This is one of my favorite stanzas (V) from Wordsworth’s romanticized poem, better known as “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” This poetic paragraph takes for granted a biblical (or Platonic) pre-existence, which mourns the loss of a child’s vision of an ideal world fading away “into the light of common day,”…

For thousands of years, since the time of Plato, the gauntlet against divine command theory (DCT) has been thrown down. Relatively recently, Robert Adams has retrieved it engaging the conversation with his modified DCT, in which he invokes the loving nature of God and his revealed will. Linda Zagzebski, however, sees a fly in the…

When we live the way we are supposed to God is glorified and we are blessed or happy (shalom). The biblical view of happiness is cultivated by living according to biblical virtues, such as justice and righteousness, which are motivated by flourishing (shalom). In this paper, I explore the prophet Isaiah’s prognostication in Isaiah 32:16-17…

The classical Greek matrix of holiness (goodness) is expressed in one of the two horns of a classic moral dilemma called Euthyphro’s Dilemma. In one of Plato’s early dialogues, Euthyphro, Socrates inquires of Euthyphro, a religious expert on the subject of holiness, why holiness is loved by the gods: either holiness is holy because it…

In our fast-paced modern world, pride can disguise itself as busyness or even success. I am not talking about healthy responsibility. I am referring to taking on more and more stress until there is no time for spontaneity, enjoyment, and rest. We shove God off His throne and replace Him as the center of the…

A strictly Darwinian process of evolution is insufficient to account for a universal principle such as the pursuit of happiness. Admittedly, natural selection as an unguided (“blind”) and purposeless process may explain why human beings seek to survive, but it fails to explain why we seek to thrive. Human flourishing seems superfluous to the individuals…

In Rubén Darío’s poem, “Los Motivos Del Lobo” (“The Motives of the Wolf”), St. Francis of Assisi converts a wolf into being civilized but only temporarily does the feral canine stop the slaughter of animals and humans in the hills of an Italian town, Gubbio. At first the wolf conforms to the ways of the…

There are basically two types of skeptics: one that builds and the other that destroys. The former curiously takes things apart so she can know how things work, and because she respects the inherent design structure of the object she puts it back together again so others can enjoy it also. The latter anxiously pulls…

I wrote this poem about the recent death of a close friend of mine. The world lost a wonderful warrior of God. But what is our loss is heaven’s gain. I will forever remember his brave, compassionate soul. The only contrast here in the City of Gold is the ample gems under my feet. Fluorite…

If you have ever heard the term “liberation theology” in conversation but were too embarrassed to ask what it meant or maybe you are already acquainted with the term but you would like a relatively terse description of it, then look no further. In this 10 page paper, you will learn the methodology of one…