November 2014 Ordained Servant

From the Editor. Ever since the rise of modern science in the Enlightenment, the question of the relationship between science and the humanities has been on the minds of Western thinkers. Jim Gidley has devoted his career to teaching the sciences at a Christian liberal arts college. So this question is one to which he has paid considerable attention. Taking his cue from C. P. Snow’s 1959 Cambridge lecture “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” Gidley analyses the problem and offers a very helpful Reformed perspective.

On the theme of culture more generally, Danny Olinger reviews Jan de Bruijn’s new biography of Reformed polymath Abraham Kuyper in Abraham Kuyper: A Pictorial Biography, reminding us of the value of Kuyper’s thinking about the Christian in culture. Along these lines, David VanDrunen reviews Roman Catholic theologian R. J. Snell, The Perspective of Love: Natural Law in a New Mode, showing some important differences between the Catholic and Reformed understandings of natural law. Finally, I review John Drury’s Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert. This new biography is a must-read for all fans of poetry, especially the poetry of this Anglican master of sacred verse.

Our poem this month is, of course, by Herbert, and appropriate for the month which we Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. Our family tradition has been to read Psalm 136 before our feast. This year Herbert will get a word in.

Blessings in the Lamb,
Gregory Edward Reynolds

FROM THE ARCHIVES “CULTURE”

Subject Index

• “Christ in the Midst of Culture: The Church as Embassy.” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 18 (2009): 10–14.

Ordained Servant exists to help encourage, inform, and equip church officers for faithful, effective, and God-glorifying ministry in the visible church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its primary audience is ministers, elders, and deacons of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, as well as interested officers from other Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Through high-quality editorials, articles, and book reviews we endeavor to stimulate clear thinking and the consistent practice of historic, confessional Presbyterianism.