H.R. Rookmaaker

I've been dipping into his classic Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. It was the first "reformational" book I ever read and I've been hooked ever since. Here is a particularly good quote:

I used the phrase 'how a Christian should live and act' rather than 'a Christian attitude to culture' advisedly. For we can easily slip into the mistake of making Christianity and culture two distinct entities quite separate from each other. Then, if we find we are in difficulties in resolving the two, the mistake may well be that we are trying to bring together two different things which we have separated artificially. Culture is the result of man's creative activity within God-given structures. So it can never be something apart from our faith. All our work is ultimately directed by our answer to the question of who - or what - our God is, and where for us the ultimate source of all reality and life lies. So our resulting 'culture' can never be something separate from our 'faith' (36)

Schürmann on seeing and hearing

For the Greeks to know is to see: “To know is to have seen, and to attain evidence is, as the word indicates, ‘to have seen well’. We only see well what is given to us, and we see best what remains immobile. Hearing, on the other hand, is the sense attuned to time: the ear perceives movements of approach and retreat better than the eye. A sound is not yet, then it approaches, it is there, and already it fades and is no more. For the gaze there is only the either-or of the present and the absent. To look is to strive to see what is the case. It is an act that requires distantiation. We are unable to read signs printed on a page with the eye ‘glued’ to it. Not so for hearing. The closer a sound is the better I perceive it. Hence ‘belonging’ has the connotation of ‘hearing’. The German gehören derives from hören. In the Greek, Latin, and Germanic languages, to be capable of hearing is to be capable of obeying; horchen meaning gehorchen. The eye is the organ of distance and the constantly present. The ear is the organ of involvement and of disclosure in time” (Reiner Schürmann Heidegger on Being and Acting pp.65-66)

Miscellaneous Links

The latest Aspects is on-line.

Next year the Association for Reformational philosophy celebrates 75 years with an international symposium at the Free University on The Future of Creation Order.

The ICS is preparing for what looks to be a very interesting conference next month called Truth Matters.

Johan Mekkes Creation, Revelation and Philosophy has been available for a few months now here or here.

Some optimistic reflections on Britain's coalition government from Jonathan Chaplin From Big State to Big Society.

And Jonathan Chaplin's forthcoming book on Dooyeweerd.

Is Dooyeweerd the Prog Rock of philosophy? Discuss

... Well at least prog rockers and reformational philosophers should agree that early Genesis is great!

Philosophia Reformata

There is now a website for the journal Philosophia Reformata published by the Association for Reformational Philosophy. If you explore it a little you will find a few articles on-line and the contents for the next edition apparently due out now.

Paul has also pointed out to me that Roy Clouser and others have published a special edition of the journal Axiomathes dedicated to Herman Dooyeweerd. See here and here. Reason to celebrate.

Links of interest

An interesting article articulating a communitarian conservative response to the global economic crisis called Rise of the red Tories.

Some videos of Alvin Plantinga on God and arguments among other topics and among lots of other interesting people at Closer to Truth.

Loads of great philosophy cartoons at chaopet.

A little more than nothing

I owe Bruce Wearne thanks for coming across this quote. It expresses well the insight that we should avoid unbridled optimism because we are not the answer to the worlds problems, we cannot solve everything, at the same time the pessimism that we cannot do anything is equally misguided.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's word. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that should be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No conversion brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness. No programme accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about. We plant seeds that one day will grow or maybe die. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and do it very well. It may be incomplete but it is a beginning. A step along the way. An opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the results. But that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are the workers, not master builders. We are ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own.

Archbishop Oscar Romero, El Salvador (1917-1980)

Religious reasons in public discourse

Theos a think tank for public theology has published a report by Jonathan Chaplin called Talking God.

The reformed philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff has made significant contributions to this topic and can been seen explaining his view in conversation with Miroslav Volf in the video below.