Currently reading:
Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Endsby S. Mark Heim
Till We Have Faces
by C. S. Lewis
Probably should put retractions first, so I will say that I was a bit unfair to Cragg in my previous post. I still don't agree with his approach, I think that it does lead to a confusion of the gospel message, but I have discovered that I misread him; most of what he says is not incompatible with Niceno-Constantinopoletan orthodoxy, but sidesteps that issue in order to not alientate Muslims, while at the same time Cragg is trying to get them to ask themselves the pertinent questions. So I may have to read the book again, but in the meantime I was wrong with my criticisms.
I've been recovering for a the past couple weeks from illness. About half a week to a week into the 2-week class on Christian Encounters with World Religions, I caught a nasty flu. I was better for a day (it was a Tuesday), then I got throat problems. First, I was just feeling tired, demotivated, and had an itchy, scratchy throat. I went to the doctor Friday, who thought I had strep (which I had been beginning to suspect). Friday night it really hit hard, and I was out of comission the entire weekend and most of the following week. For it wasn't strep that I had; that would have been bad enough. I had full-blown tonsilitis, and the type that takes its time to go away. Finally, after being down and out for a week and a half, I was better, though I'm still constantly tired and finding it hard to sit down and concentrate on a book.
In the meantime, I've decided that I'm not sure that I really want to go into comparative religions. The subject material does interest me somewhat, but I'm finding that the discussions I really enjoy are in more analytic stuff, and religious studies programs are tending more and more towards continental philosophy. I want to be conversant with the continentals, but I don't think that I could be doing my main work in it. Thus, my current prognosis of what I want to do is philosophy of religion, maybe working with modal logic and philosophical theology. I think that it would be cool to work under Thomas Flint at Notre Dame, though I don't know that I could actually get in there.
2 comments:
I keep gravitating back in an epistemological direction, although I think I'm going to end up mainly in ethics, some area in history of philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Right now I am frustrated with my philosophy of religion because I'm tired of discussing arguments for and against God's existence. I think that these (or some arguments anyway) are important, but I am more interested in philosophical theology. Swinburne's Existence of God frustrates me because he assumes so many positions without really arguing for them--he just states them!
And then, of course, I keep having days when I wonder whether or not this is something that I want to be doing at all. I keep answering myself, however, that there are parts of philosophy that I definitely do like, and I would still like to teach undergrad courses.
I was wondering for a time whether or not I wanted to continue doing philosophy, but I have my second wind and am look forward at continuing. I like teaching, and I (much of the time) like researching. In particular, I really find myself getting interested in philosophical theology; the issues there seem to be important and intriguing, a good combination. I here you with the arguments for/against God's existence. I myself find that to be the least intersting area of philosophy of religion. I think it is much better to spend time working on a genuinely Christian view and developing it than spending all of the time defending Christianity (apologetics aren't useless, but I don't think that they deserve to be the foremost issue). On the whole, I kinda like what Reformed Epistemology and Radical Orthodoxy are doing in starting from Christian truth and working from there (whether or not I agree with all the specifics of their views).
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