Posted in apologetics, pluralism, tolerance on 21 April 2008 | 6 Comments »
Well I’ve finally dug myself out from under a pile of year-end marking and grad has come and gone, so I thought I should at least wrap up some of the topics we covered over the past few weeks of my apologetics class. We spent the last few classes talking about the challenge [...]
Posted in pluralism, theology on 20 November 2007 | 9 Comments »
To the three or four readers who are still frequenting this blog, my apologies for the unusually lengthy silence. There’s a very simple explanation: I haven’t had anything interesting to say. I don’t really have an explanation for this other than being afflicted with a mental rut that seems to have occurred [...]
Posted in pluralism on 13 June 2007 | 1 Comment »
I’ve just come across a print version of Miroslav Volf’s paper, “A Voice of One’s Own: Public Faith in a Pluralistic World“. This is a portion of last October’s Laing Lectures, delivered at Regent College in Vancouver and was the subject of a number of posts here last year. One quote to [...]
Posted in pluralism, public religion, theology on 5 February 2007 | 9 Comments »
Having recently been interested in the possibility of holding religious convictions without considering those who don’t share them to be inferior I was intrigued by the following article that asks whether the very existence of religious beliefs leads inevitably to conflict. Meic Pearse, an author whose insights I have appreciated on other topics (see [...]
Posted in pluralism on 25 January 2007 | 17 Comments »
I just came across an article/post by Brian McLaren where he attempts to answer the provocative question “What’s the good of having a religion if you can’t feel superior to anybody?”
McLaren’s answer is in the following rhetorical question: “What is religion for? Is it for creating an in-group that feels superior? Or is it for [...]
Posted in faith, pluralism on 8 November 2006 | 8 Comments »
The last of Volf’s four elements of a ‘functional faith’ is meaning and this completes his portrait of what a healthy faith looks like. This is, in my opinion, the most basic and fundamental of faith’s functions. When faith is operating according to its design it is helping us to understand and [...]
Posted in faith, pluralism on 2 November 2006 | No Comments »
Returning to Volf’s conception of what a ‘functional faith’ looks like it is important to note that, in his opinion, much of contemporary North American Christianity never gets past the first two features: blessing and deliverance. We either view faith as some kind of performance-enhancing drug or we use it as a crutch so [...]
Posted in faith, pluralism on 27 October 2006 | 1 Comment »
The second positive ‘function’ that faith can have (when it’s operating properly) is that of deliverance. Here Volf pointed out the basic reality that most of us struggle to find ways to deal with failure and disappointment in our lives. Faith in God functions in that it gives us ways of both understanding [...]
Posted in faith, pluralism on 24 October 2006 | 6 Comments »
So if faith is malfunctioning when it leans toward either idleness or coerciveness, what is the proper role of faith in contemporary life? Volf wrapped up his lectures by summarizing four key areas where faith can contribute to what he called a ‘counter-culture for the common good’. (I always find it [...]
Posted in faith, pluralism on 23 October 2006 | 4 Comments »
Interesting article in the October 9 edition of Time Magazine on how ’spiritual doubt’ could be the key to defusing tensions between the rival fundamentalisms of East and West. Andrew Sullivan’s ‘When Not Seeing is Believing‘ is an argument for a greater humility in terms of what can be known about God and a [...]
