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If read, pondered, preached, taught, and applied, the teachings of Kingdom Triangle could spark revival, reformation, and reform in the church, as well as in the world at large. This is a triangle that Christians must not ignore.
2 comments:
I want to ask a sincere question: how much of Heidegger has Moreland read? He mentions him both in _Philosophical Foundations_ and _Kingdom Triangle_ as an "important postmodern thinker," which I imagine is to imply that he is one who fits Moreland's broad understanding of postmodernism as essentially relativistic and denying the existence of truth.
I think that neither Derrida nor Foucault fit Moreland's postmodern category, but I am not as well-read in them, so I will focus on Heidegger. Even before _Being and Time_ (e.g. _Logic: The Question of Truth_), Heidegger saw truth as a central issue in philosophy and, throughout his career, was a proponent of a robust notion of truth that includes the correspondence theory, but also goes well beyond it (I would suggest the works of Mark Wrathall as the best available scholarship on this issue). Similarly, his understanding of being simply cannot be read as supporting relativism. In fact, in his later work, he sees reality as that which essentially includes but is also beyond our understanding of things; it is pregnant with meaning and possibilities, it transcends our understanding and thus is more real than our understanding of it, none of which are in any way reducible to cultural understanding (see the works of Charles Taylor, Hubert Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall, Taylor Carman, Richard Polt, Julian Young, Thomas Sheehan, etc.).
As I've said elsewhere, relativism is bankrupt and should be repudiated. But it does not serve either the Evangelical nor the Emergent Church to include in your lists of postmodernists, which is then followed by explaining postmodernism as essentially relativistic, Heidegger (and, again, I would also add Derrida and Foucault, but cannot present a robust case at the moment). In fact, one tactic that has never been used by Evangelicals is to correct Emergent Church thinkers by giving a correct understanding of Heidegger (and Derrida and Foucault) rather than falling into what is a philosophically ignorant (and, hence, philosophically irresponsible) understanding of Heidegger.
On another note, I'm surprised he hasn't been discussed more explicitly given his high influence on three of the favorite thinkers in Evangelical discussions of so-called postmodernism: Derrida, Foucault, and Rorty. It's almost like addressing Aristotle without even mentioning Plato!
Another review of Kingdom Triangle that may be of interest:
http://christianbookshopsblog.org.uk/2008/04/10/kingdom-triangle/
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