Abstractions don’t exist, if by existence you mean having a certain weight or color. Neither do propositions, if by existence you mean material embodiment. And of course, by such criteria, God the Father doesn’t exist either. But of course, abstractions still function just fine, provided the people using them are grounded in an incarnational and …
One Foot Nailed to the Floor
Chesteron once said (Chesterton always once said) that the purpose of an open mind was the same as the purpose of an open mouth — it is meant to close on something. A man who is not closed in certain respects is a man who was never open in the right kind of way. The …
Neck Kissing
This morning I received a really fine set of questions about my posts on Brian McLaren and the emergent church from a graduate of NSA, one who really grasps what we are seeking to do here, and who wondered at the similarity between McLaren’s critique of modern evangelicalism and our own critique of it. The …
True Certainty
Absolutism is a two-edged sword, and yet we would prefer to have it be a more comfortable one-edged sword. Epistemic certainty is an Enlightenment idol — men who want to know absolutely have fallen to the ancient temptation offered in Eden, which is, ye shall be as God. Only God knows absolutely. But the fact …
Old Slewfoot’s Kitchen
In response to my postings on propositions taken as simple statements of fact, one objection was raised that wondered who on earth would think that emergent leaders would challenge “statements”? Well, if we are talking about statements that are true, I do. They do, and their books are full of such questioning. Emergent writers are …
As Logocentric As It Gets
I rise in praise of propositions, but not the propositions of bad philosophers who try to reify everything they touch. Rather, I praise the propositions of the competent and godly English teacher, and, although this is not the point of our current discussion, I also praise clauses, imperatives, nouns, verbs, alphabets, jots and tittles. A …
Digory and the Postmodern Witch
When Digory refused to listen to the witch, it was because he had promised. He had learned certain things that little boys always ought to learn, and this includes little emergent boys. Not only had he learned that you should keep your promises, he had also learned not to steal, which had come in handy …
False Alternatives
Emergent thinkers like to believe that they are advocating a move from the “absolute to the authentic.” But of course, the fact that these are a couple of adjectives being used as abstractions means that we do not yet know what we are talking about. Moving from the “absolute” to the “authentic” blends right in …
One Other Thing
I should have said one other thing about the two-fold authority of Scripture. It is not the case that the raw propositional truth has the two-fold authority (both rerum and verborum), but rather that only Scripture in the original languages had that two-fold authority. To translate a Scriptural passage into “pure” propositional notation would result …
Declarative Sentences and the Spirit
The problem is an obvious one for Protestant Christians, who place such a high value on translating the Scriptures from the original Hebrew and Greek into the vernacular. What does it mean to translate something? What does it mean to translate something that has divine authority? And doesn’t this require a propositional meaning distinct and …