Posted in epistemology, faith on 31 January 2008 | No Comments »
I just discovered that John Stackhouse has been posting on some of the themes I’ve been musing on over the past few weeks. They are grouped under the heading ‘Do You Have to Choose Between Your Brains and Your Beliefs?” and his latest discussion of the relationship between faith and knowledge is a more [...]
Posted in apologetics, epistemology on 17 January 2008 | 19 Comments »
So where to begin a course that aims to demonstrate the plausibility of the Christian faith? It seems to me that any discussion of whether or not Christianity makes sense, whether or not God can be known (indeed whether or not God even exists) must start with a theory of knowledge. What kind [...]
Posted in epistemology, theology on 27 August 2007 | No Comments »
More on A Rumor of Angels…
Berger’s goal is to examine the future of theology in the contemporary world. He is acutely aware of the ‘relativizing’ effects of both historical research and sociological analysis. History has shown us some of the more human factors behind our sacred texts and religious traditions while sociology has [...]
Posted in epistemology, theology on 24 August 2007 | 1 Comment »
Ryan has got me into Peter Berger’s A Rumor of Angels, an effort to answer the question of whether belief in the supernatural can be maintained within the modern world (he’s writing in 1969). Berger is working with the theory that modernization and secularization have brought with them an incredulity toward that supernatural that [...]
Posted in epistemology on 3 October 2006 | 3 Comments »
Some recent reading has got me curious about the idea of human inquiry (or the pursuit of knowledge) and whether or not it is possible to do this ‘freely’. This question was addressed by contrasting the way people have thought about ‘inquiry’ during three distinct periods of human history. Essentially the questions being asked are: [...]
Posted in epistemology, theology on 30 August 2006 | 3 Comments »
A brief follow-up to the previous post. I listened to the podcast that one commentor recommended and found it quite interesting. The discussion was basically around the psychology of belief. Why do we believe the things that we do? What kind of ‘knowledge’ is possible and how do faith and reason [...]
Posted in epistemology on 21 August 2006 | 12 Comments »
“Our knowing of the real world is a compromise between what is ‘there’ on the one hand and our personal perspectives on the other. We cannot get at the world ‘as it really is’, for we cannot cease to be physically, socially and historically lcoated beings. We may move to view reality from [...]
Posted in epistemology on 6 August 2006 | 17 Comments »
Via ThinkChristian:
In a brief column at First Things, Michael Novak analyzes the oft-used argument that religious belief is a crutch for those who cannot cope with the cold realities of life. Belief, so this argument goes, is a self-indulgent comfort for people too weak deal honestly with life as it is.
Novak argues that [...]
Posted in epistemology, eschatology, pluralism on 19 July 2006 | 2 Comments »
I’ve now had approximately three weeks to digest the material from my ‘History of Protestant Spirituality’ course and it’s been interesting to try to understand the different ways in which Protestants have understood themselves in relation to God. From Luther’s ‘theology of the cross’ and its reminder that God is experienced in suffering to [...]
Posted in epistemology, faith on 5 June 2006 | No Comments »
Jeff has posted some really good thoughts on the role of doubt in the life of discipleship and how it may not be the sign of sickness or disease that we sometimes think. A good quote: “I am beginning to think that lack of faith is not doubt, but the failure to commit.”
