A Very Nuanced Take on Everything
Whereas we denizens of late modernity are wandering in the fog of the simultaneous global renegotiation of all human custom, and consequently pining for nodal points of orientation, it seems…
Whereas we denizens of late modernity are wandering in the fog of the simultaneous global renegotiation of all human custom, and consequently pining for nodal points of orientation, it seems…
25. On a superficial reading, the trends and quandaries I have highlighted thus far permit two basic reactions. Republicans versus democrats, right versus left, conservative versus progressive, tradition versus change,…
I have always (in one way or another) battled with the assurance. From an extremely visceral fear of going to Hell in my early childhood, to which was added a…
21. Bringing my analysis all the way to the ground, it is one thing to see our quandary, and another to know what to do about it. One way through…
Some say that Jesus always “responded” to people, but never “reacted” to them. For our purposes, I’ll take “being triggered” as a reaction. On this reading, most of us are…
17. To claim that modernity entails the simultaneous global re-negotiation of all human custom does not, crucially, imply that modernity is the death of tradition. We can no more exit…
13. Taking the mid 19th century as our point of departure in understanding modernity, I have (so far) focused merely on the question of man’s relationship with his labor (and…
9. If our point of departure in understanding modernity is “that moment in which some humans decided they were modern,” then the epochal fracture would have to be located in…
5. Before we seek to understand modernity, it is fitting to ask whether there is anything to be understood in the first place. Is “modernity” actually definable in any substantive…
The first in a series navigating the key features of modern life and the crises they provoke.
Could religion only have developed among a species that knew how to play?
For a significant portion of the human race, the sensation of self-confidence is but a mental construct. Its internal structure is imaginatively “guessed” and projected on those who evidence its external markers. But like any good alchemy, the recipe remains elusive and secret.
“Feelings are not facts,” we hear a lot these days. In a host of intellectual and even pastoral debates, this binary is popular. There are those who care about the real stubborn world of inflexible facts, and those who want to force the world to conform to the shape of their feelings. There are those, analogously, who stick to the plain teaching of the Bible, and those who try to retrofit the Bible into the shape of their sentiments.
Uniting modern persons is no religion or creed or political vision, but rather the world of film and literature. These get to us beneath our discursive reasoning. Whatever creed or critic you follow, you probably like Johnny Cash, The Wire, and To Kill a Mockingbird.
One way of reading the story of civilization is to read it as a story of divine pedagogy. This can be overstated at the expense of other truths and metrics of reality, but (as such) it is both a biblical notion (Gal. 3-4) and a thickly treated theme in the history of the Christian church. Can modernity possibly be read in this light?
Is the future of civilization still determined by humans? It may seem a scholar’s query, but many ordinary folks, especially with the advent of peculiarities like fascist AI, would love to know the answer.
Another blog? Yes. Pilgrim Faith? Yes. Why? Let me tell you. As of January 1’st, I (Joseph Minich) have taken on the role of Davenant Fellow with The Davenant Institute.…
A DAVENANT TRUST PUBLICATION ISSUE 1.1 • SEPTEMBER 2016 Ad Fontes, “to the sources,” was a rallying cry of the Reformation. The Reformers bequeathed to us a heritage, thick in…
Joseph Minich considers whether believers today can still feel the Nicene Creed's claims about the Incarnation as plausible
Philosophy: what is it good for?
In a fatherless age, how do older brothers step in? Joseph Minich reflects on 10 years of Davenant.
How can Christians wisely navigate between competing approaches to apologetics?
What might an authentic history of "understanding God" look like?
If metamodernism comes after postmodernism... what then?
At last, a worthy biography of the first confessional Reformed theologian to have truly grappled with modernity.
In the last few years, few issues have been more controversial among Reformed evangelicals than the debate over the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father. To the extent that God’s intra-triune life has been thought to be the foundation and model of inter-human relationships, many have perceived their various social programs (particularly in relation to the sexes) to be at stake, at times driving the debate’s resolution in a particular direction. One meta-issue continually at the forefront in the debate over eternal subordination concerns the traditional doctrine of God’s simplicity.
