philosophy
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By In Culture, Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Presuppositional Epistemology

“…but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and fear.” (1 Peter 3:15)

In the Western world today reality as we know it is being assailed, reformulated in the cauldron of human autonomy and self-expression. On the one hand man finds himself in an ineradicable condition: he exists in a world with a vehement desire for answers. He is driven by a quest for knowledge, understanding, and meaning/purpose. On the other hand this man finds himself in an equally precarious situation: he is bent on sin and transgression, or at least he is told. How will he function? What can possibly give him resolution and peace? With a restless heart fixated on some reasonable explanation, men today go searching for answers, sometimes in the discovery of the actual true truth (i.e., that which corresponds to the mind of God), other times in the discovery or fabrication of an idol (which is what all covenant-breakers in Adam do). But either way, he is always and in every way homo respondens—a man who simply responds to his divinely-created environment.

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By In Culture

Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian Philosopher

I have recently completed a reading of Marcel E Verburg’s massive book, Herman Dooyeweerd: The Life and Work of a Christian Philosopher (Paideia Press, 2015). For those unfamiliar with him, Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) taught jurisprudence for decades at the Free University of Amsterdam, a Christian university established by Abraham Kuyper in 1880. As an undergraduate, I came into contact with his unique philosophical school, known in Dutch as De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee and in English as the Philosophy of the Law-Idea. Eventually I would write a dissertation at the University of Notre Dame on Dooyeweerd’s political thought, comparing it with that of neo-Thomist philosopher Yves René Simon (1903-1961). (more…)

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