Westphal’s book is a collection of related essays, the first one having the same title as the book — Overcoming Onto-theology. That essay is promising, but unhappily it promises all the wrong things, and then does a good job in fulfilling the promises. I have three basic criticisms of his project as set forth here, …
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, …
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. …
Outside My Heart?
Peter Leithart meant to be provocative in his Against Christianity, but the provocation is the “make you think” kind, and not the bomb-throwing kind. But when you tease out the ramifications of what he is saying, what you have on paper sure looks like it ought to be the bomb-throwing kind, but it still isn’t. …
The P-38 Era
A brief glance around the blogosphere indicates that the word theonomy got people’s attention. Of course, it always did. Let me put the disclaimers in the first couple sentences so I can continue to kick this particular can down the road. No, this is not going to be done through politics. No, it is not …
The Great Migraine of Modernity
Andrew Sandlin has prematurely welcomed me to the ranks of the Christian postmodernists. I am afraid he took my deal-busting adjective “theonomic” as something that would actually be welcomed in the ranks of those who are currently calling themselves Christian postmodernists, including one of the gentleman he cites. Of course it would never be accepted …
Sensibilities and Powers
Let me begin with an outrageous conclusion, and then try to defend it. This is not usually a good procedure because it just gets everybody’s back up, but if the outrageous conclusion is actually the voice of sweet reason, then why not? Here is the conclusion, in a short series of statments. The only genuine …
The Real Me
All human knowledge is embodied knowledge. Discrete monads of “knowledge” do not sit in our brains like so many marbles in a can. We are creatures fashioned from the dust of the ground, and this means that God has created us to know with our bodies. This prevents us from taking refuge in that old …
Living in Story
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 …