Category: Philosophy

Postmodernism Can’t Be.

Theologian John Caputo, quoted at my friend Christopher Benson’s blog, with a rather unsatisfying explanation of “postmodernism.” “Postmodernism thus is not relativism or scepticism, as its uncomprehending critics almost daily charge, but minutely close attention to detail, a sense for...

/ June 23, 2011

Knowledge Spackle

So, we had a hole in the wall. I don’t mean the tiny urban apartment we shared in the first year of marriage, but a literal gap in the plaster. We had to call maintenance to patch it up. (I...

/ March 31, 2011

Natural Law at Christianity Today

My conclusion: But influence goes both ways, and evangelicals may have something to offer the natural law thinkers as well. Specifically, the evangelical emphasis on the brokenness of our rational faculties because of sin may serve as a reminder that...

/ March 23, 2011

Christianity and Hellenism, Part 3 of 3: On Human Nature

One of the theological areas most likely to raise questions about the relationship between historical Christian teaching and Greek (especially Platonic) thought is that of human nature. Especially with regard to two related subjects:  the relationship between body and soul,...

/ December 11, 2010

Christianity and Hellenism, Part 2 of 3: On Being, Loosely Speaking

In my last post, I asserted that the early Christians made discriminating use of the ideas and methods of Greek philosophy. The key terms and categories were carefully reshaped and turned towards biblical ends. If old Plato was baptized in...

/ November 6, 2010

The Philosophical Muddles of Postmodernism

At the urging of a friend, I sat down and read Phillip Kenneson’s essay on the nature of truth in Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World. I almost wish I hadn’t. Count me among the not impressed.  The essay is...

/ August 26, 2010

Metaphysics and Meaning of James Davison Hunter

Milliner’s characteristically incisive remarks today include this graph from James Matthew Wilson: The meaning of the world that we usually describe as constituting culture, or a culture… does not depend primarily upon our social conventions. Rather, the signs of a...

/ July 26, 2010

Postmodernism: What Hath Paris to Do with Jerusalem?

If you are skeptical about postmodern thought, I encourage you to check out “The Church and Postmodern Series” by Baker Academic, which “features high-profile theorists in continental philosophy and contemporary theology writing for a broad, nonspecialist audience interested in the...

/ July 16, 2010

Carrying the Fallen

Three American flags draped the coffins lying on the cargo floor of my C-17.  It was only three hours earlier that I had received a phone call informing me that my crew was to fly from Europe to America; no...

/ July 6, 2010

The (Economic?) Case for Babies

I’m in the market for babies and, based on the research, it’s prime time to be having them.  Happily married, financially stable, and with a happiness quotient that should make the rich and famous envious, my wife and I are...

/ June 28, 2010