Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category

Classics for the Contemporary Christian: The Straits of Orthodoxy

I have a bone to pick with G.K. Chesterton about his book Orthodoxy. It took me a ridiculously long time to read. He just had to go and make every sentence so delicious and profound that I was forced to sit back after every line in order to laugh at his wit or furiously scribble notes. Think I’m...
March 3rd, 2010 | Book Reviews, Culture, Media, Religion, Worldviews | Read More

Classics for the Contemporary Christian: Er…Kommunistischen?

Communism’ is a likely candidate for ‘touchiest word of the 20th century’. While the word evokes many high-charged reactions, two seem consistent among American conservatives: First, communism is associated with naïve hippies who think there should be no war and want to sing ‘Why Can’t We...
February 24th, 2010 | Book Reviews, Politics, Worldviews | Read More

Intentional Ambiguity: Telling it Slant

In the recent inaugural episode of Barak Wright’s arts and culture podcast, The Sandbox Monthly, Ken Myers talked about the dearth of genuine speech on the radio. Real conversation is full of starts and stops, hesitations, and the kind of awkwardness not found in the canned speech of radio personalities,...
December 7th, 2009 | Art & Literature, Logic & Rhetoric, The Gospel | Read More

In Defense Of Complementarianism: A Response To Allen Yeh (Part 2)

A few weeks ago I wrote this blog post as a response to this post by Dr. Allen Yeh on the Scriptorium, which was a non-theological case for egalitarianism. Now Dr. Yeh has written his second post, which purports to be a theological defense of egalitarianism. I am obliged to point out, however, that...
November 18th, 2009 | Evangelicals, Philosophy, Religion | Read More

You Are What You Eat…And Not Who You Sleep With

Food and sex have shifted roles over the past fifty or so years, argues Mary Eberstadt in a fascinating essay at Policy Review. Once, social stigma condemned extra-marital philandering. Sex was a serious ethical issue, with serious personal and social consequences. Food, however, was something with few,...
November 16th, 2009 | Culture, Technology, Worldviews | Read More

Is Christianity a Metanarrative?

Lyotard famously summed up postmodern philosophy as “incredulity toward metanarratives.” Despite the varying strands of postmodernism that have emerged in recent decades, one unifying factor is a suspicion of the “metanarrative.” This leads naturally to the question, “What is a metanarrative?”...
November 4th, 2009 | Other, Outtakes, Philosophy, Postmodernism, Religion | Read More

Logic, Anyone? (Part I)

The most common arguments for abortion rest on fallacious logic. This is not to say that every argument for abortion invokes faulty logic. However, in my experience traveling to many US college campuses and dialoging about abortion, studying abortion ethics at Oxford, and interning at the Yale Bioethics...
October 22nd, 2009 | Abortion, Logic & Rhetoric | Read More

Morality And The Wrath Of God

One of the major objections to Christianity raised by some atheists is that the God of the Bible does not seem to be a good God. In contrast to the popular portrayals of a benign and merciful Jesus who loves everyone, God (the Father) seems wrathful and angry. Nothing epitomizes this wrathful attitude...
October 5th, 2009 | Apologetics, Ethics, Philosophy, Religion | Read More

On Harry Potter and “How You See It”

In a recent conversation with my friend Sally about Harry Potter, I had just commented on the Christian significance of Harry’s many “death and resurrection” experiences throughout the story, when she replied: “Well, that’s how you see it, but that’s not necessarily what someone else might...
September 2nd, 2009 | Art & Literature, Philosophy | Read More

Instructions for Living Gently in a Violent World

Books that promise to radically change the way I see the world make me skeptical. Living Gently in a Violent World was no different, except insofar as that it actually did. Living Gently is a release by InterVarsity Press in their ongoing series “Resources for Reconciliation,” which addresses...
July 28th, 2009 | Abortion, Book Reviews, Culture, Human Rights, Media, Moral Philosophy, Religion, Reproductive Technologies | Read More