Despair at Work
“Remember,” Paul writes, “that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without…
Bruce Baugus
Spiritual Despair: Consciousness of Despair
A piercing observer of the human condition, Søren Kierkegaard argues that despair is the sickness unto death. The very structure of being human is such that we can only be…
Spiritual Despair: A Universal Malady
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a peculiar sort of apologist for the spiritual earnestness he believed is demanded by the gospel and necessary to being human. It is not surprising, then,…
A Transient Age: The Dawn of (Post-) Post-Modernity
Postmodernism already seems passé–so 1970s, or at least 1990s. But if postmodernity has already passed us by then what ideological age is this? Post-postmodernity? It’s obvious we love to consider…
Validity, the Mind of God and Confessional Christianity
A while back I wrote a post on the parasitic nature of absurdity. Absurdity, as a concept, is only meaningful when set against a backdrop of rationality. Whenever we conclude something…
Abelard & Anselm; or How to Throw Yourself in Front of a Bus
Leon Morris once suggested that “the atonement is the crucial doctrine of the faith” and that “unless we are right here it matters little . . . what we are…
Kierkegaard (of all people?) on Authority and Eloquence in Preaching
Søren Kierkegaard is surely one of the most influential and misunderstood influences on modern Western thought and especially contemporary theology. This is a bit surprising for someone who wrote in…
The MA & PA Case for De-Christianizing Culture: Marx, White, and all the Rest
Karl Marx didn’t write all that much about religion, but what little he did was radical, programmatic, and rather clever. Here is almost his entire commentary on the meaning of…
The Donald in Dilbertian Perspective: Reason, Evolutionary Psychology, and Stiff-necked Reality
As strange as it may sound, one of the more insightful discussions of Trump’s political success is offered by “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams. Trump is a “master persuader,” he argues,…
The Apologetics of Christian Solidarity
Love is the end (telos) of the apostles’ teaching and the first apology for the faith (1 Tim. 1:5). Without love even the most celebrated preacher or apologist is just…