How much better it is to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen above silver (Proverbs 16:16) Most attempts to reconcile faith and scholarship are in terms of personal faith and the task of scholarship: how do I, as a Christian and a scholar, integrate what my faith with my academic task? While this is a worthy question, there is a more fundamental question that should precede it. To see this consider what we mean by “faith.” There are at least two ways of taking the term. [1] In a subjective sense faith means the believer’s trust in God and his word. However, Jude uses the…
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What Are All Those Marks in Your Book?
Yes, I write all over my books. Over the years I have gone from underlining the important bits to developing a system of markings to help me grasp the argument of the book/paper. Here is my system: A: An assumption, given, or some premise held for the sake of the argumentC: Claim or conclusion.P.1, P.2 etc: Premise 1, premise 2 etc. of an argument that supports a claim/conclusion.Obj. 1, 2, 3 etc: ObjectionsResp. 1, 2, 3 etc: Responses to objectionsRej. Rejoinder.T [: Thesis statement of the book, chapter, or section.P [: Purpose statement of the book, chapter, or section.R: An argument or claim that the author is going to refute.Q: A Question!: Unusual/counter intuitive claim or something I…
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Why There’s an Ought in Art
In his controversial essay, On Moral Fiction, John Gardner argues that art is “essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy.” He argues that truly great art shows the story of humanity; it takes the random experiences of life and shows their worth: “Life is all conjunctions, one… thing after another, cows and wars and chewing gum and mountains; art—the best, most important art—is all subordination: guilt because of sin because of pain.” Ever since a certain artist nailed a urinal to a wall and called it fountain, much art has subverted this idea. It is now more concerned with fragmentation, disjunction and the doing away with any idea of human nature related to a guiding narrative.…
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Are You A Bouncy Physicalist? Take the Test and Find Out!
If you think reality is exhaustively physical, then you will probably be either a pessimist or an optimist about naturalistic scientific discovery. You will either conclude that it is highly likely that “folk psychology,” the belief that there are irreducibly mental, non-physical entities of some sort, will be shown to be false, or you will think that though it is possible that folk psychology will be proven false, it is unlikely. The latter position entails the belief that one should continue the naturalistic research program with a physicalist assumption even though you probably won’t be able to prove it. If you’re are an optimist, a bouncy physicalist, you will think…
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Missions Or Missiles
I saw a car wreck the other day. I pulled over to see if I could help. The car had rolled down a steep bank into a ditch and hit a tree. Three teenage girls were screaming and walking around the car. I went down to see if there was anything I could do. An emergency team arrived and I backed off. As I got to the top of the bank I noticed a car full of teenage boys so I asked them if they knew the girls. They said they were friends. I wandered why they weren’t getting out of the car to help their friends. They didn’t seem…
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So, You’re a Calvinist. But What About Free Will?
Just what, if one is a Calvinist, can be meant by human free will? And how, given that everything that happens is decided in advance, makes a human beings responsible for their actions? These are the most common questions aimed at those who are committed to a strong doctrine of sovereignty, one that features the idea that God determines all that happens in advance. Determinism is the idea that for everything that happens there are antecedent conditions such that, given those conditions, nothing else could occur. For a Calvinist, the antecedent condition in question is ultimately God’s will. God’s will is such that every event in creation is determined by God in advance of the event. We call…
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Liar, Lunatic, Lord or What?
Over at the Gospel Coalition, there is some debate over an old argument about the claims of Jesus made by C.S Lewis. The argument presents a trilemma: Jesus Christ’s claims to be God are believable (or not) depending on whether Christ is Lord, a lunatic who doesn’t really know what he’s talking about or he is masterful con artist. Apparently, William Lane Craig argues that there is another possibility: Christ’s non-existence. If Christ didn’t exist then no one really claimed anything. Justin Taylor claims that this makes the argument unsound. I disagree. Tell me what you think (any Lewis experts should chime in either here or over at Justin Taylor’s…
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Dear Non-Calvinist
Dear non-Calvinist, I am reading a book that prompts the following: Calvinism, whatever you think about it, is not like a song. One can like or dislike a song. If I disagree with you and think it is a good song and you hate it, I might wish you liked it and wonder why you can’t see how great it is. But that is all I can do. But not so with Calvinism and non-Calvinism. Calvinism is not like a song. A piece of music can no more be true or false than an argument can be in or out of tune. If you are writing a book about Calvinism…