In Part One of his book Adventures in the Spirit: God, World, Divine Action, Philip Clayton explores the methods of philosophy and theology. Chapter 1 is entitled “Critical Faith: Theology in the Midst of the Sciences”, and it begins by setting forth the goal of the studies included here, which is “to develop and defend a form of contemporary theology that shares in the adventure of human inquiry across the sciences and philosophy, across the humanities and the world religions,... Read more

Ben Shapiro at Big Hollywood has some interesting philosophical reflections on LOST, coupled with some speculations about what happens next (HT SF Signal). Read more

Today in my Sunday school class we talked about Islam. In recent weeks, we had turned to the subject of how Christians might/should view other religions, and it was felt that those in the class would benefit from learning more about other religions. It is hard, if not impossible, to discuss how one might view them without knowing something about them, after all! Much of this resulted from one person in the class expressing surprise that I’m pretty sure others... Read more

Some excellent reflections on the season 5 finale of LOST have been posted at Entertainment Weekly by Doc Jensen (HT Carmen Andres, who also has posted her own thoughts about the episode). Here’s a sample, which represents his own theory about the significance of certain events: Much of the castaways’ history — including the crash of Oceanic 815 — has been molded and manipulated by the entity that is the Nameless Man In Black, an intricate, divine conspiracy whose ultimate... Read more

Let me say it from the outset: this post will discuss last night’s episode, the finale of the penultimate season of LOST. If you don’t want to learn what happens in that episode just yet, or you don’t want answers to some of the questions viewers of that episode were left with, then read no further. SPOILERS AHEAD! Let me begin with a translation (kindly provided by Chris Jones) of the answer to the question/riddle “What lies in the shadow... Read more

Hachette Book Group would like to offer five copies of Robert Wright’s brand new book The Evolution of God to five readers of this blog. I will have copies sent to the first five who either send me an e-mail or leave a comment requesting a copy. I’m afraid that this opportunity is only for blog readers in North America, and that copies of the book cannot be sent to post office boxes. Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:... Read more

I’m grateful to Pat McCullough for drawing my attention to recent posts on the blog In The Corner With Matt. Among other interesting things, I found a quote from a recent book by Rodney Stark about history and evidence that paralleled some of my own thoughts over the past couple of days. The “postmodern” challenge against “objectivity” and “impartiality” is helpful inasmuch as it leads us to humbly acknowledge that we have not achieved objectivity or impartiality ourselves. But those... Read more

“Doubts in the matter of religion, far from being acts of impiety, ought to be seen as good works, when they belong to a man who humbly recognizes his ignorance and is motivated by the fear of displeasing God by the abuse of reason.” – Denis Diderot, Addition aux Pensées philosophiques, par. 1, in Diderot, Oeuvres Complète (1875), 1:158 (quoted by Philip Clayton). Read more

There have been some incredibly substantive posts around the blogosphere over the past couple of days. In the domain of New Testament: Loren Rosson has an extensive overview and review of John P. Meier’s latest volume on the historical Jesus. Michael Barber considered the historicity of the temple incident. Mike Koke asked about pseudonymous works in the canon. David Ker wrestled with the relationship between history and hagiography. Unorthodoxology reviewed Ehrman’s Jesus, Interrupted. Anumma asks whether it is worth scholars’... Read more

A comment on my previous post got me thinking about the image of “cafeteria Christianity” – the idea being of a smorgasbord from which one picks and chooses, which is not in and of itself necessarily a bad thing. I’d like to explore the metaphor further. All who consider themselves Christians are in the cafeteria. The difference is that some of us enter delighting the buffet, eager to taste new things and help ourselves to a little of this and... Read more