50 Books for Aspiring Seminarians
I’ve often told people who aspire to graduate school in Biblical studies or theology that an English major might just serve them better than a Bachelor’s degree in ministry. Most…
Review of Evolution's Purpose for SpeakEasy Bloggers
Evolution’s Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins by Steve McIntosh 260 pp. Selectbooks. $24.95. More than anything else, this book reminds me that philosophy and…
The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode #95: Plato's Aesthetics
General Introduction – Dry, bleeding Kansas – Hardcore listener feedback Ancient Greek Art – Our access to it – Black and red, figure and background – The Parthenon – Classical…
Scholarship that Starts with Conviction: Some Thoughts on the Adjective "Academic"
Every community’s complex practices require the process of tradition, what Alasdair Macintyre helpfully identified as the ongoing debate about what it means to practice what the community practices and to…
The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode #93.2: Pragmatism
General Introduction – Where’s Grubbs? – A programming note – Listener feedback C.S. Peirce – What do our sentences mean? – Synthesizing physical phenomena – Peirce as Father of Analytic…
Teaching Plato: Still the Best Gig I've Had
As with most things I’ve taught, I had no business teaching Greek philosophy when first I gave it a run. Sure, I had been a double-major in English and humanities…
What my Freshman Comp Students Teach me about Political Philosophy
Every fall, I teach the Honors Freshman Composition class at Emmanuel College, an opportunity that I do not take lightly. In the course of those fifteen weeks we learn together…
The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode #87: Death
General Introduction – Nathan’s snottier than usual – David goes back to bed – Listener feedback Death in the Bible – A Psalm of Moses – Daniel speaks out –…
Heidegger for Christian Thinkers 4: History and Temporality
Temporality Some people, I realize, think that philosophy is an insidious pastime that makes muddy what was perfectly clear before. I happen to be one of those people who thinks…
Heidegger for Christian Thinkers 3: Death and Resoluteness
Being Towards Death Although Heidegger seldom if ever mentions Thomas Aquinas in Being and Time, the opening section often brings to mind Thomas’s doctrine of analogy and the philosophical problems that…
There's No Such Thing as Clean Hands, and It's a Good Thing, Too
I’m not sure why I’m so slow to leave things, and further I’m not at all convinced that the tendency derives from any particular moral strength. I am convinced that…
Heidegger for Christian Thinkers 2: Morality, Truth, and New Ways to Think about Both
Just to remind folks, I published these essays at another site several years ago, but I figured that rewriting the poorly-written passages and reposting them here might be of some…
Heidegger for Christian Thinkers 1: Being and Time and Living in the World
Three years ago, give or take, in the days before we had launched this blog or started the podcast, I published a series of essays on Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time…
The Christian Humanist Podcast, Episode #83: The Federalist Papers, Part One
General Introduction – David squares the circle – The chatter continues on the blog – Email, Facebook, or nothing at all What Is a Federalist, Anyway? – The Articles of…
An entirely untested hypothesis
Here’s a thought I just had: what if Americans aren’t anti-intellectual per se but have an aversion to the Appeal to Authority? In my experience, actually taking the time to articulate…