believers and the fruits of their outreach. Attending a weekly church meeting can be beneficial to seekers who are interested in learning more about God, and it is also important for Christians desiring to grow in community with other believers.

In the modern world, one of the best places to hear the gospel message is at church. Through sermons and other Bible studies, the church provides gospel teaching for those who are unacquainted with the message as well as for those who seek continuing growth through the study of God’s word. It is also important for Christians to have fellowship with one another. Many Christians interact with other believers only at church, while most of their time at work and in their communities is spent with those who do not believe. In order to meet, interact with, and build relationships with each other, it is often necessary for Christians to purposefully seek each other out. The church is just such a purposeful community, where Christians can not only interact with and encourage each other, but also build relationships where they can disciple one another and help each other grow. Furthermore, the church organization is an effective way for Christians to gather together in order to serve each other and the larger community. As Christians strive to follow Christ in the world, it is essential that they meet together as His body to learn, disciple, encourage, and serve.

Sarah White ’11 is an English major and Russian minor. She is the Managing Editor of the Dartmouth Apologia.

Michael Giuffrida — Yale Logos

For me, the question “Why go to church?” is, on the surface, easy to answer. I am a Catholic, and we Catholics are required to attend mass every Sunday. All Sundays are holy days of obligation, and observance by attending Mass is mandated by Canon Law. Skipping Mass when one is able to attend is a sin.

This is all true, but not very insightful. Clearly, church should not be solely an obligation. In fact, we, most of whom are no longer persecuted for our Christian beliefs, ought to see church as a privilege.

Until Constantine’s Edict of Milan granted freedom of religion, Christians were put to death for celebrating the Eucharist. Yet Christians still regularly participated in worship, risking their lives for the opportunity to meet and celebrate the Eucharist, an opportunity we take for granted and sometimes pass up. Either our forebears in church history were insane, or there is something in this mode of worship worth dying for.

Church is a great opportunity to gather with fellow believers, worship together, and introduce neophytes into our community. But, more importantly, by sharing in the Eucharist, we share and become members of Christ’s Body. We take part in the sacrifice on Calvary through the Eucharistic liturgy. By obeying Christ’s commandment to “do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19) we are redeemed. To achieve this redemption and eternal life in Christ, early Christians risked and sometimes sacrificed their earthly lives.

Not to risk our lives to meet in church, not even to devote an hour of our week to God, not to wish to partake regularly in this act of redemption, is tantamount to turning our backs to Christ, which is precisely what we do whenever we sin. If we understand the redemptive power of the Eucharist, and if we hear Christ’s commandment, then we will not only attend church regularly, but do so willingly and eagerly.

We are baptized into a community, the Body of Christ, the Church. With these members we must worship, and “not stay away from our assembly… but encourage one another” (Hebrews 10:25). We go to church because we all comprise the Body of Christ, and we wish to say Yes to Him.

Michael Giuffrida is a sophomore Computer Science major in Calhoun College. He is the Executive Director of the Logos.

Links to stories coming soon.
In the meantime, click image above for a PDF.

- Editor’s Note -

The Vision
by Samir Paul ’10

– The Dispatch –

III: Why Go To Church?
Anne Goetz ’10; Jinju Pottenger, Princeton; Sarah White, Dartmouth ’11; Michael Giuffrida, Yale ’12

– Opinions –

An Interview with Francis Collins
Questions by the staff of The Ichthus

Untainted, but not Untested
Roshni Patel ’13

On The Timelessness Argument Against Theological Fatalism
Jordan Monge ’12

A Heroic Joy
Carson Weitnauer

– Features -

On Not Being Narrow-Minded
Nick Nowalk

A Little Bit of Immortality: The Mysterious Redemption of Karamazov
Judith Huang ’10

– Books & Arts -

Resurrecting the Liturgical Impulse
Samir Paul ’10

A Review and Contemplation of The Portal of Beauty
Cecilia Raker ’11

A Review of The Great Emergence
Jennifer Delurey ‘ 12

– Fiction & Poetry -

The Solar Hour
Ann Chao ’09

Small Things
Maria Xia ’11

The Poet’s Corner #80
Eboné Ingram ’12

- Last Things -

Façades
J. Joseph Porter ’12

THREE LOOKS OUT OF A WINDOW¹

1.

In October my daughter Mercedes had her baby. Aileen had sent me a pattern for a baby poncho, and I was at the window seat crocheting little blue roses onto the ends. Outside the sky was red with the coming of night.

The bay window looked out onto the Hollis Plaza. At five o’clock in the evening the plaza was empty except for a man and a young woman on a bench. I saw the tops of their heads. She was blonde; he had dark hair. The man held out a hand and a white rose. Paper dark with fish grease tumbled over the stones and caught in his feet. He kicked it away.

I pressed my face to the window, my nose against the glass. The girl turned her head away from the man and covered her face with her hands, and I saw that she was crying a little. I thought, How sweet! and I called to Charles, Look, come over here! Charles came to the window grumbling. His favorite program was on, the antiquing show. He said, Some teacher’s brought in a Welch chess board, Mildred, so hurry up about it.

I said, Charles look he has a white rose and she is crying, she can’t even look at him! Do you remember when you proposed to me? I cried so hard!

Charles said, Yes Mildred I remember. He went back to his program.

I sighed and thought, How romantic it all is! I yelled to Charles, It’s just like one of those old black and white movies! Do you remember when La Belle et la Bête came out, and we went to see it at the Bronx movie house, and you kissed me at the end of it?

Charles didn’t answer. I heard the music from the television playing.

There was another woman watching from the window across the way, above the port cochere. I didn’t know her. She had white hair like mine, with silver in it. We smiled at each other, nodding and thinking, Oh how beautiful it all is!

Below, the girl’s eyes were like water stars, shimmering and wet.

2.

It had started to snow; the clouds slid about in the sky. The ground was white as paper. Watching from the other side of the glass, I thought of the snow globe Charles had brought me from his trip to Paris, the year before we were married. I still had it on my dresser. Now the girl was holding her forearms in front of her face. He was gripping them, shaking her. It might have been that she was shivering; I couldn’t be sure. It had been a rather cold winter. I thought they might have been yelling, but the window kept out the sound.

There were pigeons pecking at the ground. I called out, Charles, come over here, I think something terrible is happening. Charles yelled back at me to mind my own damn business.

Charles, you really need to see this! I said.

Stay out of it, Mildred! he yelled back.

I tried to open the window to call down to them, but it was frozen shut. The woman across the way was peering down. I looked at her and she looked back.

I heard the phone. I yelled, Charles, pick it up! It kept ringing. I was worried it was Mercedes about the baby. He wouldn’t eat; when I had seen her on Saturday she was drawn and tired. I hurried into the kitchen to answer it.

3.

The Plaza was empty. The girl was not there, and it was a blizzard outside. The street lamps had turned on. The man came walking back slowly into view. He was huddled. He crossed the window frame, the snow bearing down on him like lead. I could not be sure it was even him. Sometimes the snow plays tricks on the eyes. He looked up toward my window, noticing me then. He turned his palms upward like an offering. His hands were red from the cold, and he looked quite flushed; his cheeks were raw and exposed. But the frost was collecting on the edges of window, and after a moment all that remained was a damp spot in the center, filmy from my breath. He hurried out of my little glass circle, looking down again at his feet. I was uneasy about it. I thought I might go downstairs to the Plaza, but then I remembered my coat was in the TV room, and I didn’t want to bother Charles.

The other woman was still at the window. But I saw her turn away. She turned off her lights. I was relieved to see her go.

She had seen it too. And as there was no trouble outside for her, there was none for me.

I went back to crocheting. I still had six flowers to make.

¹Title taken from a poem by William Stafford

II.

THE SHOVEL AND THE ROSE

After finding the ring in the bar of soap I told Herb there were two things I needed to do before I married him: get the shovel out of the lake and take the red rose from Danny.

Herb looked at me in his brittle, self-effacing way and said, didn’t I love him?

The soap had begun in the shape of a pink mollusk shell. He had given it to me on Valentine’s Day five weeks before, and it had taken me all that time to wear it down to a nub at its center.

Herb said if I didn’t love him just to tell him right then and there so we could be done with it.

I told him of course I loved him, but if he could wait five weeks just for me to find the ring, he could wait a little longer for me to say yes.

Herb stood there like a split walnut, blinking his eyes underneath his glasses. After a minute or two he said yes, yes, he supposed it had to be done.

By then I was thirty-one, and there were only two things after all that time I still regretted: the shovel and the rose. Twenty-four years before, I had left the rose in a classroom and the shovel under the dock, and I wanted them back.

I told my aunt Lanette that Herb had proposed, but I was leaving to find the rose first. She was running the hose in the garden at the time. She promised to make my wedding dress while I was gone. I told her to remember the lace, and to start with the sleeves short and make them longer from there, in case it took me a while to come back.

Danny and I took art lessons together in grade school. Sometimes he would sort pieces of confetti into patterns and give them to me on oaktag. That was when I fell in love with him. He had a sacred, choir-boy’s voice, and when he said in that soft way of his, did I love him, I told him yes, I thought I did.

But when he had given me the red rose I was frightened, and I had given it back. I said I was too young. I said he would have to wait a little while. Danny said, how long? and I told him I didn’t know. He waited three months but then one day he was gone, to South America with his father. Someone said he’d moved to Ecuador, but I wasn’t sure where that was.

I got in my car and drove to the last place I could remember. The school was still there, but it had older walls and more children. Their footsteps clapped on the hallway tiles. In the art room there were eight students; they sat at high counters, instead of the folding tables we had used. They were painting with watercolors kept in little white pots. I didn’t know what had happened to the markers, the ones that smelled like chocolate and watermelon.

Danny was sitting at the far counter with the rose, its petals fanned out to one side so that it looked top-heavy. It had died a long time ago. He stood when I came in and said, Hello Jolaine, it’s been a long time. He was taller, and I couldn’t tell if I was in love with him or not anymore. But then I saw he had a ring on his finger and a gilded little boy next to him. I had made him wait too long.

I told him, I shouldn’t have given you back the rose, Danny. I’ve thought about it all this time.

Well, that is the way of things, isn’t it, he said. But I could hear it in his voice; I had been forgiven.

I took the rose. We shook hands, and he said, I’ll be seeing you then, although we both knew it wasn’t true.

The lake had gotten old while I was gone, and the water had turned black. It was September, and the beach was all slanted shadows and emptiness. My heels stuck in the sand like taffy. It was slow going, but I made it to the shore. The dock was far away. I had to cup my hand above my eyes to see it, because the sun was very bright.

My sister and I had played a game near the dock in August, many years before. One of us would hide a little plastic shovel in the water, and the other dove down to find it. The idea was that eventually if it was not found the shovel would rise to the surface, and then the game would be lost.

There had been stories that once-long before we had gotten there-a man had drowned below the dock, while tying the buoys with yellow rope. When it had been my turn to find the shovel, I had thought of this story and was frightened. I couldn’t see the shovel; the water made yellow and green freckles in my eyes. I was very far down, and I could feel the seaweed putting spells on the bottoms of my feet.

I was almost out of air when I saw the glass face, deep below me in the water. I swallowed the lake in gulps. The bubbles caught inside my throat. The lifeguards blew their whistles and paddled out to get me on yellow boards with red crosses.

Afterwards I thought: it was probably a fish. But we had left the shovel underneath the water, and we never went back for it.

I had learned how to swim the crawl stroke at age eleven, and I still remembered it after all this time. My fingers split the lake into five parts in front of me. The water made a sound like pearl grease as I moved through it.

My sister had gone back once too. She had walked dripping into my house, smelling of the lake, and she said, Jolaine, you’ll have to go back, I couldn’t find it. That was the day I told Herb about the shovel.

I found the shovel caught in the seaweed. It had not come to the surface after all. Around it the water was wrinkled like an old newspaper. I thought it must not have moved in twenty-four years.

I saw the glass face too. But it smiled at me, and I waved as I kicked back to the surface, the water falling into blossoms below me.

When I got back Herb was sitting in a chair reading the stock quotes. My white dress was on the table. The sleeves were at three-quarters with lace around the cuffs. He looked up at me only a little surprised and said, So that’s it then?

I said yes, yes, that’s it.

I went to go try on my dress.

III.

THE ANGEL PROJECT

They gave us three angels each. They were made of plaster and were painted in pink. They said, put them on trash piles, on the sides of bridges, at bus stops, they said put these around the city, anywhere you’d like. They are angels to inspire people.

We prayed around them in circles of four, and there were three hundred of us, together. I did it because I thought it would help me get you back, the angels and all that praying.

1. THE FIRST ANGEL

It was a Thursday, I think. A blue pick-up truck was at the stoplight-it was the truck you used to drive. The street lamps had not been lit yet, and there was still that indigo sky, the kind you named your dog after. It stretched very far above me. This color I had seen only once before, lying on the hood of your car with my head on your stomach.

I thought surely you would come back. You always said you would. I kept thinking of the day I would turn around and you would be there in the kitchen door in your green boots, all wet from the rain. It would be many years after you’d left and you would not tell me why you had gone, and I would not ask. We would just keep going.

The wind came. It braided the leaves into eights and lifted my hair, and I thought I saw you. But the truck drove away when the light changed.

2. THE SECOND ANGEL

In Court House Square there is a man who used to play the violin every day. It had only one string. I’m sure you don’t remember, after all this time. He could not play more than seven notes, and it was not at all beautiful. It made the sound of an old bus, when its brakes fall apart. But I fell in love with you anyway, in the Square listening to this man with his violin.

For a while after you left I made myself go past to hear how the sound had changed. It drifted, like lanterns through dark hallways.

There was the day when I knew you were not coming back. Pietra was very angry with me for loving you still, in that same way I always had. She said parts of me were passing away a little at a time. I said, yes, perhaps. My hair had grown white at the ends, although I was still very young. I remember after she left, I said to the man with the violin: You know, I fell in love with Edmond somewhere between two of your notes. The man did not know English, I think. He smiled and nodded his head, saying, yes, Edmond, Edmond. I said to him, Do you remember Edmond? and he kept nodding and said again, yes, Edmond, Edmond.

I saw that it had never been a song for you and me, really. It was just a story about a man sitting alone, on a red bench after dinnertime.

3. THE THIRD ANGEL

I kept the third angel for you, Edmond. There were rules against keeping them ourselves but I did it anyway. You were always angry with me for following the rules. I wrapped it in tissue paper and kept it under your uniform in the hall closet.

I left in the middle of the night. It was very warm out. I took off my jacket and left it on the side of the road. I was in my nightgown still, I don’t even think I had any shoes on, can you imagine that? I left just like that, even though I thought, I won’t make it home again without any shoes.

There was that sky again, with its near-hazel rim, and the dust rose into a veil behind me.