Cultural Apologetics
How might a Christian respond to Wielenberg? We can start by arguing that it is more plausible to think values and duties attach to persons rather than things, and in this, theism is rationally preferable to Platonic atheism. As I type I’m sitting on a chair. I don’t have any obligations to the chair. I don’t owe it to the chair to weigh less than
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The philosopher Peter Kreeft speaks of three longings of the human soul—truth, goodness, and beauty—and three prophets (or guides or capacities) of the human soul—reason, conscience, and the imagination.
Paul M. Gould • Cultural Apologetics
I adopt Hunter’s “faithfully present within” culture approach, augmented by Andy Crouch’s insight that Christians are called to be creators and cultivators of the good, true, and beautiful. Alternative accounts of cultural apologetics could be developed that explicitly endorse one or another of Niebuhr’s possible positions on Christ and culture.
Paul M. Gould • Cultural Apologetics
A walk through the agora (the marketplace) would reveal a pantheon of idols, indicative of the Athenians’ religious devotion. One could find temples for the worship of Roman Caesars, Greek and Roman gods, and countless other shrines and idols. A novelist at the time wrote of Athens, a city of roughly 25,000 people, “It is easier to meet a god in
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It is interesting how we forget that godlessness isn’t a new phenomena. The Apostle Paul struggled with it in culture, in fact, it reaches back to Genesis 3 in the beginning. We just experience it differently in modern times, but there is nothing new under the sun.
Some fourteenth century theologians didn’t like the idea of God being restricted by his own essence or the essence of things in the world. William of Ockham (1287–1347) argued that God can do whatever he wants. God’s power is absolute. Extreme versions of what is called voluntarism allow that God could command murder as morally right, make
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As a movie director in Hollywood has said: “L.A. is the town that controls world storytelling for both children and adults.”54 Hollywood and other elite institutions that produce and cultivate art have an inordinate influence on the narratives that shape our world, and if we want Christianity to be viewed as reasonable and desirable, Christian
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In light of these local and global concerns, how can art, beauty, and the imagination help us point others to Jesus? Let me offer three practical suggestions.
Paul M. Gould • Cultural Apologetics
Ockham argued for a view called nominalism. Nominalists reject belief in universals. There are no shareable essences in the world. Whatever traits chickens have in common can be explained without an appeal to universals. So too for every other creature in the world, including humans. They share things in “name” (nomen) only in virtue of the
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This picture of the world began to unravel in the late medieval period. One important consequence of realism, the view that mind-independent universals exist, is that the structure of the world imposes limits on what is possible, even for God. Even God can’t change Rosie into an alligator. What God could do is cause Rosie to cease to exist and in
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