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.

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. “What’s that,” you might reasonably ask. Basically, in addition to doing some local and online...