Download or read book Rethinking Philosophy in Light of the Bible written by Brayton Polka and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking Philosophy in Light of the Bible analyzes the ideas that are central to the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard in order to show that they are biblical in origin, both ontologically and historically. Brayton Polka argues that Schopenhauer has an altogether false conception of the fundamental ideas of the Bible—creation, the Fall of Adam and Eve, and covenantal love—and of Christianity, which leaves his philosophy irredeemably contradictory, as he himself acknowledges. The aim, then, is to show that our modern values, the values that constitute modernity, are biblical in origin. It is only when we come to understand that modernity is biblical from the beginning and that the Bible is modern unto the end that we are able to overcome the opposition, so evident today, between philosophy and theology, between reason and faith, and between the secular and the religious. Polka makes central the distinction that Kierkegaard draws between Christianity and Christendom: Christianity represents the coming into historical existence of the single individual; Christendom represents Christian values that are rationalized in pagan terms. As Kierkegaard shows us, if God has always existed eternally, then he has never existed eternally, then he has never come into historical existence for the single individual. The distinction between Christianity and Christendom is the distinction not between faith and reason, but between truth and idolatry. While theology and philosophy each represent the truth of Christianity, Schopenhauer’s idolatrous concepts of faith, no less than of reason, represent Christendom.

Download or read book Rethinking Hell written by Christopher Date and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most evangelical Christians believe that those people who are not saved before they die will be punished in hell forever. But is this what the Bible truly teaches? Do Christians need to rethink their understanding of hell? In the late twentieth century, a growing number of evangelical theologians, biblical scholars, and philosophers began to reject the traditional doctrine of eternal conscious torment in hell in favor of a minority theological perspective called conditional immortality. This view contends that the unsaved are resurrected to face divine judgment, just as Christians have always believed, but due to the fact that immortality is only given to those who are in Christ, the unsaved do not exist forever in hell. Instead, they face the punishment of the "second death"--an end to their conscious existence. This volume brings together excerpts from a variety of well-respected evangelical thinkers, including John Stott, John Wenham, and E. Earl Ellis, as they articulate the biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments for conditionalism. These readings will give thoughtful Christians strong evidence that there are indeed compelling reasons for rethinking hell.

Download or read book Rethinking Philosophy and Theology with Deleuze written by Brent Adkins and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-04-11 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debate between faith and reason has been a dominant feature of Western thought for more than two millennia. This book takes up the problem of the relation between philosophy and theology and proposes that this relation can be reconceived if both philosophy and theology are seen as different ways of organising affects. Brent Adkins and Paul R. Hinlicky break new ground in this timely debate in two ways. Firstly, they lay bare the contemporary dependence on Kant and propose that our Kantian inheritance leaves us with an insuperable dualism. Secondly, the authors argue that the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze provides a way of resolving the debate between faith and reason that does justice to philosophy and theology by reconceiving of both as assemblages. Deleuze's philosophy differentiates domains of thought in terms of what they create. This seems like a particularly fruitful way to pursue the problem of the relations among philosophy and theology because it allows their distinction without at the same time placing them in opposition to one another.

Download or read book Rethinking Peter Singer written by Gordon R. Preece and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is Peter Singer?What does he say about issues like abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and animal rights? What does he say about Christianity? What exactly is his philosophy?"Peter Singer is probably the world's most famous or infamous contemporary philosopher," says Gordon Preece. Recently appointed as professor of bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, Singer is best known for his book on animal rights, Animal Liberation, and for his philosophical text Practical Ethics. But underneath his seemingly benign agenda lies perhaps the most radical challenge to Christian ethics proposed in recent times.In Rethinking Peter Singer four of Singer's contemporaries, fellow Australian scholars Gordon Preece, Graham Cole, Lindsay Wilson and Andrew Sloane, grapple with Singer's views respectfully but incisively. From a straightforwardly Christian perspective, they critique Singer's thought in four major areas: abortion and infanticide, euthanasia, animal rights, and Christianity.Rethinking Peter Singer is not only for those who want to understand Singer's views but also for all who want to challenge the thinking that more and more informs our society's stance on moral issues.

Download or read book Walk Away written by Lee Trepanier and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-07-19 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines key twentieth-century philosophers, theologians, and social scientists who began their careers with commitments to the political left only later to reappraise or reject them. Their reevaluation of their own previous positions reveals not only the change in their own thought but also the societal changes in the culture, economics, and politics to which they were reacting. By exploring the evolution of the political thought of these philosophers, this book draws connections among these thinkers and schools and discovers the general trajectory of twentieth-century political thinking in the West.

Download or read book Modernity between Wagner and Nietzsche written by Brayton Polka and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modernity between Wagner and Nietzsche analyzes the operas and writings of Wagner in order to prove that the ideas on which they are based contradict and falsify the values that are fundamental to modernity. This book also analyzes the ideas that are central to the philosophy of Nietzsche, demonstrating that the values on the basis of which he breaks with Wagner and repudiates their common mentor, Schopenhauer, are those fundamental to modernity. Brayton Polka makes use of the critical distinction that Kierkegaard draws between Christianity and Christendom. Christianity represents what Nietzsche calls the faith that is presupposed in unconditionally willing the truth in saying yes to life. Christendom, in contrast, represents the bad faith of nihilism in saying no to life. Polka then shows that Wagner, in following Schopenhauer, represents Christendom with the demonstration in his operas that life is nothing but death and death is nothing but life. In other words, the purpose of the will for Wagner is to annihilate the will, since it is only in and through death that human beings are liberated from life as willfully sinful. Nietzsche, in contrast, is consistent with the biblical concept that existence is created from nothing, from nothing that is not made in the image of God, that any claim that the will can will not to will is contradictory and hence false. For not to will is, in truth, still to will nothing. There is then, Nietzsche shows, no escape from the will. Either human beings will the truth in saying yes to life as created from nothing, or in truly willing nothing, they say no to life in worshiping the God of Christendom who is dead.

Download or read book Understanding Death as Life s Paradox written by Brayton Polka and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on death as life’s paradox in order to test, to put on trial, what it means for us human beings to exist. No one of us chooses to be born. Yet, having been born, we must choose to have been born, to live, to exist. To exist is to choose to exist. To choose to exist is to live with our choices. This text argues that death is the limit of life, that we can live freely and lovingly, at once justly and compassionately, solely within the limit of death. It shows that we can develop a comprehensive conception of life, and also of death, solely insofar as we learn to overcome the dualistic opposition between philosophy and theology that continues today to falsify our understanding of not only the secular, but also the sacred.

Download or read book Irreconcilable Differences written by Jason C. Robinson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if philosophy, theology, and science spent a little more time together? These fields often seem at odds, butting metaphysical heads. Instead of talking at, how about talking with one another? This book engages three academic disciplines--distinct yet sharing much in common--in a slice of conversation and community in which participants have aimed at validating the other and the way the other sees the world. The result is a collection of essays united by a thread that can be hard to find in academia. In bringing together a wide range of contributors on a project that at first seemed unlikely, Irreconcilable Differences? is also a testament to the spirit of cooperation and hard work--evidence that small acts and events can make a big difference, and that sometimes all you need in order to make something good happen is an idea with a little support along the way. The editors of this collection are hopeful that its contributors and readers will keep looking for ways to bridge academic, social, and political gaps. We need to forge relationships based on personal knowledge and proper confidence seeking to make meaningful claims in an increasingly complex world.

Download or read book The Impact of Innovative ICT Education and AI on the Pedagogical Paradigm written by Boris Aberšek and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To be a good teacher, one must acquire a large set of different kinds of interdisciplinary knowledge. Education for teachers and trainers consists, in part, of learning the language of education and the appropriate associated skills. A deeper understanding of judgments and choices also requires a richer vocabulary than is available in everyday language. On a systemic level, the education system needs to consider the individual as the basic building block of society, and further take into consideration the individual’s consciousness related to their emotional intelligence. Because a person’s consciousness is something entirely singular and inherent to the individual, some kind of generalization will have to be constructed, which will contribute enough in terms of novelty and progress, to make it innovative enough for the purposes of teaching and learning. This volume will serve to provoke cognitive dissonance and intellectual unease, as it explores cognitive theories and inspires researchers and teachers to update and invigorate some of the theories that have been embedded in their minds since their own school years. In order for this to happen, the book provides readers with many valuable insights and introduces new experiences resulting from alternative teaching practices.

Download or read book Imagining the Jewish God written by Leonard Kaplan and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-09-09 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish art has always been with us, but so has a broader canvas of Jewish imaginings: in thought, in emotion, in text, and in ritual practice. Imagining the Jewish God was there in the beginning, as it were, engraved and embedded in the ways Jews lived and responded to their God.This book attempts to give voice to these diverse imaginings of the Jewish God, and offers these collected essays and poems as a living text meant to provoke a substantive and nourishing dialogue. A responsive, living covenant lies at the heart of this book—a covenantal reciprocity that actively engages the dynamics of Jewish thinking and acting in dialogue with God. The contributors to this volume are committed to this form of textual reasoning, even as they all move us beyond the “text” as foundational for the imagined “people of the book.” That people, we submit, lives and breathes in and beyond the texts of poetry, narrative, sacred literature, film, and graphic mediums. We imagine the Jewish people, and the covenant they respond to, as provocative intimations of the divine. The essays in this volume seek to draw these vocal intimations out so that we can all hear their resonant call.

Download or read book Monstrous Fictions written by Carl J. Rasmussen and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-09-14 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reformer John Calvin has influenced America in a formative way. Calvin remains respected as a theologian to whose work intellectuals on both the right and left appeal. In the nineteen-nineties, Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) formed a politically influential ecumenical coalition to oppose abortion and change the culture. Its ecumenism of the trenches influenced the administration of George W. Bush and continues to influence religious elements in the Tea Party. Evangelicals in the coalition presume to speak for Calvin. This book provides a counter argument. Calvin rejects the ethics advocated by ECT, an ethics of individual virtue, conscience and natural right. Instead, he affirms an ethics of obedience to the authority of secular government as an institution with a divinely ordained mandate. This work considers the following themes in Calvin: Calvin on Faith. Modern and postmodern philosophical approaches, including Reformed epistemology, do not explain how Calvin understood faith. Faith is divine activity. Belief is human activity. Faith is not a belief system or worldview on which to base a political theology. The author provides four Augustinian theses about Calvin on faith Calvin on Sanctification. Calvin rejected virtue ethics or an ethics of individual conscience. His ethics require self-denial and service. An important requirement of his ethics is obedience to government. The author provides three theses about Calvin on sanctification, as a critique of attempts to revive virtue ethics. Calvin on Natural Law. Calvin’s doctrine of natural law is one of the most vexed issues in Calvin studies. The author provides five theses to clarify Calvin’s doctrine of natural law. For Calvin, secular government transcends the authority of conscience, and Christians in conscience are required to obey it. In conclusion, the author discusses Karl Barth’s interpretation of Calvin and its relevance for the church struggle against the Third Reich. Based on his analysis of Calvin, he provides a defense of gay marriage and the right to terminate a pregnancy, as well as an analysis of religious freedom. Calvin would reject ECT’s theology of virtue, conscience and natural law. But he would affirm its ecumenism as a possible path out of culture war.

Download or read book Western Art and Jewish Presence in the Work of Paul Celan written by Esther Cameron and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western Art and Jewish Presence in the Work of Paul Celan: Roots and Ramifications of the “Meridian” Speech addresses a central problem in the work of a poet who holds a unique position in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. On the one hand, he was perhaps the last great figure of the Western poetic tradition, one who took up the dialogue with its classics and who responded to the questions of his day from a “global” concern, if often cryptically. And on the other hand, Paul Celan was a witness to and interim survivor of the Holocaust. These two identities raise questions that were evidently present for Celan in the very act of poetry. This study takes the form of a commentary on Celan’s most important statement of his poetics and beliefs, “The Meridian,” which is an extraordinarily condensed text, packed with allusions and multiple meanings. It reflects his early work and anticipates later developments, so that the discussion of “The Meridian” becomes a consideration of his oeuvre as a whole. The commentary is an act of listening—an attempt to hear what these words meant to the poet, to see the landscapes from which they come and the reality they are trying to project; and in the light of this, to arrive at a clear picture of the relation between Celan’s Jewishness and his vocation as a Western writer.

Download or read book The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum written by R. J. Rushdoony and published by Chalcedon Foundation. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Christian School represents a break with humanistic education, but, too often in leaving the state school, the Christian educator has carried the state's humanism with him. A curriculum is not neutral: it is either a course in humanism or training in a God-centered faith and life. The liberal arts curriculum means literally that course which trains students in the arts of freedom. This raises the key question: is freedom in and of man or Christ? The Christian art of freedom, that is, the Christian liberal arts curriculum, is emphatically not the same as the humanistic one. It is urgently necessary for Christian educators to rethink the meaning and nature of the curriculum. It should be clear then that whether history, science, mathematics, grammar, literature, ecology, civic duty, or law, every aspect of curriculum must be reconstructed along Biblical lines. The overall objective is for Christian families to prepare and equip themselves for service in the Kingdom of God, and this cannot be done without a rethinking of the philosophy of the Christian curriculum. In this study, Rousas John Rushdoony develops the philosophy of the Christian curriculum. It is the pioneering study in this field, and it is important reading for all Christian educators.

Download or read book Rethinking Human Nature written by Kevin J. Corcoran and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are we as human persons? Are we immaterial souls capable of disembodied existence or merely animals destined to dust? For centuries, scholars have debated this issue, and that debate continues today. But the question of human nature can no longer remain a topic for discussion within the hallowed halls of the academy. End-of-life ethical decisions, human cloning, fetal tissue transplants, and stem cell research all reveal the urgency and the importance of the question for ordinary people. Rethinking Human Nature offers a fascinating look at what it means to be human by defending the "constitutional view"--which suggests we are constituted by our bodies without being identical to the bodies that constitute us. Grounded in Scripture, this book connects the theology and philosophy of human nature with the moral conundrums that confront us at the margins of life.

Download or read book Play Among Books written by Miro Roman and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.

Download or read book God and Galileo written by David L. Block and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2019-05-17 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A devastating attack upon the dominance of atheism in science today." Giovanni Fazio, Senior Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics The debate over the ultimate source of truth in our world often pits science against faith. In fact, some high-profile scientists today would have us abandon God entirely as a source of truth about the universe. In this book, two professional astronomers push back against this notion, arguing that the science of today is not in a position to pronounce on the existence of God—rather, our notion of truth must include both the physical and spiritual domains. Incorporating excerpts from a letter written in 1615 by famed astronomer Galileo Galilei, the authors explore the relationship between science and faith, critiquing atheistic and secular understandings of science while reminding believers that science is an important source of truth about the physical world that God created.

Download or read book Rethinking Secularization written by Gary Gabor and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05-27 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking Secularization: Philosophy and the Prophecy of a Secular Age provides a philosophical appraisal of secularization in light of the recent re-emergence of religion in the public sphere. It explores the adequacy of classical theories of secularization, and, rooted in historical and conceptual analysis, what might be offered in their place today. Responding to the once dominant theories of a global, world-historical emancipation from an inherited religious past to a modern secular age, the volume also considers the extent to which philosophy itself has inspired and nourished such prophecies. As a result, a more sophisticated view of secularization emerges, both more interesting and complex than the simple linear process it is often thought to be. From the conceptual origins of secularity in the writings of Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to the contemporary secularization theories of Hans Blumenberg, Marcel Gauchet, and Charles Taylor, Rethinking Secularization considers philosophy’s own relationship to the concept of secularization. It reflects the trend in contemporary philosophy to rethink the relation between religion and modernity, and includes systematic contributions to the debate. The book would appeal to a wide range of readers in philosophy, sociology, religious studies, and intellectual history.