Naturalism is what we could call a worldview, a sort of total way of looking at ourselves and our world. It isn’t clearly a religion: the term “religion” is vague, and naturalism falls into the vague area of its application. Still, naturalism plays many of the same roles as a religion. In particular, it gives answers to the great human questions: Is there such a person as God? How should we live? Can we look forward to life after death? What is our place in the universe? How are we related to other creatures? Naturalism gives answers here: there is no God, and it makes no sense to hope for life after death. As to our place in the grand scheme of things, we human beings are just another animal with a peculiar way of making a living. Naturalism isn’t clearly a religion; but since it plays some of the same roles as a religion, we could properly call it a quasi-religion.
The wide variety of psychotherapies that psychologists and students of psychology face can make for a confusing picture. The level of complexity is multiplied for Christians since they must ask how a particular psychotherapy fits (or doesn’t fit) with a Christian understanding of persons and their suffering. In this expanded and thoroughly update edition, Stanton Jones and Richard Butman continue to offer a careful analysis and penetrating critiques of the myriad of psychotherapies now current in the field of psychology including: Classical Psychoanalysis, Contemporary Psychodynamic Psychotherapies, Behavior Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, Person-Centered Therapy, Experiential Therapies, Family Systems Theory and Therapy. Two valuable new chapters have been added: “Community Psychology and Preventative Intervention Strategies” and “Christian Psychotherapy and the Person of the Christian Psychotherapist.” Opening and closing chapters discuss foundational concerns on the integration of psychology and theology and present the authors’ call for a “responsible eclecticism.” Modern Psychotherapies remains an indispensable resource.
Modernity is a period, a mindset, and a malaise. The period begins with the French Revolution in 1789. The mindset is that ethos reflected by an elitist intellectual class of “change agents” positioned in universities, the press, and in influential sectors of the liberal church. This elite continually touts the tenets of modernity, whose four fundamental values are moral relativism (which says that what is right is dictated by culture, social location, and situation), autonomous individualism (which assumes that moral authority comes essentially from within), narcissistic hedonism (which focuses on egocentric personal pleasure), and reductive naturalism (which reduces what is reliably known to what one can see, hear, and empirically investigate). The malaise of modernity is related to the rapidly deteriorating influence of these four central values between roughly 1955 and 1985. … Anybody who knows the modern university knows that we have gone far beyond modernity. We left it behind in 1968. It is only a matter of catching up with where history is taking us. We must now learn how to live with the consequences of the failure of those assumptions and values. This is the challenge of the postmodern period.
I was sincerely committed to liberalized abortion legislation at the time. It was a hotly debated issue in the late sixties in Oklahoma. Abortion became a watershed issue for me when I finally recognized that huge numbers of lives were being destroyed in the interest of individual choice. In the midst of all the rhetoric about freedom came the embarrassing awareness that I was condoning a moral matrix in which innocent life was being taken. That was a shock. It still is. This realization produced a loss of confidence in a whole series of liberal programs I had struggled for. Abortion was such a fundamental moral challenge to me that I could no longer find myself easily associating with people and programs who continued to do what I had been doing for so long — that is, asserting individualistic choice when it involved the loss of life under irresponsible conditions of sexual unaccountability.
Following the extraordinary success of the New York Times bestseller Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas’s latest book offers inspirational and intellectually rigorous thought about the great questions surrounding us all today. The Greek philosopher Socrates famously said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." Taking this as a starting point, Eric Metaxas founded a speaking series that encouraged busy and successful professionals to attend forums and think actively about the bigger questions in life. Thus Socrates in the City: Conversations on "Life, God, and Other Small Topics" was born. This book is for the seeker in all of us, the collector of wisdom, and the person who asks "What if?" Within this collection of original essays that were first given to standing-room-only crowds in New York City are serious thinkers taking on Life, God, Evil, Redemption, and other small topics. Luminaries such as Dr. Francis Collins, Sir John Polkinghorne, Charles Colson, N.T. Wright, Os Guinness, Peter Kreeft, and Jean Bethke Elshatin have written about extraordinary topics vital to both secular and Christian thinking, such as "Making Sense Out of Suffering," "How Good Confronts Evil," and "Belief in God in an Age of Science." No question is too big — in fact, the bigger, the harder, the more complex, the better. These essays are both thought-provoking and entertaining, because nowhere is it written that finding answers to life’s biggest questions shouldn’t be exciting and even, perhaps, fun. ~ Book Description
Tackling Hawking, Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and a newcomer in the field — the French philosopher Michel Onfray — John Lennox points out some of the most glaring fallacies in the New Atheist approach in this insightful book. Since the twin towers crashed to the ground on September 11, there has been no end to attacks on religion. Claims abound that religion is dangerous, that it kills, and that it poisons everything. And if religion is the problem with the world, say the New Atheists, the answer is simple — get rid of it. Of course, things aren’t quite so straightforward. Arguing that the New Athiests’ irrational and unscientific methodology leaves them guilty of the very obstinate foolishness they criticize in dogmatic religious folks, this erudite and wide-ranging guide to religion in the modern age packs some debilitating punches and scores big for religious rationalism. ~ Book Description
Reading the Gospels without knowing the personality of Jesus is like watching television with the sound turned off. The result is a dry, two dimensional person doing strange, undecipherable things. In Beautiful Outlaw, John Eldredge removes the religious varnish to help readers discover stunning new insights into the humanity of Jesus. He was accused of breaking the law, keeping bad company, heavy drinking. Of being the devil himself. He was so compelling and dangerous they had to kill him. But others loved him passionately. He had a sense of humor. His generosity was scandalous. His anger made enemies tremble. He’d say the most outrageous things. He was definitely not the Jesus of the stained glass. In the author’s winsome, narrative approach, he breaks Jesus out of the typical stereotypes, just as he set masculinity free in his book, Wild at Heart. By uncovering the real Jesus, readers are welcomed into the rich emotional life of Christ. All of the remarkable qualities of Jesus burst like fireworks with color and brilliance because of his humanity. Eldredge goes on to show readers how they can experience this Jesus in their lives every day. This book will quicken readers’ worship, and deepen their intimacy with Jesus. ~ Book Description
We are called to excellence in all activities of life, not least in our scholarship and ministry. Outlining virtues directly related to vocation and scholarship, Andreas Köstenberger tells us there is a way to be a better person and a better scholar — without needing to sacrifice our faith at the altar of academic respectability. Here is a call to a life of virtue lived out in excellence.
By this point in my life, I’d also had enough experience with government, corporations, and academic bureaucracies to understand what happens to organizations as they get larger. The middle-managers and empire-builders start to take root. Each problem results in a new guideline or process meant to prevent the problem from ever occurring again. Metrics are added, because managers can’t manage what they can’t measure. Individual incentives shift so far from the stated corporate goal that they actively work against it. Intrinsic motivation wanes. The ability to do truly great work all but disappears.
In the light of the threats posed to Christianity by militant Islam, intolerant secularism, and widespread misinformation (The Da Vinci Code, the Jesus Seminar, etc.), the necessity of informed and articulate defense of the Christian faith today can hardly be contested. Reasons for Our Hope offers a sophisticated yet accessible guide to “destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and . . . taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). The book’s 31 chapters are divided into four sections: 1) Apologetics Methodologies and Systems – with chapters on worldviews, the tension between faith and reason, etc. 2) Apologetics in Scripture and in History – a look at apologetics in the Old and New Testaments, early church, middle ages, the Reformation, Enlightenment, and today. 3) Apologetic Problems – issues such as the value of philosophy, dealing with skepticism, the problem of evil, miracles, the Resurrection, etc. 4) How to Use Apologetics in Engaging the World – how to engage the Cultist, Secularist, Postmodernist, Muslim, and Eastern Mystic. ~ Book Description