Tag: Thinking

It is time to break my blogging fast. It is fitting, the topic of this post, because I am nearing the end of my Philosophy of Religion class at the University of Oxford (next week is the last). There is one unit left, it is on Faith, Prayer, and the Spiritual life. The class is largely populated by atheists and agnostics. The text we used for class (which was augmented by many other readings and lectures) was written by an Oxford philosopher named T. J. Mawson, Belief in God. He is a Christian theist, but a panentheist who holds to…

I am starting my Philosophy of Religion class tomorrow (January 13th) at the University of Oxford (by distance, of course). Thanks again to a friend of the blog for his donation, in order to pursue continuing education like this. I am critical of philosophy, often, but let me qualify that a bit further. I am only really critical of philosophy when it is used as a basis and the material for doing Christian theology. If these disciplines are kept separate and distinct, then I have no problem learning to think with the rigor of a philosopher. As long as the…

If you’re a Catholic or scholastic Protestant thinker, you’ll follow along with Erich Przywara’s dictum (following Thomas’) of ‘revelation perfecting revelation.’ You’ll see a continuity between the naked philosopher’s machinations, and what comes in perfection through God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. You’ll maintain that humanity, since it is born into an iteration of God’s grace (which is an abstract creation), has the capacity, albeit, finite, to think towards the God of creation. On the other hand, if you’re a genuinely Protestant thinker who takes the noetic effects of the fall, who takes total depravity seriously, and who does not sublate…