Joel Garver on the Air!
Regular reader and commentator on this blog, Dr. Joel Garver, assistant professor of philosophy at LaSalle University, has a talk of his about theonomy on SermonAudio.com. I’ll be looking forward to giving this a listen. Joel, you probably don’t know that my wife and I used to belong to a theonomic church. Emphasis on used to.
Share on Facebook
September 23rd, 2005 at 12:49 pm
I downloaded it… looking forward to listening (but probably won’t until next week some time).
September 23rd, 2005 at 1:05 pm
Hey, I know that guy!
Thanks Mark! I look forward to listening to it.
September 23rd, 2005 at 4:49 pm
It was part of a summer-long series on the law of God and the law of man, headed up by David Skeel who is an elder at Tenth and law prof at the Univ of Penn law school.
Other sessions covered Kuyper, marriage and divorce, school vouchers, gay marriage, abortion, end of life issues, and some other topics that I can’t recall at the moment. Other speakers included an attorney, a judge, a doctor, among others.
You can find the sessions already posted online here.
I thought the comment someone left on my talk at the SermonAudio website was, er, interesting.
October 6th, 2005 at 7:54 am
Well, I finally got a change to listen to it yesterday. I thought it was informative, and I appreciated the one critique that was covered with any depth.
But I also felt like there was a pretty condescending (but not really arrogant) attitude throughout. So that made it a bit frustrating to listen to.
I wasn’t persuaded to change any of my views by the lecture, but I found it worthwhile to listen to. Of course, I would have liked another session or two focussing on the critiques, and then (probably) a whole nother series working out an alternative position.
October 7th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
Hmm. Sorry if it came across as condescending. That’s probably partly a matter of being in academia. It also probably doesn’t help that I don’t think I know any real live theonomists and that a lot of the major proponents of it have indulged in pretty overblown rhetoric. Ah well. No offense intended.
October 7th, 2005 at 8:37 pm
Joel,
Sometime you and I should talk face-to-face about this. I was in a theonomic church for many years. While I’ve “fallen away” from theonomy as the central motive of my walk, I know a lot of sympathies and influences remain. I could give you a first person account of what it was like to “grow up” theonomic back in the heyday of the movement.
October 7th, 2005 at 9:27 pm
Joel,
I wasn’t offended. I just had to take a lot of what you were saying with a grain of salt.
Still, I want you to know that I’ve come out the other side better than I went in.
And I’ve never really considered theonomy as central to my doctrine, and I don’t know if I really fit that label, but I’ve certainly moved closer and closer to a theonomic position over the years.
I would defnitely fall along side James Jordan, circa 1992. I don’t know where he’s gone on this topic since then, but I have some lectures by him from that year entitled ‘A Theocratic Critique of Theonomy’, where he critiques Bahnsen, that I pretty much agree with.
And a lot of that actually overlaps with your lectures, too.
October 8th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
Richard, I’m glad I gave no offense.
Mark, I’d welcome a discussion sometime. I’ve interacted with some theonomic folks online a bit and I do know a number of ex-theonomic sorts, but the former have left a largely negative impression and the latter mostly look back at theonomy as a youthful indiscretion. So, I’d be interested in talking to someone (you!) who, even if an ex-theonomist, might still be able to communicate about it in a sympathetic way.
I’d also note that my own view on faith and the political is probably not too terribly distant from that of Jim Jordan (but it’s also not too distant from Oliver O’Donovan or Stanley Hauerwas, so make of that what you will).
October 8th, 2005 at 10:23 pm
Joel,
Let me know sometime when you’re going to be on the WTS campus, and we’ll have lunch together.
October 17th, 2005 at 6:00 am
Hey Mark, email me and we can try to set up a lunch.