Dooyeweerd on Descartes on Creation
I am currently reading Herman Dooyeweerd's In the Twilight of Western Thought: Studies in the Pretended Autonomy of Philosophical Thought (the subtitle alone is worth the price of the book). There are so many gems in this book. Dooyeweerd is attempting to show that modern philosphical thought (in general) pretends to be autonomous and neutral, but is nothing of the sort. All philosophical thought is ultimately rooted in and driven by some set of religious convictions or axioms. Dooyeweerd speaks in terms of "ground motives". Here is Dooyeweerd on the pretended autonomy of Descartes, and the implications of Descartes' project:
"Humanist philosophy eliminated the so-called supra-natural sphere. Nor would it accept a given world-order founded in divine creation. This was incompatible with its religious basic-motive which implied the absolute autonomy of human reason. It could not accept any order of the world that does not originate from from the autonomous and free human reason itself. Therefore, the Cartesian philosophy started with a methodological, theoretical destruction of the world as it presents itself in the given order of human experience. After this methodical destruction of the given world, only the thinking human ego with its innate mathematical ideas is left. And this thinking ego, which seeks the criterion of truth only in itself, sets itself the task of recreating the world in the image of its mathematical pattern of thought" (p. 48)
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- Published: 25 August 2015 25 August 2015
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Letham on the Old Testament and the Trinity
Students: Here is Letham's chapter on the Old Testament and the Trinity, until your books arrive.
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- Published: 22 August 2015 22 August 2015
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Thomas Oden on the Nature of Theology
Attached is a brief piece by Thomas C. Oden on the nature of theology.
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- Published: 19 August 2015 19 August 2015
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Jean Gerson on Theology as Queen of the Sciences
Jean Gerson was chancellor of the University of Paris, and lived 1363-1429. Here is what Gerson said about theology as Queen of the sciences:
"Let them [the other discipline/sciences] yield to Theology and refrain form entering into her schools with importune questions, for it is proper for servants to come into the presence of the queen prepared and equipped."
Quoted in: Erika Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation, 35.
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- Published: 18 August 2015 18 August 2015
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Auguste Lecerf on "Facts", God, and Knowledge
It is always a joy to discover a theological gem. It is even more fun when the more you read, the better it gets. This is the case with one of my summer reads: Auguste Lecerf's An Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics. Lecerf was a French Reformed theologian, who ended his career teaching on the Protestant Faculty in Paris. He is of interest to me because he is working through a Christian understanding of knowledge. He lived from 1872-1943. He is conversant with the continental philosophical tradition, and is offering a robust Christian engagement with that world of thought. All the more interesting, as a Frenchman he is right in the heart of the world of Descartes, et al. Here is Lecerf on a Christian understanding "facts" (I suspect he would have enjoyed Van Til). At the same time, he appears to have been drawn (to some degree) to the neo-Thomist revival of his era (e.g. Etienne Gilson):
"The relations which exist between facts are thus conceived as pre-existent in the divine intelligence; they are established by God. The facts themselves are his thoughts, realized and manifested in time. From this point of view, the evidence of reason and of the senses must be considered as a revelation of God. 'In his light', cried the psalmist, 'we shall see light.'" (An Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics, 106).
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- Published: 20 June 2015 20 June 2015
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Matt Perman's "What's Best Next"
Matt Perman has written a very good book on using your time well, the nature of work, and all sorts of things that you should think about--if you want to work, think, write, etc., in a way which flows from your Christian commitments. Here is the Foreword and Introductory chapter.
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- Published: 02 May 2015 02 May 2015
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