1. Can you elaborate how CGT creates Faithful Presence, and how a rich theology of nature counters Faithful Presence thought? I'm not sure where the tension is.
2. Is the WCF chapter on "good works" something that frustrates you? (XVI.VII) "Works done by unregenerate men, although... of good use both to themselves and others., yet, because they proceed not from an heart purified by faith... are therefore sinful, and cannot please God." I don't necessarily disagree with this theological statement abstractly, but the overly precise definition of "good works" that makes them only available to regenerate people feels unhelpful.
1. First, I want to affirm that my own ideal includes the faithful presence of Christians in many sectors of public and academic life. However, the critique, which I inherit from Aaron Renn, is that the "faithful presence" James Davison Hunter recommended has largely bred a form of quietism and conformity. The chief recent example is the revelation that Francis Collins, as head of the NIH, "defended fetal tissue research as his agency funded the grafting of baby scalps to rodents. They (the NIH) also funded a study that examined bacteria inside corpses of freshly aborted babies." (https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft/status/1693989306594197996)
The connection to common grace is this: In current Christian vernacular, "common grace" is the predominant way we refer to that which Christians and non-Christians share. This is what enables their common participation in enterprises of all kinds. However, because this leaves out nature as something we share in common, it tends to allow the rubber-stamping of whatever non-Christians in a field are currently doing. Christians lose that critical and prophetic edge with which to critique the current practice of science, finance, music, or whatever it is.
On the other hand, the prophetic and critical "common grace theologians" are the presuppositionalists. But for them, "common grace" is more a hand-wave that, yes, non-Christians can do beneficial things sometimes. Yet what they're really interested in is a distinctively Christian practice of each area of human life. This also lacks a grounding in nature and ends up lacking content (the Christian practice of each area is just a kind of piety alongside one's work), or being too robust (think theonomy or flood geology).
The grounding in nature as one of the things Christians and non-Christians have in common provides grounds for Christian participation in common and public life, with a critical edge, and without everything having to be "distinctively Christian." For instance, on bioethics, I greatly appreciated Robert P. George's emphasis on natural law, over the presuppositionalist view and what Collins has done. This allows Christians to make a critique of research on aborted fetuses, for example, without doing so on explicitly Christian grounds, but on something like the Hippocratic oath and truths of human nature, like that human life begins at conception.
For what it's worth, I've tried to exemplify this in my critique of Christian analytic philosophy and theistic evolution. Both seem to me to involve too much uncritical acceptance of prevailing academic orthodoxy. A theology of nature allows for a more critical posture within recognition of commonality. That's a start!
1. Can you elaborate how CGT creates Faithful Presence, and how a rich theology of nature counters Faithful Presence thought? I'm not sure where the tension is.
2. Is the WCF chapter on "good works" something that frustrates you? (XVI.VII) "Works done by unregenerate men, although... of good use both to themselves and others., yet, because they proceed not from an heart purified by faith... are therefore sinful, and cannot please God." I don't necessarily disagree with this theological statement abstractly, but the overly precise definition of "good works" that makes them only available to regenerate people feels unhelpful.
1. First, I want to affirm that my own ideal includes the faithful presence of Christians in many sectors of public and academic life. However, the critique, which I inherit from Aaron Renn, is that the "faithful presence" James Davison Hunter recommended has largely bred a form of quietism and conformity. The chief recent example is the revelation that Francis Collins, as head of the NIH, "defended fetal tissue research as his agency funded the grafting of baby scalps to rodents. They (the NIH) also funded a study that examined bacteria inside corpses of freshly aborted babies." (https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft/status/1693989306594197996)
The connection to common grace is this: In current Christian vernacular, "common grace" is the predominant way we refer to that which Christians and non-Christians share. This is what enables their common participation in enterprises of all kinds. However, because this leaves out nature as something we share in common, it tends to allow the rubber-stamping of whatever non-Christians in a field are currently doing. Christians lose that critical and prophetic edge with which to critique the current practice of science, finance, music, or whatever it is.
On the other hand, the prophetic and critical "common grace theologians" are the presuppositionalists. But for them, "common grace" is more a hand-wave that, yes, non-Christians can do beneficial things sometimes. Yet what they're really interested in is a distinctively Christian practice of each area of human life. This also lacks a grounding in nature and ends up lacking content (the Christian practice of each area is just a kind of piety alongside one's work), or being too robust (think theonomy or flood geology).
The grounding in nature as one of the things Christians and non-Christians have in common provides grounds for Christian participation in common and public life, with a critical edge, and without everything having to be "distinctively Christian." For instance, on bioethics, I greatly appreciated Robert P. George's emphasis on natural law, over the presuppositionalist view and what Collins has done. This allows Christians to make a critique of research on aborted fetuses, for example, without doing so on explicitly Christian grounds, but on something like the Hippocratic oath and truths of human nature, like that human life begins at conception.
For what it's worth, I've tried to exemplify this in my critique of Christian analytic philosophy and theistic evolution. Both seem to me to involve too much uncritical acceptance of prevailing academic orthodoxy. A theology of nature allows for a more critical posture within recognition of commonality. That's a start!