| Lord willing, that is. Now that I am (almost) done with my undergraduate education,
it is time to find other ways to continue book-learning. I say almost done, because I still need to
finish writing my senior thesis. Anyway,
I thought I’d turn this blog into a sort of reading journal, mostly for my own
benefit but also so that if anyone should happen to want to follow along, book-learning may be furthered by discussion. To be honest, I
don’t expect many people to follow along, but if I am wrong, then let us keep in mind Proverbs 20:3: “It is
an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife, but every fool will be
quarreling.” A lively discussion can be
very helpful, but arguing for the sake of arguing just gets old after a while. This is how it will work: I will provide a
brief introduction on the significance of the book in question; then I will
summarize it, section by section, providing some commentary as I go; and when
the end of the book is reached, I’ll provide some more commentary on how the
book might relate to others in the series.
Expect several posts per book.
I’m going to start with a series on the nature and purpose
of Christian dogma and doctrine and the commensurability or incommensurability
of different religious traditions. This is a
very broad topic, I know. But don’t
worry, the questions to be considered will be narrowed as we go. I do not wish to get into the specific
questions of who is right about this doctrine or that doctrine. Rather, I wish to examine overarching
theories on the grounds of the possibility of having such discussions in the first place. To be more specific, we'll be examining the debate between the postliberals and the revisionists. The emphasis of the postliberals is on the internal consistency, language, and culture of a faith; whereas the emphasis of the revisionists is on the universal or public truth of it. Obviously, such a discussion has important implications for apologetics and ecumenism. Before that, however, we'll start with Alasdair MacIntyre’s
book After Virtue. In it, MacIntyre considers the possibility of
evaluating differing moral truth-claims.
According to him, one of the weaknesses of the moral theory of the Enlightenment is the separation of morality from religion. I think that MacIntyre’s book is an excellent
book, but it raises some questions on the nature and purpose of religious dogma and
doctrine and on the possibility of evaluating and comparing different religious traditions. Although the
focus of After Virtue is on moral
theory, it will provide a good starting place.
Then, for a slightly different view, we might spend a little time with Alvin Plantinga (still good stuff, though), again to get us warmed up. Then I intend to cover works by theologians George Lindbeck, David
Tracy, Terrence Tilley, Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, and documents from the Second
Vatican Council. These are all fairly
modern works, but that does not mean that I intend to ignore traditional
understandings of the issues in question.
Most of these works are very much in dialogue with tradition, so this
whole series will presuppose a familiarity with the basics of those traditional
understandings. Indeed, if you or I think
that a traditional understanding of a certain point is being misunderstood or
misrepresented by one of the authors in question, then that will be an
important point to bring up. And no, I
do not expect to fully agree with the conclusions of all of these works. I also suspect that some will be more
edifying than others. I guess that
should go without saying. They are,
however, important for the contemporary dialogue on the topic at hand. Some of them I chose from a book-list for a class on systematic
theology at Notre Dame, and some of them I thought were relevant and added myself.
Am I qualified to be doing this reading-journal series? Not especially.
When lifting weights, you cannot expect to
become a power-lifter unless you lift weights that are too heavy
for you from time to time. Apply the same
principle to learning, and you will see the reason I’m doing this series in the
first place. But like I said, I need to
finish writing my senior thesis. Also, I
left my copy of After Virtue in
Leesburg. Thus, it will be a few weeks
before this series begins. I’m excited about it already, though. |
