07 Jun 2013
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
Amid a strongly critical (and therefore entertaining) book review of Ray Kurzweil's How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, Colin McGinn makes these observations about contemporary neuroscience in general: Here I must say something briefly about the standard language that neuroscience...
Read more → 31 May 2013
Posted by Peter Escalante 
It's something of a trick question. Michael Hannon, drawing on the reflections of the great 20th c Thomist Charles de Koninck, replies to Robert George's argument that the common good is not an intrinsic good, but in doing so, Hannon decisively rebuts the idea that saying that it is an intrinsic good...
Read more → 28 May 2013
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
Discussions of human nature in its original state and the donum superadditum today seem arcane and a minor point at best. This was not the case, however, just one hundred years ago. When one reviews the great American systematic theologies from the Reformed tradition, he will find thorough discussions...
Read more → 24 May 2013
Posted by Andrew Fulford 
Having now completed our survey of the Old Testament, extracanonical Jewish Literature, and New Testament texts, we have demonstrated that natural law is woven deeply into the fabric of biblical teaching, especially the notion of an objective order for the universe, including a moral order, framed by God and discernible by...
Read more → 23 May 2013
Posted by Joseph Minich 
Giving a mixed review of Bavinck on natural law and the two kingdoms, David VanDrunen recently wrote, Though a complete account is more complex, a good general argument can be made, I believe, that his defense of the natural law and the two kingdoms categories belongs to the orthodox Bavinck and his advocacy...
Read more → 22 May 2013
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
In another surprising find, Charles Hodge cautions against the over-extension of philosophy in systematic theology. The context is the debate between creationism and traducianism, both of which have representatives within Orthodox Protestantism. Still, Dr. Hodge's warnings here are beneficial for the wider...
Read more → 22 May 2013
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
Last week I referred to the "progressivist" strain in Greek cultural thinking, which was associated with Prometheus and which tracked a general advancement of mankind from his earliest days to the present. But there is another strain as well, the "primitivist" one, in which the history of mankind is described...
Read more → 22 May 2013
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
In a 1996 book review, Jonathan Wells explains that Charles Hodge's critique of Darwinism was made on exclusively philosophical and theological grounds: A modern reader might be surprised to learn that Hodge was not a biblical fundamentalist who defended a literal interpretation of Genesis. Although...
Read more → 22 May 2013
Posted by Andrew Fulford 
As we shall see, the teaching of the NT on natural law stands in continuity with the OT and most extracanonical Jewish literature. Throughout this series, I have sought to prove the following three hypotheses, which are what I mean by the term "natural law": (N1) there is an objective order to the universe...
Read more → 20 May 2013
Posted by Eric Parker 
Martin Luther’s ubiquitous criticisms of Aristotle were once considered to be, by such interpreters as Harnack and Barth for example, a wholesale attack on the natural capacity of the intellect to discern the truth from created realities, i.e., philosophically. More recent readers of Luther, such as Lohse,...
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