Book Review: Critical Conversations: Michael Polanyi and Christian Theology
Book Review: Murray A. Rae, Editor, Critical Conversations:
Michael Polanyi and Christian Theology
Polanyi’s interest in Christianity and the interest of many Polanyians in Christianity is intriguing,
although some have found it disconcerting. Polanyi surprises many with his references to
Augustine, St. Paul, the Christian scheme of Fall and Redemption, etc. Rae’s collection of essays
adds to a considerable literature on Polanyi’s ideas in relation to Christianity. But Christianity
is not one dimensional, as the essays here clearly demonstrate. The nine authors, many familiar to
Polanyians, discuss an array of topics, and my brief comments, which often use the authors’
words, mention only a few elements of these interesting essays.
For the entire book review, click here.
An Assessment of Three Epistemological Views: Michael Polanyi, Cornelius Van Til, and John Calvin
Dr. Billy Sichone concludes:
We can safely conclude that Theistic Epistemology is the way to go as taught by Cornelious Van Til, the presuppositionalist apologetics approach fore-runner, because we cannot truly know anything in the truest sense of the word unless we begin with God. Though Polanyi was on track towards the truth, he failed to point the finger ultimately where the truth originates-God. He instead pointed his thinking towards what he called “Tacit knowledge”. Perhaps that is the best light Polanyi had and should thus commend him somewhat because he differs from other epistemologists radically though he too does not match up to Van Til’s position where God is over all things and it is from/in Him that all things consist.
The Bible as Foundation of Knowledge (Epistemogy) in the West
Jordan Peterson discusses the Bible as the:
- precondition for truth
- solution for the problem of perceptoin
- key to personal relationships
- understading of ethics
- and more…
You Probably Should Have Read the Bible
Language, Logic, and the Beginning of Human Being: Francis Collins’ Fallacies
Hendrik van der Breggen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Providence University College
Otterburne, Manitoba, Canada
Abstract: Via his popular books—The Language of God and The Language of Life—Francis Collins, the current director of U.S. National Institutes of Health, attempts to persuade the general public that the human embryo is not a human being and thus its destruction (in publiclyfunded scientific research) is morally permissible. Collins, however, misuses language and misuses logic in his attempt to discern the beginning of human life. Because Collins’ NIH is presently killing human embryos mistakenly thinking they are not human beings (and is at time of writing contemplating animal/ human cross-species research using human embryos mistakenly thinking they are not human beings), this paper endeavors to point up and correct Francis Collins’ errors.
The Bible, Critical Theory, and Critical Race Theory, Part 1
A Little History
Throughout human history, God’s Word has been attacked, first by Satan, then by those who follow him. The first instance of this was the temptation of Eve and the Fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden as Satan in the form of a serpent asked Eve, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” (Genesis 3:1). Ever since, God’s Word has been questioned, attacked, burned, ignored, counterfeited and changed.
Throughout the Dark Ages, the Roman Catholic false Church-State banned the Bible for the “laity” and burned copies of it translated into the languages of the common people. Then at the beginning of the 16th century, Erasmus “laid the egg that Luther hatched” when he published his New Testament Greek text based on the Byzantine texts, lately come out of the Eastern Orthodox church after the Muslims took Constantinople. This became known as the Textus Receptus, the Received Text, which was the basis for all the Reformation translations of the New Testament from Luther’s German to Tyndale’s English, the Genevan, and finally, the King James Version. It was this English Bible that went throughout the world carried by missionaries to the nations which proved to be a “mortal wound” to the Roman Catholic false Church-State. God’s Word was set free, and the true church of Jesus Christ was reformed and grew in a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the people of God, and the false church was exposed for what it truly was – Babylon the Great who persecutes the true saints of God.
Rome could not defeat the Word of God. Instead, she tried once again to persecute the saints of God. During the Middle Ages, the Dominicans headed the Inquisition, which tortured and murdered millions of faithful followers of Jesus Christ – men, women, and children, even organizing crusader armies to hunt them down and murder them. After the Reformation, it was the Jesuits who not only took the leadership of the Inquisition, but also were more devious, infiltrating Protestant groups by deception, in order to bring back the “heretics” to the pope of Rome, reestablishing Rome’s dominance in the world, and healing the “mortal wound.” This is demonstrated in the Jesuits’ futurist and preterist distractions on the identity of the Antichrist, whom all the Reformers, as well as the Dissenting church throughout the Dark Ages, knew to be the pope of Rome. Futurism eliminates the need to worry about a present Antichrist, he will come only in the Future and be revealed during the “Great Tribulation”; or Preterism relegates to the first century emperor Nero.Unfortunately, most non-Catholics (one cannot call them Protestants because they do not statnd for the Word of God) believe the Jesuits’ eschatology – mostly Futurism, but a few Preterism – instead of the Historicist eschatology of the Reformers and their descendants.[1]