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Full-Text Articles in Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion
Foreword To 'Sermons From Mind And Heart: Struggling To Preach Theologically', Brad Kallenberg, William Trollinger
Foreword To 'Sermons From Mind And Heart: Struggling To Preach Theologically', Brad Kallenberg, William Trollinger
Brad J. Kallenberg
One does not flip through a car manual and mistake it for poetry. Nor does one pick up the Sunday comics and mistake them for a Physicians' Desk Reference. That is because native speakers seldom make mistakes of genre when reading ordinary English texts. Yet pick up a collection of sermons, and one may feel at a loss: What is going on here? What am I to make of these sentences? What sort of genre is this? What am I, as a reader, to expect (or not to expect) from a sermon, especially from a printed sermon? Should I expect …
Some Things Are Worth Dying For, Brad Kallenberg
Some Things Are Worth Dying For, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
In April of 1992, Kristen French, a 15 year-old girl was kidnapped and held as a sex slave in suburban Ontario. For two days she was raped and threatened with death. Surprisingly, on the third day she grew defiant, refusing to perform a particular sexual act even after she was shown pre-recorded videotape of her predecessor, Leslie, being strangled by her captors with an electrical cord. (Leslie's corpse was sawn into 10 pieces before disposal.) A record of Kristen's suffering was preserved on video tape too. Of interest is Kristen's dying claim: "Some things are worth dying for." Kristen's story …
Teaching Engineering Ethics By Conceptual Design: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis, Brad Kallenberg
Teaching Engineering Ethics By Conceptual Design: The Somatic Marker Hypothesis, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
In 1998, a lead researcher at a Midwestern university submitted as his own a document that had 64 instances of strings of 10 or more words that were identical to a consultant's masters thesis and replicated a data chart, all of whose 16 entries were identical to three and four significant figures. He was fired because his actions were wrong. Curiously, he was completely unable to see that his actions were wrong. This phenomenon is discussed in light of recent advances in neuroscience and used to argue for a change in the standard way engineering ethics is taught. I argue …
Professional Or Practitioner? What’S Missing From The Codes?, Brad Kallenberg
Professional Or Practitioner? What’S Missing From The Codes?, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
Imagine a code of ethics that advocated shady business practices and that the organization proposing the code came under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Imagine further, that the investigation came to trial and the stance taken by the organization was found to be illegal by the highest court of the land. Such a scenario, if true, would raise a host of questions about codes of professional ethics, not the least of which would be “What value, if any, do codes of ethics have for the teaching of ethics?” Sadly, the above scenario is factual. However, I’m not referring …
The Descriptive Problem Of Evil, Brad Kallenberg
The Descriptive Problem Of Evil, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
Language is like the cane in the hand of the blind person. The better one becomes at getting around with the cane, the more he or she is apt to forget the cane but through the cane perceive the objects scraped and tapped by the other end. A defective cane may distort the world perceived by the blind person. So too, defective use of language threatens to muddy our understanding of the things we talk about. When discussing something as difficult as natural evils, a frequently undetected defect in our language use is “overly attenuated description.” In this piece, I …
On Locating Disaster, Brad Kallenberg
On Locating Disaster, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
Imagine a man, unknown to you, standing in your backyard calmly clasping and unclasping his hands three times each hour. If we ask "What is he doing?" we would not likely be satisfied with these words: "He's clasping his hands three times per hour." There is something unnerving about the whole scene, not only because we cannot comprehend the point of clasping one's hands three times per hour; we want to know, "What's he doing in my back yard?" There is a similarly unnerving quality about the description of the Columbia disaster as posed by the case study. By it …
Praying For Understanding: Reading Anselm Through Wittgenstein, Brad Kallenberg
Praying For Understanding: Reading Anselm Through Wittgenstein, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
If Wittgenstein is correct to assert that practice gives words their sense, then it is logically possible that an understanding of the ontological "argument" Anselm presents in Proslogion requires some level of practical participation in prayer. A close inspection of Anselm's historical context shows that the conceptual distance we stand from him may be too great to be overcome by mere spectatorship. Rather, participation in this case likely requires of the modern reader a reproduction of Anselm's conduct in prayer. If so, Anselm's case falsifies, and thus warrants our resistance of, the commonly presumed disconnect between knowledge and practice. Fresh …
Ecclesial Practices, Colin M. Mcguigan, Brad Kallenberg
Ecclesial Practices, Colin M. Mcguigan, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
In this chapter, we first provide an overview of the place of practice in some of the most prominent recent epistemologists of religion; second, we give an account of an ordinary practice (engineering) to flesh out a general conception of the importance of practice in training cognizers for skilled perception; third, and last, we connect the results of this inquiry with renewed theological and philosophical interest in the ‘spiritual senses’ tradition. The upshot of these reflections is the conclusion that an adequate account of social practices already anticipates the possibility that ecclesial practice might contribute to an epistemic transformation capable …
Practicing To Aim At Truth: Theological Engagements In Honor Of Nancey Murphy, Ryan Newson, Brad Kallenberg
Practicing To Aim At Truth: Theological Engagements In Honor Of Nancey Murphy, Ryan Newson, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
Well-meaning evangelicals unfamiliar with Nancey Murphy’s philosophical theology frequently worry that her work in philosophy of mind has the effect of depriving us of our souls. When such an objection is voiced after a speaking engagement, Murphy’s “reassurance” is predictable: “Don’t worry! There is nothing to be lost; we never had souls to begin with!” Underneath her wry reply is a deep concern that philosophical confusion about “having a soul” is seriously undermining Christian discipleship. For example, it has become second nature for many Christians to hold that the soul is more important than the body; regardless of the state …
Live To Tell, Brad Kallenberg
Live To Tell, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
In recent years, countless Christians have found evangelism a difficult and even baffling scriptural mandate. Those we encounter, particularly young people, are often entirely unfamiliar with the basics of the Gospel. Traditional means of communicating the faith, from cold-calling to mass-mailings, simply no longer speak the language of the culture. Brad Kallenberg recognizes that evangelism, even in our own backyard, has become a cross-cultural task. Like missionaries serving in foreign countries, we must become "students of the host culture." Much more than a "sinner's prayer," conversion requires a change of social identity. Indeed, becoming a follower of Christ involves gaining …
A Member Of No Community? Theology After Wittgenstein, Brad Kallenberg
A Member Of No Community? Theology After Wittgenstein, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
The study of Wittgenstein has spawned a new sort of Christian theology. A growing list of theologians have discovered in Wittgenstein a therapy for conceptual confusion and tips for how to go on, not only in religious faith and practice, but also in the practice of theology as an academic discipline. This is not to say that such thinkers have succeeded in turning Wittgenstein into an instrument of apologetics or that Wittgenstein has “delivered” them from the grip of their own religious particularity. No; they have learned from Wittgenstein the skill of silence. Their theology, like Wittgenstein’s philosophy, comes to …
The Strange New World In The Church: A Review Essay Of 'With The Grain Of The Universe' By Stanley Hauerwas, Brad Kallenberg
The Strange New World In The Church: A Review Essay Of 'With The Grain Of The Universe' By Stanley Hauerwas, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
Hauerwas's refusal to translate the argument displayed in With the Grain of the Universe (his recent Gifford Lectures) into language that "anyone" can understand is itself part of the argument. Consequently, readers will not understand what Hauerwas is up to until they have attained fluency in the peculiar language that has epitomized three decades of Hauerwas's scholarship. Such fluency is not easily gained. Nevertheless, in this review essay, I situate Hauerwas's baffling language against the backdrop of his corpus to show at least this much: With the Grain of the Universe transforms natural theology into "witness." In the end, my …
Rethinking Fideism Through The Lens Of Wittgenstein’S Engineering Outlook, Brad Kallenberg
Rethinking Fideism Through The Lens Of Wittgenstein’S Engineering Outlook, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
In an otherwise superbly edited compilation of student notes from Wittgenstein’s 1939 Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cora Diamond makes a false step that reveals to us our own tendencies to misread Wittgenstein. The student notes she collated attributed the following remark to a student named Watson: “The point is that these [data] tables do not by themselves determine that one builds the bridge in this way: only the tables together with certain scientific theory determine that.” But Diamond thinks this a mistake, presuming instead to change the manuscript and put these words into the mouth of Wittgenstein. But …
Modernism And Postmodernism, Brad Kallenberg, Ethan Smith
Modernism And Postmodernism, Brad Kallenberg, Ethan Smith
Brad J. Kallenberg
The Global Dictionary of Theology is inspired by the shift of the center of Christianity from the West to the Global South. But it also reflects the increase in two-way traffic between these two sectors as well as the global awareness that has permeated popular culture to an unprecedented degree. The editorial perspective of the Global Dictionary of Theology is an ecumenical evangelicalism that is receptive to discovering new facets of truth through listening and conversation on a global scale. Thus a distinctive feature of the Global Dictionary of Theology is its conversational approach. Contributors have been called on to …
Character, D. Michael Cox, Brad Kallenberg
Character, D. Michael Cox, Brad Kallenberg
Brad J. Kallenberg
Character denotes the particular set of qualities, both natural and acquired, that serves to identify a person or community. These qualities are relatively stable and will be manifest as a consistency of act~ on that can be termed "integrity." Accordingly, in the context of Christian ethics, character names an established disposition (or set of dispositions) with respect to the particular conception of the . human good exemplified by Christ. Such character ts developed over time and, as such, can be formed either toward or away from virtues, understood as those intellectual and affective habits that enable the pursuit of excellence. …