When Being Above It All Is Actually Under A Pile

“Statements like, ‘The sex and violence don’t bother me’ are not necessarily expressions of maturity. If a movie is exploitative with vice, it ought to bother the viewer, and if it doesn’t, then that viewer is being deadened in his or her spirituality and humanity” (Brian Godawa, Hollywood Worldviews, pp. 178).

Overcoming the Onto-Polis

Peter Leithart has pointed out the need for another Christendom. I agree with him completely. This is over against the modernity project, which wants to manage everything on secularist assumptions — in science, law, art, politics, academia, custom, and so on. With regard to human society, the structures of modernity run all the way up, …

A Hermeneutic of Hot and Sticky Things

I want to play for a moment with a distinction that Merold Westphal makes, but without saying anything one way or another about what Westphal is doing with it. If a metanarrative is a philosophically-derived account of Enlightenment hubris that is calculated to justify that hubris, then that would be bad. With that stipulated definition, …

My Own Personal Hermeneutic of Suspicion

In Overcoming Onto-Theology, Merold Westphal begins by urging a hermeneutic of suspicion. To which I cheerfully reply, “Okay! When can we start?” In this book he is addressing his postmodern friends who don’t share his faith, and his Christian friends who “are allergic or even a bit apoplectic when it comes to postmodern philosophy” (p. …