2K Theology and Philosophy

It's pleasant when two of my idiosyncrasies intersect. I've posted here about James K.A. Smith, Calvin College professor of philosophy and the fellow who's single handedly reorienting abstract worldview thinking to take human (desiring) nature into account. Smith posted on his blog here a very interesting observation to the effect that the new generation of Christian philosophers seems to be concerned simply to show that their philosophizing doesn't exclude theism. In other words, Christian teachings have no traction when it comes to the actual content of philosophy. I have no way of verifying Smith's observation but he should know given that he's a young Christian philosopher.

I've posted here and here (and other places to be sure) about "two-kingdom" theology. Two-kingdom theology, a small but vocal variant on a slightly larger but significant strand of Reformed Christian thought, argues that, in political and cultural arenas, there is little connection between the primarily redemptive Christian faith located in the community of the Church and largely unredeemable world exemplified by human culture. Two-kingdom folks advocate a withdrawal by Christians qua Christians from the political and cultural "wars" that have engendered much strife in America over the past 40 years. (Click here for some recent thoughts on this topic.)

I'm not aware that any two-kingdom folks have addressed whether there is any substantive relationship between the Christian faith--redemptively characterized--and philosophy. Even if they haven't, it seems that a practical two-kingdoms ethos may be permeating a new generation of philosophers who identify themselves as Christian. This strikes me as an altogether unfortunate state of affairs.

The nature of the Christian religion, at least as understood in a traditionally orthodox way, makes many claims about the nature of truth and the requisites for knowledge, and elaborations on truth and knowing are among the core activities of the philosophical enterprise. Christian claims about human nature as originally constituted and presently existing (e.g., the doctrines of the image of God and sin) strike me an intrinsically significant to philosophical anthropology. To forgo employing such insights when it comes to philosophizing is at best a failure of nerve and at worst the sin of acedia.

As I argued in Consideration in the Common Law of Contracts (abstract here):

If God originally created and now maintains all that exists, then creation and providence include human object qualities such as perception, cognition, and reasoning as well as the subjects of human investigation like [philosophy]. Divine aseity and human dependence account for Scripture’s reference to “knowledge” in a lengthy list of ethical categories. ... God through His Word provides the rule for all aspects of human life, not merely worship, evangelism, and personal ethics: “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Would that we all take the concluding injunction more seriously.