Bibliography: “Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview”

Jacob Aitken has helpfully compiled the Bibliography (or a large portion of it, anyway) from Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview [“Craig and Moreland (2003): 627-639”].

101 Key Terms in Philosophy and Their Importance for Theology

A brief review: http://reformation500.com/2014/09/24/review-101-philosophy-terms-for-theology/

Kelly James Clark, James K. A. Smith, and Richard Lints (Westminster/John Knox Press).

De-hellenizing the Old Testament

http://bayouhuguenot.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/de-hellenizing-the-old-testament/

“Indicative of the pattern of Old Testament piety is the fact that the dominant motives of prayer never included that of losing oneself, through contemplation, in the divine infinity. There was no room in Israel for mystical prayer; the nature of the Mosaic Yahweh with his mighty personal will effectively prevented the development of that type of prayer which seeks to dissolve the individual I in the unbounded One. Just as the God of the Old Testament is no Being reposing in his own beatitude, but reveals himself in the controlling will of the eternal King, so the pious Israelite is no intoxicated, world-denying mystic revelling in the Beyond, but a warrior, who wrestles even in prayer, and looks for the life of power in communion with his divine Lord. His goal is not the static concept of the summum bonum [the highest good], but the dynamic fact of the Basileia tou Theou [the Kingdom of God]”.

Eichrodt, Walter. Theology of the Old Testament, Volume One (Old Testament Library). Westminster John Knox Press, 1961. ISBN-10: 0664223087
ISBN-13: 978-0664223083

Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age: A Book Review

Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age: A review by Jacob Aitken:

This book was one of the earliest salvos into the postmodern situation, at least from a semi-“conservative” Christian position. The authors (hereafter MW) highlight the collapse of the “modern” project, examine the postmodern response, and then offer their own Christian response....

MW call attention to legitimate postmodern critiques of the modern project (the latter which they date roughly from the time of the Renaissance until now). Modernism, which is usually–rightly or wrongly–defined as a variant of Western liberal capitalism, sought a narrative which gave a universal legitimatization of Modernity’s goal.... Postmodern thinkers–and even Christian premoderns–pointed out that any story they told was always conditioned by a certain community at a certain moment in history. “We can never get outside our knowledge to check it against objective reality” (MW 32). Further, this metanarrative is shown to be a highly contingent one which serves to legitimate power (a common, if overdone postmodern refrain). MW then continue with a lucid description of key postmodern thinkers....

Read more.

Charting the “Reformed” Postmoderns

A Postmodern Continuum, by Jacob Aitken

One of the most useless terms in lay apologetics is “postmodern.” It usually means “someone different from me but I am not sure how.” Or it means Brian McLaren. Postmodernism as a critical literary and philosophical position is rarely distinguished from applications of postmodernism by hippie, angry, post-evangelicals. ...

For my own view, I see postmodernism as a literary-philosophical position in critique of (if not parasitic upon) late modern structures. Such a view is mediated through the works of Michael Horton and Kevin Vanhoozer.

We will start with the most radical and dangerous postmoderns to those who are sympathetic to postmodern, but would probably fit in a Reformed church. This list is not exclusive but is limited to those thinkers whom I have read...

Read more: A Postmodern Continuum

“Metaphysical Religion” and “Becoming One with God”

In a work that Lane Keister of Green Baggins considers to be “the best book on Roman Catholicism I have read”, Leonardo De Chirico describes what he believes to be the “core” of Roman Catholicism:

This core is a composite one and entails the ways in which the relationship between nature and grace are worked out and the Roman Catholic self-understanding of the Church which is the main subject of the system itself. The Roman Catholic system can be seen as emerging from the range of the nature-grace motifs which are allowed to coexist within it and serve to enrich it, and expressing itself in the paramount role of the church which is basically understood in Christological terms as the prolongation of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ (p. 24).

That, of course, is an over-simplified version of “what Roman Catholicism is”. At its heart, the Roman Catholic Church, hierarchy and all, considers itself to be “The Mystical Body of Christ”. You can find that idea in all the most recent Catholic literature out there.

Lumen Gentium states it this way:

Eastern Orthodoxy: Same as all the other Eastern religions

Jacob Aitken relates one key weakness of Eastern Orthodoxy (and of Roman Catholicism as well):

The commenter known as “Anti Gnostic” asks a perceptive question:

What does Orthodoxy offer that other communions don’t?

He gets the standard cliched answer:

“What Orthodoxy offers is the promise of communion with the incarnate God, and theosis, leading to the salvation of the eternal soul…”

He responds,

So does Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. And Wiccanism, if I bothered to check. So tell me, why should I believe Orthodox Christianity over any other belief system?

All metaphysical religions die on this field.

Jacob writes frequently (though not nearly as much as I’d like) on the topic of “chain-of-being” metaphysics. That’s the neo-platonic metaphysics that crept into “the Catholic Church” after Augustine through the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, and were systematized into Roman Catholicism by Thomas Aquinas, in part, because he mistakenly thought that “Pseudo-Dionysius” was genuinely the Dionysius from Acts 17.

This is one reason why Roman Catholicism needs to do more than just “apologize for the sins of the children of the church”. It needs to take stock and ‘fess up to all the erroneous doctrinal nonsense that it has incorporated into its system, erroneously calling it “Christianity”.

But instead, it buckles down, and says, things like “the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ”.

In doing so, it bears false witness of God's word.

Neo-platonism is not God’s word. Eastern religions are not God’s word.

A Spotlight on Eastern Orthodox Apologetics

Courtesy of Jacob Aitken:

1. Be loud on your “tradition.” Notice how they will quote the apostles on tradition, but they never demonstrate that what the apostles mean by tradition is what they mean by tradition, especially relating to content? Where did the Apostle Paul say you need to avoid food before Eucharist (contrary to 1 Corinthians 11:34)? If one cannot show that what the apostles mean by tradition is what you mean by tradition, that is the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

2. Ignore specific exegesis on Genesis 1-2. This isn’t uniquely an EO problem. All moderns are embarrassed by what the bible says on creation. A friend and I debate an Eastern Catholic who ridiculed creation theology. We then backed the truck up and unloaded dozens of Fathers who affirmed–gasp–six day creation. This is one area where Seraphim Rose cleaned house in debate.

3. Apropos (2): Creation theology teaches a firmament is placed between heaven and earth. Later biblical theology identifies Jesus as the firmament between heaven and earth. If Jesus is the firmament between heaven and earth, how then can saints intercede for those on earth when they are separated by the firmament?

4. Ignore the 5 fold covenant model. More and more I am impressed with Sutton’s fivefold covenant exegesis. Henceforth I will no longer debate TULIP. If anyone wants to attack Reformed theology, deal with the Covenants. Judicial Calvinism is all over the Old Testament.

5. Does not the vaunted realism actually entail a chain of being ontology? Isn’t this fundamentally the same thing as magic religion? I agree that death is the main problem facing us, but the apostle Paul did not separate death from the judicial consequences of sin?