One more comment on modernity’s whipping boy, Constantine. One of the central problems with many pomos is that they write turgid philosophy in praise of narrative, but they don’t understand story, and the same goes for their frothy popularizers. As a result, they are the ideal audience for hair-raising melodramatic cliff-hangers. Constantine is converted and …
Police Forces of Modernity
One more comment on Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? The problem with “robust and confessional dogmatism” in a postmodern world is this. There are only a limited number of options here, and all of them but one are variations of what Leithart identifies as “Christianity.” As he uses the word in his book Against Christianity, Christianity …
In Praise of Leithart
In my first pass on James K.A. Smith’s Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, I recognized that he did not want to give way to the full-throttled relativism of postmodernism. He said some promising things early in the book, but, as I mentioned, by the end it was clear that his approach was not going to cut …
Catching a Blunder
My thanks to Prosthesis, who caught a significant blunder in my review of Smith’s book on postmodernism below. I quoted Smith summarizing Foucault, and then interacted with that as though it were Smith himself. Mea maxima blunda, and I have corrected the problem. My apologies to all my readers, and particular apologies to Smith for …
Pretending To Leave Modernity Behind
Just finished Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? by James K.A. Smith. In some ways this was a very helpful book, but at the center, the place where the door moves on the hinge, this door squeaks in as annoying and exasperating a way as all the others. The tone is set in the introduction to the …
The Surrender is Settled
In the previous post, I was (what is it we do these days? I forget) interfacing with James Smith’s book Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? This book is part of a series by Baker Academic, a series called “The Church and Postmodern Culture.” In the series preface, this is what we read: “How should concrete, in-the-pew …
What We Need Around These Parts Is A Good Dose of Van Til
I recently spent a goodish bit of time being exasperated by Richard Rorty, who doesn’t believe that we should view nature in the mirror of some glassy essence in our brains, which is fine with me, but he then spends many, many pages holding up his mirror for us to see philosophy in. But if …
Some Arguments Against Evolution
“It [evolution] gives us almost everything the imagination craves – irony, heroism, vastness, unity in multiplicity, and a tragic close. It appeals to every part of me except my reason.” C.S. Lewis Arguments against the theory of evolution can be classified into four broad categories. We may call them particular evidences concerning questions of fact …
Incarnational Is As Incarnational Does
The ability to abstract things is the academicians’ disease. It is also a great gift of God, and like money, power, and sex, it needs to be watched closely. Part of the reason it must be watched closely is because it almost never is watched closely. There are many fine servants who make tyrannical masters, …
Intelligent Design and Stealth Creationism
Last Friday, a friend named Scott Minnich addressed the weekly disputatio at New St. Andrews. Dr. Minnich is a professor in microbiology at the University of Idaho, and he testified in the recent trial in Dover, PA as an expert witness on behalf of Intelligent Design. His talk was fascinating — with regard to the …