Upcoming engagements

Date: July 2-6
Location: Pleasantview Bible Camp
Addressing: Junior High Camp
Subject Matter: Knowing God

An Invitation: Christian Philosophy

In lieu of my recent speaking engagements or teachings I want to over a summary of some of my lessons from the university class I offered in Lebanon.

As the title of the blog suggests my first lecture was title An Invitation to Christian Philosophy. Considering that this was a first year class I began by approaching a definition of philosophy in general. To begin, there is no airtight definition. I offered two distinct perspectives: 1) Etymologically the roots of the Greek words in the contraction mean to love (philein) wisdom (sophia). This might loosely define the principles and practices of right thinking and the reasoned pursuit of fundamental truths; and, 2) It might be understood as a second order discipline that studies first order disciplines as a negative check and a positive guide. For example, the philosophy of science may seek to describe right approaches to scientific study based upon perceptions of how we may interpret sense perception and experience or aim to rightly limit the spheres of scientific conjecture considering that as a discipline science is limited to describing tested and observable data and not making metaphysical claims outside its purview (science can tell us the nature of the universe, its age, and the processes of its current development but it cannot tell us what caused it to came into being, i.e. to be created).

Obviously are different ways of defining philosophy but I think that these two broad perspectives allow us a simple means of delineating the Christian study of philosophy into two trajectories. Firstly the Christian philosopher must seek to understand the nature of rational and reasonable thought, the principles of logic, the discipline of knowing with certainty and by causes, learning the methods of making ideas clear, adequately defining words, avoiding unnecessary verbal disputes and the use of argument by reason and evidence expressed through presuppositions and truth claims. Secondly the Christian philosopher must be able to apply all the previously mentioned skills towards answering the fundamental questions of human life including but not limited to: What is real and not just a matter of appearance? What can be known about being, good and evil, motion, the world, humankind and God?

In an effort to lead the students into such a study I broke the class into a series of lectures upon topics which would aid in such an enterprise. Discussions covered the following topics:

• A Christian Justification of Philosophy
• The Relationship between Philosophy and Theology or Reason and Faith
• The Reality and Nature of Truth
• Logic and Argument
• Epistemology
  • Can we know? The Skeptical Challenge?
  • What is Knowledge?
  • What is the structure of Justification?
  • Religious Epistemology.
• Metaphysics
  • What is the Nature of the World?
  • Are there Universals?
  • What is a Particular Thing?
• Philosophy of Religion
  • Does God Exist? (Part 1)
    • The Cosmological Argument
    • The Teleological Argument
    • The Axiological Argument
    • The Ontological Argument
  • What is God like? (Part 2)
    • Necessity
    • Aseity
    • Incorporeality
    • Omnipresence
    • Omnipotence
    • Omniscience
    • Atemporality
    • Emotion
    • Simplicity
    • Immutability
• Philosophical Analysis of Two Christian Doctrines
  • The Incarnation: Is it possible?
  • Particularism: Is Jesus the only way to heaven
• Human Nature
  • Do people have eternal souls?
  • Do people have free-will?
• Ethics
  • The Ethical Question – Is it important?
  • Relativism
  • Natural Objectivism
  • Nonnatural Objectivism
  • Case Study: Article, “Reconciling Normative Tensions in Biomedical Ethics” Ashley Moyse
• Discussion
  • Bertrand Russel
  • The New Atheism
  • Islamic Philosophy
  • The Trinity

In upcoming posts I will address these topics as I did in my course.

Dr. Cook Extended Care – Wednesday Chapel

Today, I gave a short 10-minute talk to a packed room of extended care patients at the Dr. Cook facility in Lloydminster, AB.

As the basis for my address I read Joshua 4:1-7. I highlighted the idea of the importance to find or see symbols of God’s activity in the world. To introduce the idea I told a story.

The story involved a conversation I had with my elderly grandfather. I don’t remember what sparked the desire but I had never been that close to him and thought I would like to talk and find out more about this man, my mothers father. The conversation covered everything from his upbringing and his sentencing to 1-year of Sunday School by a municipal judge as punishment for a break and enter charge to the death of his only son, his wife and his own knowledge of the brevity of life. He told me stories about logging, farming, running a mill, driving horse-drawn carts, his first truck, and starting his own gravel pit. He talked about honour and respect, work ethic, and loving a woman who had not know love in her childhood.

Don’t get me wrong, the stories were brief and lacking in vibrant detail, my grandpa was not a talkative guy. I remember going to visit him with my wife. He asked if we would stay for supper and spend the evening. As fare he offered corn on the cob and we shared our banana chip-loaf. Then we sat silently, breaking the silence with a Saskatchewan Roughriders game. I loved it and I heard from my mom later that he did too.

I shared in my talk, I asked him what it was that he figured was most important for a younger man like me to know. His answer, though not offered as poetically I summarize here, build good memories and then take time to remember them. It was good to hear.

I segued from this to Joshua and the Israelites building a memorial of stones to God’s past action. The memorial was intended to remind the people of the truth so that they might live according to it in the present and have hope for the future. The application is ready. For those who sit, often because they can do little or nothing else, for those who can do little but think and often are best at remembering one of the things that they can do to strengthen themselves for today and give them hope for tomorrow is to look for and find symbols of good times and of God’s past action.

God is the creator, the sustainer, the redeemer. Experiencing and then remembering these truth’s is important, nay essential. For these blessed seniors whose lives are so limited I suggested that some of lives purest experiences might facilitate this experience and remembrance. Noting the creation of every new day, Embracing the sustenance of the warmth of their rooms and the helpful hands of their caretakers. Finding in the hearing of God’s Word the seed and plant of redemption.