Who’s Afraid of the Unmoved Mover?
Postmodernism and Natural Theology
Andrew I. Shepardson
Foreword by J. P. Moreland
Who’s Afraid of the Unmoved Mover?
Postmodernism and Natural Theology
Copyright © 2019 Andrew I. Shepardson. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Pickwick Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-5677-4
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-5678-1
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-5679-8
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Shepardson, Andrew I., author. | Moreland, James Porter, 1948–, foreword writer
Title: Whose afraid of the unmoved mover? : postmodernism and natural theology / Andrew I. Shepardson, with a foreword by J. P. Moreland.
Description: Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019 | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-5677-4 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-5678-1 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-5679-8 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Faith and reason | Postmodernism—Religious aspects | God—Proof | Philosophical theology | Christian philosophy | Religion and science
Classification: BT55 S32 2019 (paperback) | BT55 (ebook)
Manufactured in the U.S.A.10/07/19
Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: Elucidation of the Problem and Definitions
• Chapter 2: “Evangelical” Natural Theology and Postmodern Philosophy and Theology
• Chapter 3: Postmodern Evangelical Rejections of Natural Theology (Part 1)
• Chapter 4: Postmodern Evangelical Rejections of Natural Theology (Part 2)
• Chapter 5: Natural Theology After the Postmodern Critique
To my bride, Kelsey Walsh Shepardson
Foreword
In a few months (late November, 2018) I will have been a Jesus-follower for fifty years, one half of a century. Two years after my conversion, I joined the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ (now called Cru), and have been in vocational Christian work for forty-eight years. One of the things that attracted me to Christianity was that it is based on reason and evidence. It is the only religion that values knowledge, rationality, and persuasion/argumentation.
As I grew as a young believer, a whole new world of thought was opened up to me—biblical study, learning to think theologically and in light of a Christian worldview, and the role of apologetics in strengthening believers and persuading unbelievers to come to Christ. But very few other Christians I knew were interested in reason (loving God with the mind) and, more specifically, apologetics. The sad truth is that throughout my fifty years of being a Christian, things are basically the same. While there is an encouraging and growing interest in apologetics, still, the average local church has little ...
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About Who’s Afraid of the Unmoved Mover? Postmodernism and Natural Theology
Are postmodern philosophy and Christian theology compatible? A surprising number of Christian philosophers and theologians think so. However, these same thinkers argue that postmodern insights entail the rejection of natural theology, the ability to discover knowledge about the existence and nature of God in the natural world. Postmodernism, they claim, shows that appealing to nature to demonstrate or infer the existence of God is foolish because these appeals rely on modernity's outmoded grounds for knowledge. Moreover, natural theology and apologetics are often hindrances to authentic Christian faith. Notions like objectivity and rationality are forms of idolatry from which Christians should repent. |
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