An accidental blog

"If God is sovereign, then his lordship must extend over all of life, and it cannot be restricted to the walls of the church or within the Christian orbit." Abraham Kuyper Common Grace 1.1.

Friday, 2 March 2007

AoLR 2006 articles

In 2006 there were over 100 new articles on All of life redeemed. Listed here:


Baus, Gregory
Dooyeweerd's societal sphere sovereignty: neither tax based nor laissez-faire
Bert Witvoet
'Interview with Pete Steen'
Bishop, Steve
Brief Biography of Herman Dooyeweerd
Bruce Wearne
Interview with Professors Eiichi Yamamote and Michiya Murata
Bruce Wearne
Interview with Mark Roques
Bruce Wearne
Interview with Bob Goudzwaard
Bruce Wearne
Inteview with Jim Skillen
Clouser, Roy
“Faith Tectonics
Clouser, Roy
Review of Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting by John Cooper
Clouser, Roy
Review of The Challenge of Marxist and NeoMarxist Ideology for Christian Scholarship. Ed. John Vander Stelt
Clouser, Roy
"Puritanism on Authority".
Clouser, Roy
Genesis regained
Clouser, Roy
Social norms and religious belief
Clouser, Roy
Prospects for theistic science -
Eric J. Kamphof's
Masters thesis on Vollenhoven
Fernhout, Harry
Education in a pluralist society (1996)
Fernhout, Harry
Christian schooling: telling a worldview story
Goudzwaard, Bob
Christianity and economics (1996s)
Goudzwaard, Bob
Globalization, exclusion, enslavement (1996)
Goudzwaard, Bob
Bible and economy: two reflections
Gousemett, Chris
Hope of the resurrection
Gousmett, Chris
Bavinck and Kuyper on miracles
Gousmett, Chris
Humanity of Jesus
Gousmett, Chris
Jesus ate in their presence
Gousmett, Chris
Old age, new age, age to come
Gousmett, Chris
Realising your purpose in life
Gousmett, Chris
The glory of the unseen God
Gousmett, Chris
The Lord will come with the storm
Gousmett, Chris
The true temple of God
Gousmett, Chris
Free from condemnation
Gousmett, Chris
Faith in the unseen
Gousmett, Chris
Economics in Christian perspective
Gousmett, Chris
Cornerstone values
Gousmett, Chris
God has concealed himself in Jesus
Gousmett, Chris
God keeps his promises
Gousmett, Chris
God the creator of time
Hanson, David
How the reformational movement got started in the UK
Hanson, Ruth
Lives in your Hands
John Vander Stelt
Church in society (an orientation)
McIntire, C. Thomas
Dooyeweerd in North America
McIntire, C. Thomas
God's work in history: the post-biblical epoch
Olthuis, James H
Chapter 6
Olthuis, James H
Chapter 7
Olthuis, James H.
On Worldviews [pdf]
Olthuis, James H.
The word of God and biblical authority
Olthuis, James H.
The word of God and creation
Olthuis, James H.
Values and valuation
Olthuis, James H.
Chapter 1
Otto, Paul
'In the twilight of Dooyeweerd's corpus'.
Quadros Gouveais, Ricardo
Introducing reformational philosophy in Brazil: a hopeful report
Rice, Martin A.
What is a science?
Ridgway, Ian
'A Disclosing model of psychotherapy'
Ridgway, Ian
'Circumambulating interpersonal sensitive disclosure therapy using rational emotive behaviour therapy'
Roper, Duncan
Euler and the Konisberg bridges: some lessons for the philosophy of mathematics
Russell, Richard A
Looking at the medieval programme, how the church got involved and failed to reform it
Russell, Richard A
Reformation, popular literacy, callings, marriage, natural science etc
Russell, Richard A
Confessions of a book-pushing ideologue
Russell, Richard A
Where is Francis Schaeffer going?
Russell, Richard A
Going round the prickly pear of British education
Russell, Richard A
Natural theology: is it scriptural?
Russell, Richard A.
Starting with Plato and a biblical critique
Russell, Richard A.
In defence of Dooyeweerd
Schuurman, Egbert
Information society: cultural impoverishment or enrichment (c. 1983)
Schuurman, Egbert
A confrontation with technicism as the spiritual climate of the West (1996)
Seerveld, Calvin
Christian faith for today.
Seerveld, Calvin
Reformational Christian philosophy and Christian college education
Seerveld, Calvin
Creativity
Seerveld, Calvin
Vollenhoven's legacy for art historiography.
Seerveld, Calvin
Towards a cartographic methodology for art.
Seerveld, Calvin
Prov 25: 11-15.
Seerveld, Calvin
'Will you be a joke to God?' (Prov 24) .
Seerveld, Calvin
'Tomorrow is the gift of the Lord' Prov 27: 1-11
Seerveld, Calvin
'Proverbs 27 again'
Seerveld, Calvin
'How God's word in Proverbs communicates'
Seerveld, Calvin
'Uncover wrong to heal things straight' (Prov 25:2-10)
Seerveld, Calvin
Prov 27.
Seerveld, Calvin
God's gifts our thank offering - an interview
Seerveld, Calvin
Reading the Bible and understanding art
Seerveld, Calvin
A Christian tin-can theory of man
Seerveld, Calvin
Pain is a four-letter word
Seerveld, Calvin
Philosophy as schooled memory
Seerveld, Calvin
Reading the Bible like a grown-up child
Seerveld, Calvin
The gift of artistry - God's clothing for human life
Seerveld, Calvin
'The evil of authoritarianism' (Prov 29)
Sewell, Keith
Review of Dooyeweerd's Roots of Western Culture
Sewell, Keith
Mustard Seed in Australia
Simons, Petrus
Reformational philosophy in New Zealand
Stafleu, M D
'Quantum physics and the philsophy of the cosmonomic idea'
Stafleu, M. D.
Relations and Characters
Steen, Pete
'The problem of time and eternity in its relation to the nature-grace ground-motive'
Steen, Pete
Dooyeweerd and the Amsterdam Philosophy, by Ronald H Nash. Westminster Theological Journal 25: 116-118.
Steen, Pete
Review Worldly Theology: The Hermeneutical Focus of an Historical Faith, by Carl Michalson.
Steen, Pete
Review Het eeuwige leven, by Okke Jager.
Steen, Pete
Review The Basis of Christian Faith: A Modern Defense of the Christian Religion, by Floyd Eugene Hamilton..
Steen, Pete
Review Understanding God: The Key Issue in Present-Day Protestant Thought, by Frederick Herzog..
Steen, Pete
Review Set Forth Your Case, by Clark H Pinnock..
Strauss, D F M
The concept of number: multiplicity and sucession between cardinalitry and ordinality
Strauss, D. F. M.
Infinity and Continuity: The mutual dependence and distinctness of multiplicity and wholeness.
Van Woudenberg
Darwinian and teleological expanations: are they incompatible?
Van Woudenberg, R
Truth, the goal of science
Van Woudenberg, R
Design in nature: some current issues
Van Woudenberg, R
Abraham Kuyper and science
Wearne, Bruce
"Review Essay: The Calvinistic ethic and the spirit of renewal in some recent Christian scholarship"
Wearne, Bruce
Reading the Bible or Life-Direction on the Path of Scholarship
Wearne, Bruce
Electronic Tickets, Youth Despair And The Fabric Of Urban Society
Wearne, Bruce
Deism and the Absence of Christian Sociology
Wearne, Bruce
"Ticket and Travel - 20 propositions

Odds and sods

Lent has hardly started, so it seems a little premature to think of Easter, yet Triablogue has some links to interesting Easter resources.



Billy Bee is a newish blogger who has recntly discovered some neocalvinist resources.



There are a number of blogs that have dealt with the so-called 'Jesus Tomb'





Scott McKnight has hosted a review of Vern poythress's new book Redeeming Science here and here.



An online whiteboard



spirited exchanges uk is launched









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Thursday, 1 March 2007

Atheism - a faith position?

Stephen Law (editor of Think and lecturer at Heythrop College, London) argues that it's not here and here.



Is atheism a "faith position"? Anything can be, of course. But I challenge anyone to show that my atheism - or Dawkins' atheism - is a "faith position". It's not. I'll be explaining why in next blog.

In the next post he writes:

Is atheism a "faith" position? If by "faith position" we mean can't be proved beyond all doubt, then yes, it is. But then so is the belief that there are no fairies and that the sun goes round the Earth. It doesn't follow from the fact that both theism and atheism are "faith positions" in this sense that they are equally reasonable.



If by "faith position" we mean can't be proved beyond reasonable doubt, then I certainly don't accept that atheism is a "faith position". The evidence for atheism is overwhelming (though of course not everyone can see the evidence is overwhelming - this sort of evidence-blindness is an interesting feature of religious belief. That religion certainly does have the power to blind people to the obvious is demonstrated by the fact that in just 50 years, some 100 million US citizens have come to accept both that the entire universe is six thousand years old and that this is consistent with the empirical evidence).





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Tuesday, 27 February 2007

Plantinga on Dawkins's God delusion

Alvin Plantinga has a review of Dawkins’s God Delusion here.


He writes:


Now despite the fact that this book is mainly philosophy, Dawkins is not a philosopher (he’s a biologist). Even taking this into account, however, much of the philosophy he purveys is at best jejune. You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class. This, combined with the arrogant, smarter-than-thou tone of the book, can be annoying. I shall put irritation aside, however and do my best to take Dawkins’ main argument seriously.

He concludes:



The God Delusion is full of bluster and bombast, but it really doesn’t give even the slightest reason for thinking belief in God mistaken, let alone a "delusion."


The naturalism that Dawkins embraces, furthermore, in addition to its intrinsic unloveliness and its dispiriting conclusions about human beings and their place in the universe, is in deep self-referential trouble. There is no reason to believe it; and there is excellent reason to reject it.


Sunday, 25 February 2007

AoLR - Goudzwaard pages


I have added three more articles by Bob Goudzwaard to the All of life redeemed site:



These are the first three chapters from his Aid for the Overdeveloped West (Wedge, 1975). Although over 30 years old these papers ring out with prophetic import.



In 'Our gods have failed us' he makes these insightful comments:



In order to understand our own times, I should like to draw your attention to three basic biblical rules which together explain man's relation to God and to his theoretical and practical pursuits.

The first basic rule is that every man is serving god(s) in his life.

The second basic rule is that every man is transformed into an image of his god.

The third basic rule is that mankind creates and forms a structure of society in its own image. In the development of human civilization, man forms, creates, and changes the structure of his society, and in doing so he portrays in his work the intention of his own heart. He gives to the structure of that society something of his own image and likeness. In it he betrays something of his own lifestyle, of his own god.

Thursday, 22 February 2007

The Reformational Publishing Project

One of the most exciting projects this millenium has been launched:


From the site:
... we have begun taken the first steps towards the publication of such works by republishing Egbert Schuurman’s highly influential earlier work, Technology and the Future. The complete writings of H Evan Runner, both published and unpublished, will be included, along with the translation of Willem Ouweneel’s Heart and Soul, a summary of an earlier comprehensive psychology text. We also intend to translate Ouweneel’s exceptionally important work, De leer van de mens. These publications will be followed by the particularly insightful intellectual biography by Marcel Verburg entitled Herman Dooyeweerd: The Life and Work of a Dutch Christian-Philosopher. Following these latter works will be the outstanding example of systematic analysis in Linguistics by Albert Weideman entitled Beyond Expression. We will also publish a small biographical gem on Groen Van Prinsterer by Roel Kuiper that has been translated by Harry Van Dyke. We are also working on the collected writings of Robert Knudsen, and Peter Steen, as well as two volumes of highly significant articles that will be arranged thematically by Danie Strauss.

All of life reedemed update- Goudzwaard pages

I have recently added several papers - and there are more to come - of Bob Goudzwaard's on All of life redeemed:

From the journal Vanguard

Economic life - a confession from A Christian Union in Labour's Wasteland (Wedge, 1978)

Rookmaaker on Dooyeweerd and Schaeffer

In the course of the years [Francis] Schaeffer and I discussed many things, among which philosophy and particularly Dooyeweerd’s philosophy were favourite topics. Dooyeweerd’s ideas have had an influence on Schaeffer and L’Abri in that way. Of course Schaeffer incorporated these ideas in his own thinking and continued on. Neither of us is a slavish pupil of Dooyeweerd. I make quite an effort not to use his difficult terminology, which in a way belonged to the style of the 1930s. So you will not find Dooyeweerd’s vocabulary in our discussions at L’Abri, but his thoughts are there just the same.

Dooyeweerd himself wrote a good and short introduction to his work called [In] The Twilight of Western Thought. In the first part of that book he asks the question how Western thought is to be approached. Is it really Christian and if not, what is it? Escape from Reason is Schaeffer’s version of what Dooyeweerd develops in those chapters. They both talk for instance about nature and grace and about the influence of Greek concepts. Dooyeweerd tries to trace the various ways of thinking in Western history to their starting points. A starting point can be defined as the basic answers that are given to basic questions like: What is the world? Who is God? or What is the source of this world? The answers given to those questions colour the answers that are given to all other questions. The second part of Dooyeweerd’s book deals with a truly Christian approach to reality. Firstly it is basic to such an approach that we begin with a world that is created. Secondly we hold that this world is fallen, it is not perfect. But thirdly we say that this is not the end, there is redemption as Christ came to redeem this world. On the basis of these truths we can try to grasp reality and analyse how this world is made. Dooyeweerd then proceeds to give such an analysis.

Hans Rookmaaker 'A Dutch view of Christian philosophy' The Complete Works of Hans Rookmaaker edited by Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker Vol 6 Part III The L'Abri Lectures. (Piquant, 2005)

Calvinism and philosophy

Macht has recently highlighted a discussion on Calvinism and philosophy by Keith DeRose at Generous Orthodoxy. Now Jamie K A Smith has responded.

Wednesday, 21 February 2007

Plantinga on Religion and science

Rookmaaker on Dooyeweerd

Who would you say you have been helped by in the past? Have you been helped by the Dutch thinker Herman Dooyeweerd?

I am a pupil of Dooyeweerd. In fact, I am a pupil of a pupil of Dooyeweerd, namely of Professor J.P.A. Mekkes. What Dooyeweerd has discovered has given a better answer to many things than most other philosophies because it is more open; it is not such a narrow description of reality. Most philosophies try to approach everything either from history or from physics or from morality, etc. But in his philosophy all things have their own place. It is very wide and it is great for that reason. I do not think that all Christian philosophers should follow his exact terminology and system. But it is good to work in the same direction.

How exactly did he help you? .

There are two sides to Dooyeweerd. Firstly he gives an interpretation of the history of philosophy, and secondly he made his own philosophy. When I became a Christian just by reading the Bible while I was a prisoner of war, there was nobody around to help me. At the same time as reading the Bible I was studying philosophy. So I came to the point where I said: ‘Well the Bible gives me all the answers I need, but Kant is very interesting. If I become a Christian, can I also be a Kantian?’ In a way, this was the problem of the relationship between thinking and starting from the Bible.

Then somebody [J. P. A. Mekkes] pointed out, ‘Why don’t you read Dooyeweerd?’ His first twenty pages utterly convinced me that Christianity was right, because they showed me that Kant had his own religious starting point. He was not just a neutral thinker using a neutral logic; he started from a point of view just as Christianity does. Knowing this liberates one to make an honest choice between points of view. I am very thankful to Dooyeweerd for this insight. I have worked along his lines rather freely.

Another man who has been important to me is someone whose books were never published in English, which is a surprise, for he was known in England. He gave lectures there. That was Groen van Prinsterer. He wrote a book in 1848 on revolution and unbelief, on the background of the French Revolution. In a way the thesis of my book [Modern Art and the Death of a Culture] is the same as his. He was warning the people of his day not to think that the French Revolution was over, for it was still around because the same mentality was still around, but that there would be many more revolutions to come. His book now reads like a prophecy.


From 'Articles and interviews' in Complete Works of Hans Rookmaaker vol 6. Interview first published in Crusade magazine April 1972.

A feed for All of Life Redeemed

Using feedYes I have created a feed for All of Life Redeemed’s ’What’s New’ page. This will enable all those who use feed reader’s to keep in touch with any changes and developments on the site.


It’s experimental - so let me know if it works (or not!). Paste this line into your reader:


http://www.feedyes.com/feed.php?f=bxGBpqIKZ7s0ue0B

Tuesday, 20 February 2007

They will in a minute!

A kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they drew. She would occasionally walk around to see each child's artwork. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was. The girl replied, "I'm drawing God."



The teacher paused and said, "But no one knows what God looks like."



Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, "They will in a minute."







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All of life redeemed search engine

All of life redeemed is a series of linked websites, this causes problems for searching the whole suite of pages - until now:








I have created an All of life redeemed search engine - it will (hopefully) search all of the pages on the site.

Try it and let me know what you think.

Sunday, 18 February 2007

Saturday, 17 February 2007

Odds and sods

There is a brief history of blogger here.

A list of 10 great web tools here.

Victor Reppert, author of C S Lewis's dangerous Idea, has a second blog here - the first is here. Dangerous idea 2 is a blog to discuss the argument from reason.

Camshafts has some interesting questions/ issues for neo-calvinism:
(1) There is an inherent ambiguity in the language of 'worldview' or 'groundmotive'.
(2) Ground-motive isn't explanatory.
(3) Is it foundationalism?
(4) Its criticisms of dualism seem unfounded.
OttoBib is a free bibliography generator - I've not tried it out yet, but hope too soon. [HT lifehack]

Scott McKnight has been discussing Wayne Grudem's take on William J. Webb's excellent book Slaves, Women and Homosexualsand his redemptive movement hermeneutic.

Friday, 16 February 2007

Chaos Remains

Chaos Remains ... remember that name (they previously went under the name Engystrimyth and Pandemonium). They will be the biggest band out of Bristol since Portishead and Massive Attack - and there average age is only 14.5 years . (I'm only a litle biased the drummer is my son!)

They played the coffee shop at went down brilliantly - it's not often you get a mosh pit inside a church building! They went down a storm at a Sunday evening service at the local Anglican church - even if they were a bit too loud for most peoiple - and now they won the Battle of the Bands at their local High School.

Check them out here.

Monday, 12 February 2007

Believing scripture but playing by science's rules

The New York Times has an article on Marcus Ross who has just obtained a doctioarte from the University of Rhode Island and is a young earth creationist.

For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”

The website poses an interesting question: 'Can a scientist produce intellectually honest work that contradicts deeply held religious beliefs?' Comments are here
[HT Faith-Science News]

Uncommon Descent comments:

For the pro-ID and creationist students out there, Ross shows how to make it through a Darwinist controlled secular institution. Ross was never deceptive about his beliefs, yet demonstrated he could accept Old Earth Darwinism as a working but falsifiable hypothesis. One has a better chance of overturning prevailing paradigms when one is well-versed in it. Accepting a wrong theory as a working hypothesis is no more a profession of faith than accepting the wrong idea that the square root of two is rational in order to prove it is irrational.

Odds and sods

Wes Daniels of the Gathering in Light blog has a list of Fuller Seminary bloggers.

Including Richard Mouw.



A new edition of Reformed Perspectives is out. Including articles on teaching by Noel Weeks and the Reformed view of education by Van Til.



David Field who despite not liking principled pluralism redeems himself by posting some comments by Bavinck on God.



Between Two Worlds posts three sites where there are 'seminary level classes for free'. These are:









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Saturday, 10 February 2007

Speaking from faith in democracy ...

... is the title of Jonathan Chaplin's inaugral speech as director of the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics. It is available on-line here.



David Field has some comments on it here.



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Backing up your blog

The Google Operating System blog has a great piece on how to back up your blogger blog here. [HT Lifehacker].



This page lists the latest N posts from the blog:

http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=N

Instead of N, type the number of posts. If your blog has less than 1000 posts, you can save this page:

http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000



Then save the page!



To save the images use DownThemAll a Firefox extension.



The Google Op blog also notes that GMail is now open to all.



And useful tips on navigating Google Reader.















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Friday, 9 February 2007

How well do you know your environment?

1) Point north.


2) What time is sunset today?


3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.


4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?


5) How many feet above sea level are you?


6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here?


7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours?


8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt?


9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?


10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.


11) From what direction do storms generally come?


12) Where does your garbage go?


13) How many people live in your watershed?


14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?


15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice?


16) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move?


17) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water?


18) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past?


19) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)?


20) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put?

21) What was the total rainfall here last year?


22) Where does the pollution in your air come from?


23) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today?


24) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here?


25) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years.


26) What minerals are found in the ground here that are (or were) economically valuable?


27) Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated?


28) After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go?


29) Where is the nearest wilderness? When was the last time a fire burned through it? 30) How many days till the moon is full? :


31) What species once found here are known to have gone extinct?


32) What other cities or landscape features on the planet share your latitude?


33) What was the dominant land cover plant here 10,000 years ago?

34) Name two places on different continents that have similar sunshine/rainfall/wind and temperature patterns to here.

[HT Kevin Kelly]

Loving technology, loving God ...

Loving technology, loving God is the title of the new Comment by Rosie Perea.



Among other things, the sense of a disconnect between my faith and my interaction with technology led me to leave a successful career as a software engineer and become something of a Luddite, resisting new tech toys and computer or software upgrades for years, in order to seek out spiritual growth, instead, as if this were an either-or proposition. This ultimately brought me full circle to examining the relationship between technology and Christian faith. The examination led me to consider the goodness of technology when it is used for good, and employed in a healthy way. Only over the past few years have I begun to integrate two formerly disparate parts of my life, and to find pleasure once again in being a "techno geek." I have come to the conclusion that our love for technology, if not derived from and subordinate to our love for God, can compete with our love for God. That danger is still a reality for me, and I am always looking for ways to keep my love of technology grounded in the deeper love of God. Here follow some thoughts on how to keep a proper balance.


Thursday, 8 February 2007

Not For Sale

Christian bloggers survey

recently participated in a Christian Bloggers Survey. We were asked to post the list of those who participated - so here it is.

The results of the poll will be posted at Church Communications Pro, as well as in Rick Warren’s Ministry ToolBox.

Wednesday, 7 February 2007

What is the emerging church?

Here are two brief video introductions to the emerging church.


Ryan Bolger:

Eddie Gibbs:


Ryan Bolger’s blog: TheBolgBlog; Bolger’s class site

Tuesday, 6 February 2007

SMOG

A couple of days ago I posted a useful tool for analysing a text. Here is another tool - this one measures the readability of a text - the lower the number the easier it is to read it is called a SMOG test. SMOG - Simplified Measure of Gobbeldygook (I kid you not) - was devised by Harry McLaughlin in 1969. Details are available here and the code for the test is here.


Sunday, 4 February 2007

What is the emerging church?

Scott McKnight excellent piece on the emerging church has now been published on-line at Christianity Today. It is drawn from this paper he delivered at WTS in October 2006.





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Net Finney

Worried about Calvinism being the new emergent? Concerned for your loved ones stumbling over neocalvinsm sites on the web that might wreck their lives? Fear no more - there is Net Finney. Developed by a team at Liberty university, and named after revivalist Charles Finney, Net Finney filters out 99.9% of Calvinist and Reformed literature on the web. [HT Idiot Savant]





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Saturday, 3 February 2007

Analysing a text

There is a great tool to analyse a text at usingenglish.com. It provides a number of interesting statistics. The following are data from a section of Dooyeweerd's New Critique of Theoretical Thought:

A word cloud:



Wednesday, 31 January 2007

Snap - update


Apparently it's easy to disable Snap on websites. Lifehacker has the gen here.

A few links

There is a fascinating conference on 'Karl Barth and American Evangelicals: Friends or Foes?' 24-27 June. Details here [HT Generous Orthodoxy ThinkTank]. Speakers include D G Hart and George Harinck, Michael Horton, John Franke and Kevin Hector. Topics include Barth and ... Van Til, emergent, radical orthodoxy, neo-anabaptism ....

Lifehack has 26 tips to keep your computer up and functioning - this is rather close to my heart as my computer malfunctioned over Christmas and the New Year, I had to reformat it and lost a lot of information.

To Snap or not to snap?
I've been using snap for a few weeks now - and becoming increasingly frustrated with it. So too have a number of other bloggers: here and here. There is also a poll here [HT Bill Kinnon What do others think?

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Monday, 29 January 2007

Odds and sods

Macht of Prosthesis has a great blog on Telic thoughts : 'Emergent properties, abstraction and reductionism'. He provides an excellent illustration of the abstraction of science:

That is, when scientists try to make general theories about something they strip the phenomenon of all its "unnecessary" qualities and properties and only look at the relevant ones. For example, if I want to come up with a general theory of projectile motion, I don't have much need for information about what my projectile is made of or how much it costs or what color it is. Very often, I won't even care what shape my projectile is (I'll just assume it to be a point-mass). All I'll be concerned about is the initial velocity of the projectile, it's mass, the force of gravity at my experiment location, its initial angle of motion, and the height it falls. In all likelihood, I'll make a further abstraction of the motion into vertical and horizontal components of motion and look at those separately. And I haven't even begun to mention things like the legal properties of the projectile (maybe it's a hollow-point bullet and not legal in some places) or the biological properties of the projectile (maybe it's a human cannonball).

Abstraction is a vital and necessary part of doing science. But it can be a problem if we forget that abstractions are being made and we end up mistaking the abstraction for the reality.



Ben Myers at Faith and philosophy has a post on 10 theses on B. B. Warfield; the first of which is: 'It is fashionable to disparage B.B. Warfield without having actually read his work'!

The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion are organising a short course on 'Science and religion in schools' 30 March - 1 April.

The post-charismatic Roby Mac has a fascinating post with some relevant warnings on 're-monking the church'.

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Saturday, 27 January 2007

Presbymergent

Presbymergent is a new website for Presbyterians who are also Emergent:



It is our hope that this website will serve as a portal for all who are interested in connecting with Presbyterian and emerging pastors, leaders and lay people who are interested in and wrestling with how to live in and work in a “presbymergent” world. We hope that people will share their stories and thoughts.





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The Christian Idea of the State

 

On 3 October 1936 Dooyeweerd delivered a lecture on 'The Christian idea of the State'. This was subsequenty translated by John Kraay and published by the Craig Press in 1968. I have recently obtained a copy of this book and have started a blog/study guide on it here.

Friday, 26 January 2007

I'm a teetotaler!


I've just discovered that I'm a teetotaler - at least in terms of the original meaning according to Transformatum.

I never have liked tea. The only tea I can drink is nettle tea.

Thursday, 25 January 2007

Dooyeweerd's philosophy of aesthetics

Glenn Friesen has recently posted his paper 'Dooyeweerd's philosophy of aesthetics: a response to Zuidervaart's critique' on his website. He concludes:



Reformational philosophy has not understood Dooyeweerd’s ideas on imagination. As a consequence, Dooyeweerd’s ideas of perception, aesthetic imagination and theoretical thought have also been misunderstood. This is particularly so insofar as reformational philosophy follows the philosophy of Vollenhoven, who did not accept the importance of imagination, and who also rejected Dooyeweerd’s other key ideas, including those of the supratemporal selfhood, individuality structures, enkapsis, and even Dooyeweerd’s meaning of ‘modal aspect.’

Zuidervaart’s critique of Dooyeweerd is related to his failure to distinguish Dooyeweerd’s philosophy from that of Vollenhoven. As a result, Zuidervaart has not properly understood Dooyeweerd’s philosophy of aesthetics. This includes a failure to consider what Dooyeweerd himself says about imagination as an act that proceeds from out of our supratemporal selfhood, the role of imagination in perception, and the nature of individuality structures and of their enkaptic interlacements. Had he separated Dooyeweerd’s philosophy from Vollenhoven’s philosophy, Zuidervaart might have reached different conclusions. Of course, Zuidervaart might have still rejected Dooyeweerd’s aesthetics. But the arguments used to understand and ultimately accept or reject Dooyeweerd’s aesthetics would necessarily be different from those that Zuidervaart has advanced in this article.

Dooyeweerd’s philosophy of aesthetics depends on his very powerful ideas on imagination, by which we reflect God’s Wisdom, and so open up temporal creation in a way that unfolds its potentialities. And these potentialities are not mere static Ideas in the sense of ‘eidos,’ but they are endlessly dynamic within God’s even more limitless and dynamic Wisdom. And our artistic creation, like other acts of opening up the temporal world, help to make that world real, to fulfill it and to redeem it.





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Saturday, 20 January 2007

WYSOCS 21st Birthday Weekend

June 2007 sees the celebrations for 21 years of WYSOCS. The special guest and speaker is Bishop Tom Wright. On 25th June 5 pm he will be speaking on 'Thinking about God in tomorrow's world' and then on 26th June 10.30 am on 'Whatever did Paul do with the kingdom of God'. There is also lots of food!


Full details are available here.

Rowan on YouTube?

Gill, of Sandbox, has a fascinating post based on rumours in the Sunday Telegraph (For TouTube, read PewTube)that Rowan Williams is planning to use YouTube to broadcast his sermons.



Gill wonders if this is rather like building a large Victorian church in an Indian fishing village; jonnybaker wonders if this might not be categorical imperialism.



I'm not so sure .... I suppose it depends on what we mean by 'sermon' and if it is any good! And couldn't the same arguments be applied to podcasts, mp3s and DVDs?





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Thursday, 18 January 2007

ASCII-0-Matic


December's Zygon

December's Zygon journal is now out. It has three articles from the 'Einstein, God and time' conference by John Hedley Brooke, Antie Jackelen and John Polkinghorne. Abstracts can be obtained from here.





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Wednesday, 17 January 2007

Philip Edgecumbe Hughes on Dooyeweerd

Of particular significance is the development of Herman Dooyeweerd - a work of immense erudition - constructed in loyalty to the principles of the biblical revelation which are also the principles of Reformed thought. (Dooyeweerd will frown at finding himslef placed among theologians in this volume; but his philosophy is erected upon a genuinely theological foundation.) His purpose has been to construct a philosophy, which being authentically Christian, penetrates to every sphere of human life and activity. In doing so, however, he has engaged in a transcendental critique of pilosophy as a science in its specific manifestations throughout the centuries and has shown how the only system which is not incapacitated by insoluble inner contradictions os that which is founded on the creation-fall-redemption ground-motive of the biblical revelation. Herman Dooyeweerd ahs given a notable lead as with singelness of purpose and intellectual integrity he has devoted himself to the creative task of the Christian thinker
.
Philip Edgecumbe Hughes 'The creative task of theology' in Creative Mind in contemporary Theology (ed. Hughes). Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1966; p. 24.

Saturday, 13 January 2007

F J Stahl Publishing Project

Ruben Alvarado of Wordbridge Publishing has completed a biography, and the first part of a translation, of Friedrich Julius Stahl. Details of the project are here and a blog dedicated to the stahl project is here.



Stahl (1802-161) was the founder of the antirevolutionry party in Germany and greatly influenced Guillame Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876).



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Thursday, 11 January 2007

Worth checking out

Macht has a link to a review by Plantinga on Dawkins's God Delusion.



Rudi has two interesting posts on Jonathan Chaplin on liberalism and telerance.



The Evangelical Outpost declared it Atheism Appreciation Week.



Giveawayoftheday is a new(ish) site that offers a new piece of commercial software (legitimately) - the only catch is that is is only available to download in a 24 hour window.








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The Forgotten Ways

Alan Hirsch, author of The Forgotten Ways, has a blog here. In his book he poses the question:



How did the number of Christians in the world grow from as few as 25,000 one hundred years after Christ’s death to up to 20 million in AD 310? He then goes on to add:

And before you respond, here are some qualifications you must factor into your answer.

• They were an illegal religion throughout this period. At best, they were tolerated; at the very worst they were very severely persecuted.

• They didn’t have any church buildings as we know them. While archaeologists have discovered chapels dating from this period, they were definitely exceptions to the rule, and they tended to be very small converted houses.

• They didn’t even have the scriptures as we know them. They were putting the canon together during this period.

• They didn’t have an institution or the professional form of leadership normally associated with it. At times of relative calm, prototypical elements of institution did appear, but by what we consider institutional, these were at best pre-institutional.

• They didn’t have seeker-sensitive services, youth groups, worship bands, seminaries, commentaries, etc.

• They actually made it hard to join the church. By the late second century, aspiring converts had to undergo a significant initiation period to prove they were worthy.







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Wednesday, 10 January 2007

H. G. Stoker translations in process

John Steyn, of the Omnipotent grace blog, is in the process of translatiing some of the South Afican H G Stoker's work. Hendrik Gerhardus Stoker (1899-199?) was born in Johannesburg and taught at the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education. He served on the board of the journal Philosophia Reformata; very litle of his work has been published to date in English. But hopefully that will soon change. John Steyn on his blog comments:

It is quite a process [translating Stoker]. Stoker, as did Dooyeweerd, made up their own terminology to get certain ideas across, and you have to try and understand the context to make sure you get an acurate translation done.

Furthermore, the parts that I have finished need to go for review with his son, and/or with one of the other professors in South Africa.

So I am sorry to say, I am busy, but there is nothing I can release yet. I am not the intellectual property right owner, so I cannot even publish an unofficial version.

I have reserved a website name already, and I am hoping that I can publish some stuff there pretty soon, in the form of my own commentary on his thoughts. Check back often, I will include it in my links as soon as it is up and running.

Saturday, 6 January 2007

The book of nature

I have never really liked the metaphor of God's two books, ie, the book of scripture and the book of nature. Augustine was one of the first to formulate an early version of what could be construed as the two books metaphor:

"It is the divine page that you must listen to; it is the book of the universe that you must observe. The pages of Scripture can only be read by those who know how to read and write, while everyone, even the illiterate, can read the book of the universe” . Enarrationes in Psalmos, XLV, 7 (PL 36,518).

Robert Crease also has some qualms about it. In an article in Decemebr 2006's Physics World he looks at 'The book of nature' and concludes:
...the image of the book of nature can haunt us today. One reason is that it implies the existence of an ultimate coherent truth – a complete text or "final theory". While many scientists may believe this, it is ultimately only a belief, and it is far likelier that we will endlessly find more in nature as our concepts and technology continue to evolve. Furthermore, the image suggests that the "text" of the book of nature has a divine origin. The idea that the world was the oeuvre of a superhuman author was the precursor of the idea that it was the engineering project of an intelligent designer. This implication has led some contemporary sociologists of science to succumb to the temptation of characterizing scientists as behaving, and seeking to behave, in a priest-like manner.

The most important lesson to be found in Galileo's image is the need to keep developing and revising the metaphors with which we speak about science.

My problem with the metaphor is it seems to sugest that science is a neutral activity and that it is independent of any religious belief. Frank Manuel in his The Religion of Isaac Newton (OUP, 1974) pp. 27-8, sums it up well:
Those who inclined towards developing the idea of neutrality, or separateness, or autonomy, of science took a position that became epitomized in the metaphor of the two books, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature, both created by God as manifestations of His omnipotence and omniscience, but books different in character that had to be kept apart.
And why only two books? Isn't God active in history and other areas as well?

Newbigin also has some pertinent things to say about it:

Graf Reventlow's [Henning Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World, London: SCM Press,1984] study shows how, during the latter part of the seventeenth and through the eighteenth centuries, while ordinary churchgoers continued to live in the world of the Bible, intellectuals were more and more controlled by the humanist tradition, so that even those who sought to defend the Christian faith did so on the basis that it was "reasonable", that is to say, that it did not contradict the fundamental humanist assumption. Reviewing the story, one can see how the defence moved through successive tactical retreats. There was, to begin with, the view that God has provided two ways of making himself known to us: the book which we call the Bible, and the book of nature.

Truths which we cannot by the exercise of reason read from the book of nature, are provided for us as a sort of supplementary source, from the Bible. We are not, in this view, part of a story, a drama of creation, fall, redemption and consummation. We are in a timeless world where timeless truths, valid for all times and all peoples, are being communicated in two different ways. As the eighteenth century rolls on, we find that the really essential truths are available to us from the book of nature, from reason and conscience; the truths which we can only learn from the Bible are of minor importance, adiaphora about which we need not quarrel. But inexorably we move on to the point where the Bible is subjected to the scrutiny of reason and conscience and is found to be full of inconsistencies, absurdities, tall stories, and plain immorality.

"What is striking about the books which were written, especially during the eighteenth century, to defend Christianity against these attacks, is the degree to which they accept the assumptions of their assailants. Christianity is defended as being reasonable. It can be accommodated within these assumptions, which all reasonable people hold. There is little suggestion that the assumptions themselves are to be challenged. The defence is, in fact, a tactical retreat. But as later history has shown, these tactical retreats can - if repeated often enough - begin to look more like a rout."

(Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, London: SPCK, 1989, pages 2-3)

Friday, 5 January 2007

Dooyeweerd from Nelson's New Christian Dictionary

Dooyeweerd, Herman (1894–1977) Dutch Calvinist philosopher. Dooyeweerd spent his entire teaching career (1926–1965) at the Calvinist Free University of Amsterdam. He taught that religion is at the heart of all human activities, that Christians need to be guided by the Holy Spirit in their efforts to be engaged in social reforms, and that diversity of gifts must be respected and encouraged. He set forth these ideas in A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (4 vols., 1953–1958), The Twilight of Western Thought (1960), and Roots of Western Culture (1979).



From Kurian, G. T. 2001. Nelson's New Christian Dictionary: The authoritative resource on the Christian world. Thomas Nelson Pubs.: Nashville, Tenn.



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