ReEnchantment

In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor describes the differences in the Western world between the year 1500 and the year 2000. He describes the year 1500 as an age of Enchantment, when people believed that fulfillment was found outside of themselves, and saw non-human entities (angels, evil spirits, relics, icons, etc.) having causal influence over their lives. The year 2000, on the other hand, is marked by progress in the sciences and a greater understanding of the world in which we live, leading to an age of disenchantment. No longer do people believe that angels or evil spirits have any sort of causal influence on their lives, and fulfillment is found within the mind. There are no spirits bringing weather patterns as a result of sin or charity, only the laws of nature describing normal occurences.

For the most part though, Christians still believe in outside causal influences. Only now we cannot hold these beliefs naively, as Taylor would say. A Christian can watch the weather channel and see hurricanes forming along with the atheist. So what does it mean to say that a hurricane is sent as judgment on a city, or to pray that a hurricane not hit? Are certain hurricanes somehow injected with purpose, while others are simply the right mixture of weather patterns and waves?


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I want to become reenchanted with the world, but not with any sort of ignorance. To stand in awe of the God who created the stars, while understanding and acknowledging the natural existence of stars themselves. When I was little, I would see with ultimate wonder the beauties of nature as a sign pointing to the creator of nature. And I was a great philosopher then. All children are great philosophers. It only takes a seven year old son repeatedly asking his dad "why?" for every answer the dad gives him about why things are the way they are to see that. It's only when we become older that we become satisfied with simple answers and forget that our questions might actually be bigger than that.


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It is one thing for a scientist to tell you the history of cellular organisms, but another thing for the philosopher to tell you the purpose of cellular organisms. As Christians, we have to have open ears, wide eyes, and thoughtful mouths with our dialogue partners in the sciences and philosophies. Because purpose is still extremely important, and that means we still have a place at the table.

Descartes' Skull

This is the skull of Rene Descartes. Across his forehead is a Latin poem celebrating his genius, as well as an accusation of theft written in Swedish. Descartes believed that the mind and body were completely separate things, and the irony of his skull being separated from his bones has been noted by several sources.

But anyway, the skull of Rene Descartes is now kept under lock and key at an anthropology museum in Paris, Musee de l'Homme. In 2005, Russell Shorto went to this museum to see the skull for himself. The director of conservation led Shorto to the basement, where he took the skull out from its box where it is currently kept and presented it for his viewing...

"Voila le philosophe."

Carry The Weight

The new Denison Witmer album, Carry the Weight, is out. I just got it but haven't been able to listen to it much yet.

When I first moved to Pompano Beach in 05 (post Katrina), Denison's last album, Are You a Dreamer?, came out. I drove all around that afternoon and couldn't find it anywhere. Finally, at one record store an employee told me they had been given a promo copy of the album. He gave it to me, with the promise that I wouldn't tell anyone. That cd was so valuable to me that when I got to Brad and Mandi's apartment for Bible Study later that night, I actually brought it inside with me.

Sometimes I would listen to that album at night time while I read Celebration of Discipline or Orthodoxy. That was an incredible year of openness and discovery in my life, embracing Richard Foster and G.K. Chesterton and the emergent church. And Denison's music was the soundtrack to all of that.


"When did we decide that life had to be
All facts and checks, that we lost mystery?"

New Books

A few new books that I'm really enjoying or have recently enjoyed:

Born Standing Up - Steve Martin
Descartes' Bones - Russel Shorto
The Best of All Possible Worlds - Steven Nadler
Warranted Christian Belief - Alvin Plantinga

Since college I had written Descartes off as a guy with one pithy phrase ("I think, therefore I am") and an outdated idea ('ghost in the machine'/soul-body complete distinction). But I've recently realized how important Descartes is for modern philosophy, and Descartes' Bones is an excellent history of the man and his philosophy, really well written by New York Times columnist Russel Shorto. Nadler's book is a sequel of sorts to the Descartes book, as it traces his line of thought and the reaction to it through three important philosophers (Malebranche, Liebnitz, Arnauld). I'm a big fan of both of these books, and they are both extremely accessible, historical, fun accounts to read.

I have a few areas of study that I want to try to blog about soon, such as whether God intervenes in life and what that might look like, and whether we actually have distinct, immaterial souls. So I'm going to try to work on that.

Oh, and the Steve Martin book is amazing. Makes me appreciate his stand-up way more than I already did.

God and the Weird Old Testament

Joshua 10: 28 - That day Joshua took Mekkedah. He put the city and its king to the sword and totally destroyed everyone in it. He left no survivors.

Joshua 10: 40 - So Joshua subdued the whole region... He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel had commanded.

Joshua 11: 20 - So it was the Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Joshua 23: 12 - But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, then you may be sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you.

(from the TNIV)


I heard Paul Copan, who is a really good philosophy professor at Palm Beach Atlantic, give a lecture-response to the New Atheist Club on God commanding acts in the Old Testament that seem unethical. The most popular example of this is when God tells Joshua to completely wipe out all the Canaanites in the book of Joshua.

First, Copan suggested that the O.T. texts be handled with more care than the New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, etc) have done in their recent books. Then he gave several suggestions on how to better read and understand the texts, some of which I thought were really helpful. Here are his suggestions:

-Israel would not have been justified to attack the Canaanites without YHWH's command
-Wiping out the Canaanite's religion was the goal
-The language of Joshua was hyperbolic (compare Joshua 23 with 9-12, where 9-12 utilize Ancient Near Eastern terms of warfare)
-The crux of the issue is that if God exists, he has prerogative over human life, whereas the New Atheists seem to think he should have no special place)


I really liked his third point the most, where when the two texts mentioned are compared, you can come away with a sense of hyperbole within the text. He spoke more on other issues involving the O.T. (law of Moses, slavery, sex, etc.), that I might put up later because I really learned from all of the lecture.

All the Earth is the Lord's

I think one of the drawbacks of the reformers (among the many excellent things they did) was their negative attitude toward natural theology. But I am excited now because I think that nature is beginning to make a comeback in theology. Hopefully a correct view of nature in Christian doctrine can help us better refute statements like this:

“Evolution is part of a much broader and older inquiry and a deeper contest for our intellectual commitment, a contest between a world system that expects every part of the cosmos ultimately to be explainable in terms of natural properties and processes and one that maintains the existence of a fundamental core of unknowability, of supernatural mystery and controlling hand of an eternal non-worldly Being. This may be humankind’s oldest intellectual puzzle.” (from the preface to Keith Thomson's Before Darwin)

Now, my main disagreement with this sentiment is that modern science was founded upon the Christian belief that if God made nature then it would have order and be worth studying. But now certain individuals within the scientific community want to assign a God-of-the-gaps to Christianity, and then dismantle that God by showing how orderly and knowable the world is (Not that we really know that much about the world now).

I just got Allister McGrath's The Open Secret: A New Vision For Natural Theology and am really excited about it, not only as a means of the defense of nature as God's creation but as an eye opening account of nature that leads me to worship God more when I look out at the night sky.

Possible Textual Worlds

The original text from Mark 1: 1-12 has really moved me in a new way lately as I've thought about it. But what if the ending was slightly changed?

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from Mark 1:

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

Then, turning from the paralytic on the mat, Jesus continued teaching all those in the house. And when Jesus was done teaching, the man's friends carried him away.