The Pagan and Christian Epochs The predominant worldview in the west before Christianity was paganism, which assumed the existence of something beyond the here-and-now of matter in space and time; gods who must be honored in their prescribed ways and seasons, for orderly human life. We discussed this in The Pagan Epoch. That “something beyond” […]
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The Christian Epoch
As we covered in The Pagan Epoch, when Christ came and his followers took the message to the world, they were taking it to the pagan world, not to peoples who rejected supernatural reality. Some accepted the message, and others rejected it, but those who rejected it did not do so because they disbelieved supernatural agency. […]
Read more...Is Materialism a Return to pre-Christian Belief?
Materialism is the belief that there is no supernatural of any kind; no God, no gods, no angels, demons, demiurges; no “fairies at the bottom of the garden,” in Richard Dawkins’ memorable phrase. Materialism Unexamined Many thinkers today write meaningfully about materialism as a set of doctrinal principles, but in the main, materialism is presented […]
Read more...Review, Atheist Delusions, The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, by David Bentley Hart
David Bentley Hart is a Christian author, and he’s made several valuable contributions besides this book, among them the excellent The Story of Christianity, an Illustrated History of 2000 Years of the Christian Faith, and his newest, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale University Press 2013). Atheist Delusions serves as a partial response […]
Read more...Review: Inventing the Individual, by Larry Seidentop
We suffer in this age from a lack of historical perspective, but perhaps that’s been true of all people, in all ages. If we could but look back and understand, accurately, where we have been, then we might be able to project forward; to extrapolate into the future, to understand what man is, and where […]
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