Short Takes: Against Specialization
I wrote a few months ago about the problems with the over-specialization that plagues the Academy. This morning I’m reading Aristotle’s Parts of Animals, which begins thusly: Every study and…
A Primer on Religious Existentialism, Pt. 5: Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal initially seems a rather odd figure to label as a Christian existentialist–or even as a forerunner to the movement. Other than his famous “wager” (about which I will…
A Primer on Religious Existentialism, Pt. 4: Augustine
As I mentioned last week, the academic dean of the secondary literature on existentialism, Walter Kaufmann, points to the Christian theologians St. Augustine and Blaise Pascal as early examples of…
Short Takes: A Celebration of (Christian) Humanism
I stumbled across this two-part essay a couple days ago, and although each of the three Christian Humanist Podcasters would likely take issue here and there with points of theology…
A Primer on Religious Existentialism, Pt. 3: Hellenism and Hebraism
There’s a degree to which it’s legitimate to claim Judeo-Christian roots for almost all Western philosophies (including the scientism that seeks, in its more recent and ugly manifestations, to destroy…
The Christian Humanist, Episode #22.1: Science
Our outro music this week comes from Michael Knott’s 1994 record Rocket and a Bomb. The song’s called “Jan the Weatherman.” Hey, “Jan” rhymes with “Dan,” and our special guest…
A Primer on Religious Existentialism, Pt. 2: My Kind of Atheist
It is not reasonable to expect everyone to share the same religious views, and since it can be difficult to see God’s hand in our violent and hate-filled universe, I…
A Primer on Religious Existentialism, Pt. 1: Introduction
When people find out that I self-identify as a Christian existentialist, they are sometimes surprised. And why shouldn’t they be? Existentialism as a philosophical movement is bound up in the…
Bible, Tradition, Authority part 3: Forgetting the Giants
In a recent conversation with fellow Christian Humanist Michial Farmer, I noted a certain paradox about my relationship with Brian McLaren and other public Christian intellectuals who often get labeled…
Which Sport Has the Most Home Runs?
“Separate Truths” by Stephen Prothero Relationships between traditions are my intellectual bread and butter. When I started studying the various influences of Anglican sacramental life, Presbyterian church polity, Scottish Enlightenment…
Attack of the Pathetic Fallacy
I do not recall when I first encountered the notion of a pathetic fallacy: a literature course, doubtless, but I’ve had many of those. I was almost certainly an undergraduate,…
Media Ecology and the Reformation: Some Brief Thoughts
The Christian Humanist crew got an email from Ford Seeuws, listener and friend of Michial Farmer, last week, and the questions were interesting enough that I wanted to deal with…
Statistics and Narrative: A Response to Sam Mulberry
After the Christian Humanist Podcast’s episode on sports (available via the RSS feed, if you just click on it…), Sam Mulberry of Bethel University and CWC: The Radio Show emailed…
On the Death of Facebook Friends: Some Reflections on Michael Spencer and Michael Johnson
I’m sure this is going to be more and more common a phenomenon as the years pass: I’ve now got two Facebook friends who are dead. Certainly I can’t be…
Hobbits, Monsters, and Augustine
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. And so he did: Bilbo Baggins, that is. However, the opening sentence of Tolkien’s story could just as easily describe…