Dr. Nathan Shannon, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Torch Trinity Graduate University in Seoul, Korea, talks with us about his new book, Shalom and the Ethics of Belief: Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Theory of Situated Rationality. Dr. Shannon is joined by Nathan Sasser, PhD student in philosophy at the University of South Carolina.

Participants: Jared Oliphint, Nate Shannon, Nathan Sasser

Jared Oliphint and Nathan Shannon discuss Brian Leftow’s God and Necessity (Oxford University Press). In this volume, Leftow seeks to offer a metaphysic of modality. This leads him into a discussion of necessity and possibility, truth making, God’s nature, and divine simplicity. It’s a wide-ranging title, but one that offers many important themes for consideration. Dr. Shannon has written a review of the book that will appear soon in the Westminster Theological Journal.

Participants: Jared Oliphint, Nate Shannon

Nathan Shannon reviews Merold Westphal’s book Whose Christianity? Which Interpretation? Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Nate Shannon

Jared Oliphint and Nate Shannon lead a discussion on Jay Wesley Richards’ book The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Simplicity, and Immutability.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon

Several contributors to Philosophy for Theologians convene to discuss the guidelines for formulating a Christian epistemology. As a starting point, the panel looks at the seminal work by Edmund Gettier Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? In 1963 Gettier published a 3-page paper that turned the philosophical world on its head by supplying counterexamples that challenged the common definition of knowledge. Gettier’s examples have come to be known as demonstrating the Gettier Problem.

Links

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon

Christ the Center discusses the developments in Roman Catholic theology that came with Vatican II. In this episode, we welcome an able panel including Nathan Shannon, who wrote a ThM thesis on Karl Rahner, Michael Matossian, PhD candidate at Marquette University, and Danny Olinger, who studied at Duquesne University. Danny has written a helpful primer on Vatican II which appears in the lastest edition of Ordained Servant.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Danny Olinger, Michael Matossian, Nate Shannon

Dr. Barry Horner joins the program to discuss John Bunyan’s classic The Pilgrim’s Progress. Horner has thought deeply on the subject and has written a book of his own titled The Pilgrim’s Progress: Themes and Issues. His Doctor of Ministry degree from Westminster Seminary in California focused on the biblical/theological content of The Pilgrim’s Progress as well as its validity as an appropriate means for the communication of the Word of God.

Dr. Horner teaches The Pilgrim’s Progress in church, seminar, and camp settings, and pastors Christ’s New Covenant Church, Tucson, Arizona.

Links

• Bunyan Ministries
• Dr. Derek Thomas Lecture Series on the Pilgrim’s Progress
• The Bolton Conference

Participants: Barry Horner, Camden Bucey, Nate Shannon

Painters David Campbell and Sabina Tichindeleanu visit the program to discuss modern art.

Participants: Camden Bucey, David Campbell, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon, Sabina Tichindeleanu

Bob LaRocca leads a discuss on Thomas Aquinas’ Second Way. The Second Way is an argument for the existence of God from efficient causes. The flow of the argument is as follows:

1. We perceive a series of efficient causes of things in the world.
2. Nothing exists prior to itself.
3. Therefore nothing is the efficient cause of itself.
4. If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results.
5. Therefore if the first thing in a series does not exist, nothing in the series exists.
6. The series of efficient causes cannot extend ad infinitum into the past, for then there would be no things existing now.
7. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

Visit this site for more information regarding Thomas’ Five Ways.

Participants: Bob LaRocca, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon

PhD students Gabe Fluhrer (MDiv, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary), Carlton Wynne (MDiv RTS, Charlotte) and Nate Shannon (ThM, Westminster Theological Seminary) share what led them to PhD studies, how their seminary experience prepared them, and how their studies have impacted their ministry.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Gabe Fluhrer, Jared Oliphint, Nate Shannon

Accomplished jazz pianist Pamela York visits the program to discuss jazz music and its relation to Christianity. Pamela’s two albums, The Way of Time and Blue York are currently available at Amazon and in the iTunes music store.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon, Pamela York

Christian portraiture artist Mike Mahon joins the panel to discuss a Christian view of the arts. Mike is a southwest artist and elder in the Rio Rancho Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Mike shares his many years of thought reflecting on how Christian’s should approach the arts.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon

Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) (known to intimates as “Van”) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. From 1930 until his death 70 years later, Quine was continuously affiliated with Harvard University in one way or another, first as a student, then as a professor of philosophy and a teacher of mathematics, and finally as a professor emeritus who published or revised several books in retirement. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard, 1956–78. A recent poll conducted among philosophers named Quine as one of the five most important philosophers of the past two centuries.

Quine’s paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism, published in 1951, is one of the most celebrated papers of twentieth century philosophy in the analytic tradition. According to Harvard professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith, this “paper [is] sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy”. The paper is an attack on two central parts of the logical positivists’ philosophy. One is the distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths, explained by Quine as truths grounded only in meanings and independent of facts, and truths grounded in facts. The other is reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms that refers exclusively to immediate experience.

from Wikipedia

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon

René Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650), was a French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist. He has been dubbed the “Father of Modern Philosophy,” and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings. Many of his works are still studied today – in particular, his Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes is also known for his contribution to mathematics and even is credited as the father of analytical geometry. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution. His famous phrase cogito ergo sum (“I think therefore I am”) is perhaps the most well known philosophical phrase. This phrase encapsulates Descartes attempt to find something he could not doubt – an indubitable. And for him, that thing was the very fact that he was thinking.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon

The crew discusses current audio and video resources, and even software that will prove useful to the student of reformed theology.

post photo by swishphotos

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon

We realized many of our discussions on the Reformed Media Review were drifting toward the philosophical.  And we also believe there is a general lack of good philosophical resources – at least from people working from a Reformed theological framework.  As a result, we bring you Philosophy for Theologians.

Our goal in this program is to provide an overview of a particular philosophical figure or an idea and to analyze it critically through the lens of Scripture.  That doesn’t mean proof-texting Kant’s views, but it does mean that we consider everything in light of God’s revelation.   We not only want to address philosophical questions on Philosophy for Theologians, but we want to equip you with a way to think about these questions.

In this wide-ranging discussion, the panel begins with a discussion between Nate Shannon and Bob LaRocca regarding the role of realism in Herman Bavinck and the consistency thereof.   The discussions moves on and touches, among other things, upon Thomas Reid, Alvin Plantinga and possible worlds semantics.

Participants: Bob LaRocca, Camden Bucey, Jared Oliphint, Jonathan Brack, Nate Shannon