March 17, 2004
the sage of königsberg
I just finished Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? a debate between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdmann. In one of his statements, Craig includes a shorten version of this quote from Tom Morris, (who is commenting on an unwarranted assumption commonly made by modern liberal theologians):
…there is a conviction expressed here which is wide-spread among contemporary theologians, the belief that Kant, or Hume, or both together some two centuries ago dealt death blows to natural theology and to the sort of classical theistic metaphysics underlying traditional approaches to revelation theology…What is particularly interesting about the references theologians make to Kant or Hume is that most often we find the philosopher merely mentioned, in a somewhat deferential and even slightly appreciative tone, but we rarely, if ever, see an account of precisely which arguments of his are supposed to have accomplished the alleged demolition of cognitivism, and exactly how they may be supposed to have had the effect. In fact, I must confess to never having seen in the writings of any contemporary theologian the exposition of a single argument from either Hume of Kant, or any other historical figure, for that matter, which comes anywhere near to demolishing, or even irreparably damaging traditional theistic metaphysics, historical Christian doctrine, or the epistemology of what we might call ‘theological realism’, the construal of theology as a discipline whose intent is to represent religious realities as they, in fact, are.
This is precisely right. Hume and Kant are often alluded to as authorities, but their arguments are not presented or examined. Defenders of Christianity have a right to see the details of their critics charges.
Posted by Tim at March 17, 2004 10:34 PM