Individual Theology and Worldview Articles (3)

This post will contain links to individual articles that I have found particularly compelling, insightful, and valuable.

The Illusionist: How Herbert Marcuse Convinced a Generation that Censorship Is Tolerance & Other Politically Correct Tricks by Robin Phillips. This is MUST-READ.

His] vision was essentially Marxist, but with a twist. Whereas Marx believed that power rested with those who controlled the means of production, the Frankfurt school argued that power rested with those who controlled the institutions of culture. The school would come to include sociologists, art critics, psychologists, philosophers, "sexologists," political scientists, and a host of other "experts" intent on converting Marxism from a strictly economic theory into a cultural reality…. 

What emerged from the shadow of this new tolerance was a type of intellectual redistribution. Instead of redistributing economic capital from the middle class to the working class, as Marx had urged, the new tolerance sought to redistribute cultural capital. Marcuse made no secret that this was his ultimate goal, admitting that he commended "the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right." This was achieved in a number of ways, including what Flynn has described as "attitudinal adjustment" effected by "psychological conditioning through entertainment, the class room, linguistic taboos, and other means [that] transmit their ideology through osmosis."

EVANGELICALS DIVIDED: THE BATTLE BETWEEN MELIORISTS AND TRADITIONISTS TO DEFINE EVANGELICALISM by Gerald McDermott April 2011 in First Things.

Evangelical theology has long been divided between those who emphasize human freedom to choose salvation (Arminians) and those who stress God’s sovereignty in the history of salvation (the Reformed). Now this old division has been overshadowed by a larger division between new opposing camps we may call the Meliorists and the Traditionists. The former think we must improve and sometimes change substantially the tradition of historic orthodoxy. The latter think that while we might sometimes need to adjust our approaches to the tradition, generally we ought to learn from it rather than change it. Most of the Meliorists are Arminian, and most of the Traditionists are Reformed, though there are exceptions on both sides….

But the way to renewal requires a conscious rejection of Meliorist accommodationism and the assertion of what I have called Traditionism, particularly its willingness to be instructed by the Great Tradition…. These days the most common temptations are to argue in neo-pietist fashion that doctrine and morality are finally unimportant as long as believers experience warm feelings about Jesus and engage in ministry to the world, and to reduce Scripture to the human expression of religious experience, finding revelation somewhere other than in the biblical text itself….

KARL BARTH’S FAILURE: KARL BARTH FAILED TO LIBERATE THEOLOGY FROM MODERNITY’S CAPTIVITY. by Matthew Rose June 2014 in First Things.

I missed Karl Barth when doing my MDiv. This is a good 15 minute introduction to Barth and how he fits into 20th/21st cc. thought.

But we are living through the unraveling of the Christian metaphysic, which began with a rejection of classical theism, proceeded to abolish purpose from the material world, and is now eliminating the rational and moral nature of man. In order to recognize this metaphysical demolition for what it is—one can scarcely repair what one misunderstands—Christians are no more helped by Barth than by theological liberalism. Both collude with secular reason in denying our capacity to attain knowledge of the highest things. We will be immeasurably better served by recognizing, as John Paul II wrote in Fides et Ratio, that our “crisis of meaning” stems from failing to defend the ability of reason to know “the ultimate and overarching meaning of life.”