![\"moral19\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/292\/2009\/02\/moral19.gif?w=300\")
The biography of the conference\u2019s last session speaker, Greg Thornbury:<\/p>\nThe biography of the conference\u2019s last session speaker, Greg Thornbury:<\/p>\n
\u201cGregory Alan Thornbury, PhD is the founding Dean of the School of Christian Studies at Union University, where he teaches philosophy and theology. Since 2002, He has served as Senior Fellow for The Kairos Journal (New York), an online research tool designed to help pastors and church leaders engage public square issues. The editor of two volumes and the author of numerous essays, his work has appeared in The American Spectator, Breakpoint Magazine, and other publications. In addition to his work at Union University, he has become a popular campus lecturer and conference speaker on the intersection between theology and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
The following are the remarks of Greg Thornbury from his talk \u201cMugged by the Enlightenment: The Prospects for ![\"gregthornbury-1501\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/292\/2009\/02\/gregthornbury-1501.jpg\")
Natural Law & Christian Witness in a \u2018Show-Don\u2019t-Tell\u2019 World.\u201d<\/p>\n
Irving Kristol memorably said, a neoconservative is \u201ca liberal who has been mugged by reality.\u201d\u00a0 According to Thornbury, a young evangelical today is one who has been mugged by the ugly idea that their beliefs make them a social leper.<\/p>\n
Are fewer and fewer people listening to evangelicals today, we wonder?\u00a0 If, as I will argue, people are irrepressibly religious beings, why is secularism advancing so rapidly in Europe and now America?\u00a0 I will attempt to trace this out.\u00a0 If some of this sounds like a mea culpa, then that is certainly intentional.\u00a0 If the Christian community is indeed interested in a future for \u201cmaking men moral.\u201d then perhaps it is appropriate to begin not with an apologetic, but with the words \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having noted the foibles and subsequent decline of Western institutional religion, I move on to discuss the persistence of transcendence and the reality that secularism fails to offer a better solution for cultural flourishing.\u00a0 Finally, I want to look at two key ideas: reason and revelation, and ask if there is hope for rapprochement between natural law and theologies of revelation when it comes to the project of re-introducing the Christian witness to the Western world?<\/p>\n
In 1887, Friedrich Nietzsche inscribed in his notebook that \u201cGod is much too extreme hypothesis.\u201d\u00a0 Depsite earnest attempts to do away with it in modern times, however, it seems clear that religion cannot and will not go away.\u00a0 Faith shapes culture.\u00a0 It is simply a matter of which belief system a society chooses and how effective that faith is at nourishing the animating impulses of a people.\u00a0 Which religious expression\/identity will capture the minds of this generation?\u00a0 Goethe put it well: \u201cThe destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinions of its young men under twenty-five.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wars of Religion: Public Damage to Christian Credibility The 16th and 17th centuries did little to help this situation.\u00a0 The French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), with such awful events as the St. Bartholomew\u2019s Day massacre, still live on in infamy.\u00a0 It\u00a0seemed clear in this age that religion was inextricably connected with violence, a claim that is hard to shake.\u00a0 Martin Luther also did not help the situation much.\u00a0 With his \u201ctwo kingdoms\u201d model, Luther sowed the seeds for the demise of religion\u2019s role as a source of cultural authority.\u00a0 Certainly Luther could not have imagined a Germany in which the princes would no longer take stock of their religious heritage.\u00a0 On the heels of the Reformation, the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) further besmirched the reputation of religion\u2019s involvement in matters of the state.<\/p>\n The Plausibility of Secularism In the English-speaking world, no philosopher levied a more trenchant critique of theology\u2019s role in forming government than Thomas Hobbes.\u00a0 The author of Leviathan<\/em> sought to remove political questions from the arena of theological debates, and turned them into a science of common sense and natural justice.\u00a0 The 20th-century did not realize the inflated dreams of the Enlightenment thinkers like Hobbes and Voltaire.\u00a0 The First and Second World Wars, Mao\u2019s Revolution, Stalin\u2019s slaughter of innocents, and the killing fields of Cambodia wrought horrors of proportions never previously seen.\u00a0 In the place of a literal hell to punish those who did evil in this life when they die, George Steiner observed in 1970, modern ideologies had instead relocated hell above ground.\u00a0 The problem, then, seemed not to be religious ideas about man, but man himself.<\/p>\n Certitude, resultingly, is in short supply today.\u00a0 As a result of these disillusioning events, many people today buy fully into the postmodern project to subvert, resist and undermine ideologies that oppress groups who live on the boundaries of culture.\u00a0 And yet nihilism seems scarce today.\u00a0 Thornbury heard an NPR interview with David Bowie some time ago in which Bowie confessed that his music had become more hopeful and transcendent with the birth and growth of his child.\u00a0 Despite this kind of thinking, prevalent today, a more substantive response is necessary to best handle the renewed cultural interest in transcendence.<\/p>\n Hope for Rapprochement Between Natural Law and Theologies of Revelation Sometimes, Jedi mind tricks work, as in Episode Four with the storm troopers.\u00a0 Sometimes, however, you run into Jabba the Hut.\u00a0 Stephen Pinker is Jabba the Hut (showed a picture of Pinker, much laughter).\u00a0 Quoted Pinker at length, noting that his assessment was neither right or insightful, but proceeds from a strong sense of gamesmanship.\u00a0 Try as you might\u00a0to persuade an audience that your position on human dignity is derived purely from natural law, Pinker claims,\u00a0as long as bear the stigmata of being a Christian, you might as well go ahead and cite Scripture passages in support of your position.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to fall prey to guilt by association one way or the other.<\/p>\n Also, people often embrace truth through their passions, their pre-theoretical faith commitments, not always through the exercise of reason.\u00a0 Michael Polanyi has pointed this out.<\/p>\n Despite these concerns, all hands are needed on deck.\u00a0 These concerns about natural law are being addressed.\u00a0 Example: John Wilson-Michael Novak exchange in Books and Culture<\/em> over Novak\u2019s No One Sees God.<\/em> On the one hand, Wilson notes, Novak forcefully counters the New Atheism by use of the rational proofs for God\u2019s existence.\u00a0 On the other hand, Wilson notes that both the atheist and the believer must live in darkness.\u00a0 At first, Thornbury thought Wilson had Novak in a bind.\u00a0 However, Novak countered in National Review<\/em> that in the world of the heart, there is a \u201cdark knowledge of \u201cthe cloud of unknowing.\u201d\u00a0 The heart has its reasons that reason cannot comprehend.<\/p>\n Thornbury also read J. Budziszewski published his essay \u201cNatural Law Revealed\u201d in Firs Things, <\/em>where the professor spoke eloquently of the ways in which the book of revelation affirms and narrates the mirror of nature.\u00a0 This resonated.\u00a0 Nothing could restore the fortunes of historic Christianity more in postmodern times than a unified thesis of public reasons for traditional morality complemented by an authentic recognition that there is an existential dimension for why people disagree with our views on marriage, abortion, and other related life issues.<\/p>\n Hope for the Church After the Crisis\u00a0of Faith in Institutional Religion<\/strong> Conclusion My Take I\u2019m not going to get into the natural law-theology of revelation debate here.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have the time or energy right now to do so.\u00a0 I would commend the audio to you for further inquiry into this subject.\u00a0 I will say that I very much appreciated Thornbury\u2019s call for the church to retain its prophetic witness in the culture.\u00a0 I liked very much that he called for young evangelicals especially to not bury their heads in their hands over their loss of cultural influence, but to work very hard to be salt and light in the broader culture.\u00a0 This is surely the right approach to the loss of Christian influence in our society, and in all societies.<\/p>\n Thornbury is a fun speaker with a lively mind, an eloquent pen, and a clear heart for the church.\u00a0 I\u00a0like very much that he doesn\u2019t join the chorus of commentators who slam Carl Henry, but instead recognizes that he\u00a0was a tremendously gifted Christian leader who is far less intellectually\u00a0spotty or unaware\u00a0than\u00a0is sometimes claimed.\u00a0 \u00a0Carl Henry had his faults, as we all do, but he does not deserve to be swept under the rug.\u00a0 He is the most significant evangelical theologian of the 20th-century, and he deserves to be remembered as such and appreciated for it.<\/p>\n We are now heading off to chapel, where Robby George is speaking.\u00a0 Following that, I\u2019ll be blogging the final event of the conference, a lunch at which Hadley Arkes of Amherst College will speak.\u00a0 The conference, just for the record, continues to be intellectually stimulating and very well-executed.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The biography of the conference\u2019s last session speaker, Greg Thornbury: \u201cGregory Alan Thornbury, PhD is the founding Dean of the School of Christian Studies at Union University, where he teaches philosophy and theology. 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\n<\/strong>Secularism becomes plausible in light of certain events in 17th and 18th-century Europe.\u00a0 The first event is Savanarola\u2019s attempt to purify the church in 15th-century Florence.\u00a0 Despite his best efforts, he was condemned by Rome and eventually burned at the stake.\u00a0 Niccolo Machiavelli took note of this and concluded that what mattered for the supposedly religious prince was not religious zeal but the power to enforce one\u2019s will on others.\u00a0 Those who have followed Machiavelli have concluded one of two things about the Church: it is either corrupt or moralistic.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>The wars of religion had a deep influence on leading European thinkers.\u00a0 Voltaire cried, \u201cCrush religious superstition!\u201d\u00a0 And when Kant declare, \u201cSapere aude<\/em>,\u201d or, have courage to use your own reason (the Enlightenment\u2019s motto), we can see the impetus behind this declaration of cultural independence from the dictates of the clergy and the theologians.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>I have been something of a skeptic when it comes to the persuasive power of natural law in matters related to public square issues.\u00a0 I was profoundly influenced by theologian Carl F. H. Henry, who had little truck with natural law theory.\u00a0 He mentored me and exercised a profound influence on my thinking, for he had a staunchly revelation-centric epistemology.\u00a0 Others in recent days have also questioned the efficacy of natural law in questions of morality that don\u2019t get into theology and revelation.\u00a0 Straussians, for example, doubt the potential of the natural law approach to solving matters like the marriage debate.\u00a0 The consense on natural law seems to have weakened some.<\/p>\n
\nThe church\u2019s failure to resist the Nazis weakened its cultural position, and understandably so.\u00a0 It was not the Protestants but the Catholic German territories that protested against the Nazis, while many German Christians of other groups welcomed the Fuhrer with open arms.\u00a0 Quoted Bonhoeffer at length to make the point that he believed that the church from this point forward would need not to seek great things for itself, but rather needed to seek the welfare of the actual communities in which churches find themselves.\u00a0 Therefore, everyone should see that the church is there, for them and for their children.\u00a0 We need this kind of Bonhoeffer-like witness.\u00a0 It is not quietism\u2013Bonhoeffer protested all the way to the gallows.\u00a0 He called on fellow Christians to be prophetic.\u00a0 But he realized that the church\u2019s structures of power had failed in the Second World War.\u00a0 The prophetic tradition must be strong, as it had been in protesting slavery, and the excesses of Roman culture, and in many other eras.\u00a0 This must be manifested in a life\u2013it was Christians who stayed behind in times of plagues in centuries past, while the elites and bluebloods fled.\u00a0 This had a powerful effect on the culture.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>We pray now that young evangelicals would not be so concerned that the culture does not like us, but that would seek to be \u201cin the city, for the city,\u201d being the moral conscience of the culture.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Following the talk, Francis Beckwith of Baylor University responded to the talk.\u00a0 Here\u2019s where things started to heat up, as Beckwith responded to Thornbury\u2019s critique of natural law.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t time for heated debate, but it was clear that much could be said.<\/p>\n