Emerging Epistemological humility, or idolatry?
I’ve heard it said that the emergent church is attractive because it has an epistemological humility the traditional church doesn’t have: that God is so far beyond us we can’t know Him, that we can’t be sure what Scripture is saying, that we shouldn’t be so rigid on the truth question, that morality may not be transcendent and that ultimately, Scripture itself must necessarily be constantly reinterpreted. Now, I suppose some people may want to call that ‘epistemological humility,’ however, if God has revealed Himself to us, then I’d rather call it idolatry: “Sorry God, your revelation wasn’t quite enough”.… (Read more)
A literal reading of Genesis?
One of the message boards I frequent just recently banned any discussion concerning the different interpretations of the Genesis creation account. This particular message board holds to a literal reading of Genesis and thus from ‘this point’ forward, no arguments against a literal interpretation of Genesis, whether they be biblical, scientific or philosophical, are to be permitted. I’ll note in passing that this rule was to take affect in the Apologetics and Evangelism sub-forum of this particular message board. Thus, I’ve been inspired to write.
One of the major points of contention was that anyone who does not believe the cosmos to be between 6,000 and 12,000 years old was holding, effectively, a non-literal interpretation of Genesis. I think this is an area where people are confused and there is great confusion as a result. To say up front, probably to the disagreement of many, Genesis nowhere teaches an age of … (Read more)
It’s Genetic!
When Christians involve themselves in discussions of homosexuality, usually a couple things happen: (1) there is a failure to distinguish between homosexuality as a disposition and homosexual acts and (2) people view it as some sort of argument to assert that, since homosexuality must have a genetic origin, it’s acceptable and an orthodox reading of Scripture on the ‘homosexual issue’ is errant. Well to answer, (1) Scripture condemns homosexual acts and thus (2) appealing to one’s genes is neither here nor there.
To begin, a video by Ravi Zacharias on the acceptance of homosexuality within Christianity: is it possible to live a Christian life and be homosexual? As well, William Lane Craig’s podcast on how one can be Christian and homosexual:
What many Christians will disagree with (at least in my experience) is this notion that there should be a distinction created between homosexuality and homosexual acts. Surely, they … (Read more)
The Madman
As Francis Schaeffer aptly put it to Nietzsche’s declaration of God’s death, “If God is dead, then man is dead too”.… (Read more)
Relationship between Faith and Reason
I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why there are Christians who hold to the idea that as Christians, we’re to abandon the head for the heart (we don’t place the head above the heart to begin with), knowledge for the Spirit (we certainly understand that all things are in subjection to God, including knowledge) and logic for the spiritual. Better not tell Paul in Athens. I don’t see what reason there is to abandon the head for the heart, while I do see the importance of creating proper distinctions between the primacy of knowing and loving with respect to its object. I believe it was Aquinas (or perhaps, Kreeft?) who said that when you love something, you become more like it. When you know something, it becomes more like you. The question of which has priority (the head or the heart) would then depend. With God, the heart … (Read more)
The Two Tasks of Evangelism
J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig are in the habit of quoting Charles Malik. I was reminded of this as I was watching a lecture led by Peter Kreeft on ‘beautiful, intelligent Christianity,’ I believe the lecture was aptly titled Shocking Beauty. The lecture is on YouTube and it was a comment by the user who uploaded the lecture that reminded me of Charles Malik’s quote. You see, the user who uploaded the video commented on the video that arguing with atheists is a total waste of time. That one can’t be a rational Christian because, in their view, ‘faith lies in the realm of the Spiritual and not the rational,’ thus, a dichotomy is created: ‘faith is a gift of God and beyond rationality’. Needless to say, how anyone can listen to Peter Kreeft and come to this view is entirely beyond me.
This is a pressing danger … (Read more)
Book Review: The Unaborted Socrates by Peter Kreeft
Author: Peter Kreeft
Publisher: IVP Books
Published: 1983
This is a short review of the short book, The Unaborted Socrates, by Peter Kreeft (professor of philosophy, Boston College).
As the title suggests, this is a book dealing with the issue of abortion in contemporary culture. The book takes the form of Socratic dialogue between four figures: Socrates, Dr. Rex Herrod (abortionist), Professor Attila Tarian (ethicist) and “Pop” Syke (psychologist). The dialogue takes place in a variety of locations in modern day Athens: an abortion clinic, a philosophy convention and finally, a psychiatric ward.
The dialogue is interesting and funny, Peter Kreeft is a gifted communicator and writer, able to keep the interest of his readers throughout his book. The book is also short, 155 pages. However with that said, the book finishes exactly where it should finish. The dialogue feels neither rushed nor lengethened and the topics in this dialogue … (Read more)
Concerning Abortion
I just finished reading Francis Schaeffers A Christian Manifesto and Peter Kreeft’s The Unaborted Socrates and it seems that Schaeffer, like Kreeft, places strong emphasis on abortion and the issues surrounding abortion. Rightly so, I think. So, maybe some comments on Kreeft and Schaeffer. On the legalization of abortion Schaeffer comments:
“The door is open. In regard to the fetus, the courts have arbitrarily separated “aliveness” from “personhood,” and if this is so, why not arbitrarily do the same with the aged? So the steps move along, and euthanasia may well become increasingly acceptable. And if so, why not keep alive the bodies of the so-called neo-morts (persons in whom the brain wave is flat) to harvest from them body parts and blood, when the polls show that this has become acceptable to the majority […] Law has become a matter of averages, just as culture’s sexual mores have become … (Read more)
What if I’m wrong…
Some thoughts, writing while sick and distracted isn’t the easiest…
‘Isa: […] You equivocated between value–opinions and values, between opinions about what’s right or wrong and what’s really right or wrong. You see, different cultures may have different opinions about what’s morally right and wrong, just as they have different opinions about what happens after death […] What’s believed to be right and what really is right aren’t necessarily the same, just as what’s believed to exist after death and what really exists aren’t necessarily the same. We can be wrong about it. Just because I may believe there is no hell doesn’t mean there is none of that I won’t go there … [1]
I’m sure we could extend the above to include religious or philosophical inclinations, in fact, I think we will.
There are a lot of bad philosophical systems out there. I don’t mean bad as in … (Read more)
Gaunilo’s Island
Gaunilo’s famous objection to Anselm’s Ontological argument is known as ‘Gaunilo’s Island,’ it follows as such from his On Behalf of the Fool:
For example: it is said that somewhere in the ocean is an island, which, because of the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of discovering what does not exist, is called the lost island. And they say that this island has an inestimable wealth of all manner of riches and delicacies in greater abundance than is told of the Islands of the Blest; and that having no owner or inhabitant, it is more excellent than all other countries, which are inhabited by mankind, in the abundance with which it is stored.
Now if some one should tell me that there is such an island, I should easily understand his words, in which there is no difficulty. But suppose that he went on to say, as if by … (Read more)
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