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The Misdiagnosis of Modernity: Henri de Lubac and the Human Hunger for God
Posted on October 26, 2025 Leave a Comment
In a recent substack article, Craig A. Carter, a professor of theology at Tyndale University, reviews Steven Long’s Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace. The book tackles a complex 20th-century debate within Roman Catholic theology concerning the concept of “pure nature” (natura pura). At stake is nothing less than the […]
From Chicken-Stuffing to Immortality Machines: The Faustian Bargain of Modernity
Posted on July 24, 2025 Leave a Comment
The scene feels like a grim parody of scientific progress: London, late March 1626. An aging Sir Francis Bacon, once Lord Chancellor of England, now fallen from grace but still crackling with intellectual ambition, jostles in a carriage through the snow near Highgate. Spying a chicken pecking scraps in a cottage yard, a sudden inspiration […]
The Failure of the Modern Project: Part 3 of 4
Posted on May 13, 2025 Leave a Comment
“We are nothing; let us be everything!” Across the first ten chapters of The Kingdom of Man, Rémi Brague has charted modernity’s grand project: the systematic effort to establish human sovereignty over nature, knowledge, and morality. From Bacon’s vision of restoring man’s “lost dominion” to Descartes’s methodological conquest of certainty, and from Locke’s labor-driven theory of […]
Conferences and Papers
Posted on May 12, 2025 Leave a Comment
Two recent calls for papers piqued my interest. I’ve submitted abstracts to both and will share them here. While I don’t yet know if they will be accepted, I intend to write the essays regardless and potentially submit them to a journal or magazine. Call for Papers: Notre Dame Conference The de Nicola Center for […]
The Failure of the Modern Project: Part 2 of 4
Posted on May 8, 2025 Leave a Comment
“The modern world is not the triumph of reason, but the revenge of Prometheus.” In The Kingdom of Man, Rémi Brague presents a formidable critique of modernity not as the triumph of human reason but as the culmination of a metaphysical rebellion—one that sought to replace divine order with human sovereignty. Having already examined the medieval […]
Metaphors, Mysticism, and Modern Misreadings
Posted on April 7, 2025 Leave a Comment
William Placher and Denys Turner, though separated by geography and academic focus, converged on a shared mission: to confront modernity’s relentless effort to shrink the mystery of God into categories palatable to human reason or emotion. Placher, an American theologian and philosopher of religion, spent much of his career at Wabash College in Indiana, where […]
Why the Science-Faith Dialogue Needs Souls, Not Just Syllogisms
Posted on March 29, 2025 Leave a Comment
In a recent post, I argued that the future of the science-faith dialogue depends less on physicists and more on theologians—those trained to grapple with Scripture, tradition, and the existential dimensions of belief. One reader, in a rather cheeky tone, urged me to “catch up” on philosophers like Bas van Fraassen, Hans Halvorson, Alex Pruss, […]
Why the Future of Science-Faith Dialogue Needs the Theologians, Not Just the Physicists
Posted on March 28, 2025 Leave a Comment
In the modern dialogue between science and Christian theology, two names loom large: John Polkinghorne and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Both sought to reconcile faith with the empirical rigor of the natural sciences, yet their approaches diverge in ways that reveal a deeper, often unspoken tension in the conversation. Polkinghorne, the physicist-turned-theologian, is frequently cited as a […]
An Elegy for the Sacramental Imagination
Posted on March 22, 2025 Leave a Comment
Karen Armstrong (b. 1944)—British author, scholar, and former Roman Catholic nun—has spent a lifetime interrogating the modern world’s estrangement from the sacred. Since leaving her religious order in 1969, she has emerged as one of the most accessible and thoughtful voices in comparative religion, blending scholarly range with spiritual urgency. Her wide-ranging works—A History of […]
The Failure of the Modern Project: Part 1 of 4
Posted on January 20, 2025 1 Comment
O what a world of profit and delight,Of power, of honour, of omnipotence,Is promis’d to the studious artizan!All things that move between the quiet polesShall be at my command: Emperors and KingsAre but obey’d i’ their sev’ral provinces,Nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds;But his dominion that exceeds in this, Stretcheth as […]