September 19, 2025
Podcasts
Dan Daugherty, Executive Director of the Alcuin Center Study in Muncie (and newly welcomed member of New Life), was recently a guest on World Upside Down, the podcast of Indianapolis Theological Seminary. Dan talked about the resurrection in art and literature. It’s an insightful and engaging conversation, and also a confirmation of how blessed we are to have Dan in our midst and the Alcuin Study Center in our own backyard.
Last month I stumbled upon an episode of The Biblical Mind podcast. The host, Dr. Dru Johnson, was interviewing someone of whom I’d never heard named Kaitlyn Schiess. While she comes from an egalitarian tradition, I found her insights and counsel for engaging in the political process both refreshing and challenging. If you want to change the world, listen to what Schiess says about the importance of serving your local community in the Spirit of Christ as a first step.
Videos
While listening to the Kaitlyn Schiess podcast, I was reminded of an old Saturday Night Live skit poking fun at the notion of remedying complex cultural issues simply by posting on social media – while sitting on the couch, or perhaps on the toilet (you’ll have to watch the video). Click here for a good laugh.
Articles
Psalm 88 and the Dark at the End of the Tunnel
On Mondays this fall I’ll be teaching a class on the psalms at the Alcuin Study Center. As a sort of “teaser” for the kinds of things we’ll be diving into, I’ve written an article on Psalm 88, the darkest of the psalms. The article is posted on the Alcuin Study Center’s website.
Also starting this fall, I’ll be gathering with a group of men to study 1 Timothy. A repeated emphasis throughout Paul’s letter to Timothy is the centrality of godliness for Christian ministry and the proclamation of the gospel. R. Kent Hughes writes on the connection between godliness and the gospel in this brief article on 1 Timothy from Crossway.
In a conversation with New Life member (and mother of one of our elders) Jennifer Blalock, I discovered that she took a creative writing class some years ago. She still has copies of most of her work and she shared several with me. They are enjoyable, heartwarming, and sources of biblical wisdom. Read an essay she wrote in 2013 called “Getting Old Isn’t a Disease.”
The 6W Chronicles: Brief Profiles in Church History
Who? Athanasius
When? c. AD295-373.
Where? Alexandria, Egypt. Athanasius was mentored by Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, accompanying him to the Council of Nicaea in AD325. He succeeded Alexander as the bishop of Alexandria, serving from AD 328-373.
What did he do? After the Council of Nicaea asserted that the Son was “of one substance with the Father” against the teachings of Arius (who taught that Jesus was an exalted creature but neither eternal nor fully divine), many church leaders drifted away from the Council’s formulation. As a result, Athanasius was routinely removed from his office by emperors who favored Arianism or modified versions of it. In total, he was exiled five different times by four different emperors. Athanasias made use of his evictions, traveling and defending Nicene theology in his teaching and writings, seemingly at times contra mundum, “against the world.”
Why should we know him? Athanasius’ relentless efforts and steadfast commitment to Nicene orthodoxy eventually led to the church’s reaffirmation of biblical Trinitarianism at the Council of Constantinople in AD381 (after his death) and a definitive rejection of the teachings of Arianism and its sympathizers. C. S. Lewis wrote of Athanasius: “It is his glory that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have moved away.”
Works? Athanasius’ most widely known work today is probably On the Incarnation. It can be downloaded for free here. Perhaps you’ll consider reading this brief classic over Advent this year (don’t skip the introduction by C. S. Lewis – it’s excellent). Athanasius’ writings opposing the teachings of Arius are found in The Three Orations against the Arians. He also helped promote the ideals of early monasticism through The Life of Antony, a biography of the great desert father whom he encountered during his time in exile. The Life of Antony can be accessed for free here.
Quotes
Speaking of Athanasius, here’s a quote from On the Incarnation:
“The Savior is working mightily among men, every day He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world, both within and beyond the Greek-speaking world, to accept His faith and be obedient to His teaching. Can anyone, in face of this, still doubt that He has risen and lives, or rather that He is Himself the Life?” – Athanasius
If you ever encounter people who suggest that the gospel accounts of Jesus were simply made up by a band of charlatans in the early first-century, keep this in mind:
“Perhaps Matthew and the other Gospel writers are not to be trusted. Perhaps they took strands of the historical Jesus and wove them together with the extraordinary prophecies of old to create a fabulous tale … It's worth pressing into that possibility. If nothing else, doing so reveals the scale of the project. Imagine the writers’ room as someone commissions the authors of the gospel: Ok, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, I have a job for you. I know you've had no training or prior experience, but we need you to write the most influential works in literature … It won't be easy. We need this to be the life and times of the greatest figure in human history – God but also man, sinless but fully alive, pure but with profound depths, the Judge of the world but with bottomless compassion, the fulfillment of all Jewish hopes but with a global appeal, a man in time but a man for all times. We need a hero with heart-melting kindness yet steely determination. We need him blasting the self-righteous and befriending sinners. We need sublime ethical teaching to fall from his lips – the kind that builds civilizations. We need extraordinary miracles from him ... And we need it all to stand up to scrutiny: scriptural, theological, geographic, linguistic, literary and historical. It needs to be believable both near and far, now and later, for those who've lived through these times and for all generations to come. Got it? Now get to work! … When you read the Gospels for yourself, you begin to ask, along with Bible scholar Peter Williams, ‘Which genius comes up with this?’ There is genius here. There's enough genius in the Jesus story to remake the world. But we need to ask: does the genius reside in the authors, or have the authors basically reported the genius of their Hero, Jesus? Both options are somewhat ‘miraculous,’ but one of them involves a Miracle Maker who can explain the feat.” – Glen Scrivener in The Air We Breathe
Final Thought
Being 55 years old with a teenager daughter has made me realize that I need to make a confession: to everyone who wrote “stay cool” in my sixth grade school yearbook … I have some devastating news.
