Blessed are the Undone: Testimonies of the Quiet Deconstruction of Faith in Canada,

Blessed are the Undone: Testimonies of the Quiet Deconstruction of Faith in Canada, Angela Reitsma Bick & Peter Schuurman. Foreword by Neal DeRoo. New Leaf Press, 2024.


Available at: New Leaf Press


Publisher's Overview:

Canadian Christians frustrated with the Church have come ‘Undone’ and are leaving politely, almost apologetically, in what this book dubs a Quiet Deconstruction. Blessed are the Undone asks: what aspects of faith are being questioned, and why?

Weaving in church history, cultural analysis and their personal stories, Bick and Schuurman use canoe camping to illustrate the twists and turns of the spiritual journey. Whether you feel like you’re up the creek without a paddle when it comes to faith, or if people you love have lost their bearings, this book is for you.

This book neither condemns nor condones the trend of those deconstructing their faith. It seeks to describe and document the Canadian “deconstructing faith” scene while also providing a theological and sociological frame through which to understand it. Provocative, critical, fair, and focused on Canadian concerns, this book opens a window of well-researched appraisal.

Nature and Grace: The Spirituality of Existence

Nicholas Ansell, Nature and Grace: The Spirituality of Existence" (Chapter 22), in T&T Clark Handbook of the Doctrine of Creation. Jason Goroncy, ed. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024.

Available at: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.


Publisher's Overview:

The T&T Clark Handbook of the Doctrine of Creation provides an expansive range of resources introducing the doctrine of creation as understood in Christian traditions. It offers an examination of: how the Bible and various Christian traditions have imagined creation; how the doctrine of creation informs and is informed by various dogmatic commitments; and how the doctrine of creation relates to a range of human concerns and activities.

The Handbook represents a celebration of, fascination with, bewilderment at, lament about, and hope for all that is, and serves as a scholarly, innovative, and constructive reference for those interested in attending to what Christian belief has to contribute to thinking about and living with the mysterious existence named 'creation'.

Catching the Fire of Love: On the Vital Role of Emotional Connection

James H. Olthuis,"Catching the Fire of Love: On the Vital Role of Emotional Connection," Journal of Psychology and Christianity 43, no.1 (Spring 2024): pp. 50-57.

Available through: Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) membership, or at your academic library


Excerpt:
Love is at work in us and with us as we seek to catch and be caught by the fire of God’s love. Caught by the fire of God’s love, we can undergo a transformation that clears a space of healing and forgiveness so that we are no longer hampered, burdened, or victimized by the traumas we have suffered. We are enabled to develop healthy, mutually satisfying relationships with others, encouraged to join in socio-economic projects for the good of society at large—reforming structures of injustice, opposing all forms of violence, caretaking the planet, and becoming agents of change and renewal—co-partners with God in the ministry of healing, for it is to that mission that we were created and recreated in Jesus Christ. (56)

Participating in God’s redemptive work: A cyclical model for learning and assessment

"Participating in God’s redemptive work: A cyclical model for learning and assessment." Edith van der Boom. In International Journal of Christianity and Education. Calvin University. March 2024. 28(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20569971241231583

Find it at: Sage Journals 


Abstract

With the goal of working towards decolonizing educational practices, this article considers the Indigenous medicine wheel as inspiration for a cyclical model for learning and assessment. Many current assessment practices highlight individual achievement rather than ongoing and relational learning. This article suggests using a Learning Wheel as a tool to engage students in conversation about learning and assessment. The purpose of assessment would be to inform students’ learning. The goal of learning would in turn equip students to be mindful of learning that engages in real-world issues to partner in God’s redemptive work.

Encouraging Faith Manifestoes for People with Open Ears: Biblical Narrative History

Encouraging Faith Manifestoes for People with Open Ears: Biblical Narrative History. In Tough Stuff from the Bible, Tendered Gently series (Vol. 1). By Calvin G. Seerveld, Jordan Station: Paideia Press, 2024. 


[404 pages, ISBN 9780888153432]

Find it on: Paideia Press

This is the first volume in a forthcoming series, Tough Stuff from the Bible, Tendered Gently. This volume is a collection of 18 Biblical meditations interpreting both Old and New Testaments. They are a compilation of what was spoken to mostly local congregations in the Toronto, Ontario area of Canada, between 1977 and 2011, by Calvin Seerveld. Certain old traditional hymns (no longer under copyright) and a few newly composed Psalms texts by Seerveld, with melodies, are included, which are relevant to the exposition. Occasional photographic illustrations document what is spoken.

Congregations of Christian believers constituted the majority of audiences for these public presentations. Exposition represents a hermeneutics in the tradition of Martin Luther and Jean Calvin, often with a contemporary twist that relates the biblical passages to current societal problems, political troubles, and ordinary daily life. A few meditations end with a prayer.

Adorno, Heidegger, and the Politics of Truth

Adorno, Heidegger, and the Politics of Truth

Lambert Zuidervaart. New York: SUNY Press, 2024.

Available at: SUNY Press


Publisher's Overview:

An elusive and complex idea of truth lies at the center of Theodor Adorno's thought. Yet he never spells out what it is. Through close readings of Negative Dialectics, Aesthetic Theory, and related course lectures, Lambert Zuidervaart reconstructs Adorno's conception of truth, contrasts it with the conceptions of Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault, and explores its relevance for contemporary philosophy, art, and politics. Adorno regards truth as a dynamic constellation in which various dialectical polarities intersect. The most decisive polarity, Zuidervaart argues, occurs between society as it has developed and the historical possibility of a completely transformed world. Critically reconstructed, Adorno's conception of truth can help inspire hopeful critiques of an allegedly post-truth society.


Review of the Book:

Zuidervaart, who already published numerable books on critical theory in general and Adorno in particular, again shows himself to be an excellent and critical reader of Adorno. The greatest strength of Adorno, Heidegger, and the Politics of Truth is that it offers an in-depth study of Adorno's concept of truth, based on a thorough reading and understanding, and an original and critical interpretation of Adorno's work. It also surpasses that in demonstrating the need for a conception of 'truth as a whole' beyond propositional truth, and the need to link the concept of truth to social critique and social hope. All this makes this book a must-read for Adorno scholars.

— Thijs Lijster, author of Benjamin and Adorno on Art and Art Criticism: Critique of Art


Table of Contents:

1. Adorno’s Conception of Truth

2. The Humanly Promised Other of History

3. Surplus beyond the Subject

4. What Is, Is More Than It Is

5. Politics of Truth: Adorno, Foucault, and Feminist Critical Theory

6. “Weh spricht vergeh”: Truth in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory

7. Promises of Truth

Appendix: Reflections from Damaged Life: Theodor W. Adorno (1903–69)

Gestures of Grace: Essays in Honour of Robert Sweetman

Gestures of Grace: Essays in Honour of Robert Sweetman. Currents in Reformational Thought series. Edited by Joshua Lee Harris & Héctor Acero Ferrer. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2023.




Publisher's Overview:

Gestures of Grace is a celebration of the life and career of Robert Sweetman, H. Evan Runner Chair in the History of Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies (2001-2023). These essays, written by students and colleagues, testify to the remarkable breadth and depth of Sweetman's research and teaching, from his early scholarly career at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies to his time at ICS. Throughout the volume, there is extensive engagement with Sweetman's influential historical scholarship on topics such as the emergence and development of the Dominican order in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, medieval women authors, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and indeed on Sweetman's own systematic contribution to the nature and promise of Christian scholarship today.


Praise for Gestures of Grace:

“Joshua Lee Harris and Héctor A. Acero Ferrer’s collection of essays in honor of Prof. Robert Sweetman is a remarkably fine tribute to an outstanding medievalist and Christian scholar who engages in contemporary as well as historical thought. The collection, unlike so many other Festschriften, offers studies by a wide-ranging group of contributors who enter into dialogue with the equally catholic work of the scholar honored. No better tribute could be imagined for so broad, yet scholarly and keenly philosophical a mind, as Sweetman’s.”

—Timothy B. Noone, chair in philosophy, The Catholic University of America

The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective

The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective. Edited by Roger D. Henderson & Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker. Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2024.


Available at: InterVarsity Press


Publisher's Overview:

While some Christians have embraced the relationship between faith and the arts, the Reformed tradition tends to harbor reservations about the arts. However, among Reformed churches, the Neo-Calvinist tradition—as represented in the work of Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, Hans Rookmaaker, and others—has consistently demonstrated not just a willingness but a desire to engage with all manner of cultural and artistic expressions.

This volume, edited by art scholar Roger Henderson and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker, the daughter of art historian and cultural critic Hans Rookmaaker, brings together history, philosophy, and theology to consider the relationship between the arts and the Neo-Calvinist tradition. With affirmations including the Lordship of Christ, the cultural mandate, sphere sovereignty, and common grace, the Neo-Calvinist tradition is well-equipped to offer wisdom on the arts to the whole body of Christ.


Contents: 

Introduction
    Roger D. Henderson and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker

Part One: Roots
1. Geneva's Artistic Legacy: From Calvin to Today
    Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker

2. Calvin and the Arts: Pure Vision or Blind Spot?

3. Rumors of Glory: Abraham Kuyper's Neo-Calvinist Theory of Art
    Roger D. Henderson

4. Dooyeweerd's Aesthetics
    Roger D. Henderson

Part Two: Art History
5. Art, Meaning, and Truth
    Hans R. Rookmaaker
    Looking with Historical Depth: Hugo van der Goes, Filippino Lippi and Albrecht Dürer

6. The Vocation of a Christian Art Historian: Strategic Choices in a Multicultural Context
    E. John Walford
    Ridentem dicere verum—Pieter Bruegel’s Peasant Wedding of Circa 1567

7. More than Can Be Seen: Tim Rollins and K.O.S.'s I See the Promised Land
    James Romaine

Part Three: Aesthetics
8. The Halo of Human Imaginativity
    The Meaning of the Crucifixion: Grünewald and Perugino

9. Rethinking Art
    Nicholas Wolterstorff
    The Social Protest Meaning of the Graphic Art of Käthe Kollwitz

10. Imagination, Art, and Civil Society: Re-envisioning Reformational Aesthetics
    Redemptive Art Criticism

11. Art, Body, and Feeling: New Roads for Neo-Calvinist Aesthetics
    Chris Ofili: Contemporary Art and the Return of Religion

Part Four: Theology and Art
12. The Theology of Art of Gerardus van der Leeuw and Paul Tillich
    Wessel Stoker

13. The Elusive Quest for Beauty
    William Edgar

14. Fifty-Plus Years of Art and Theology: 1970 to Today
    Victoria Emily Jones

Adorno, Foucault, and Feminist Theory: The Politics of Truth

Chapter 7: "Adorno, Foucault, and Feminist Theory: The Politics of Truth." By Lambert Zuidervaart. In Feminism and the Early Frankfurt School. Studies in Critical Social Sciences series, Vol. 271. Edited by Christine A. Payne & Jeremiah Morelock. Leiden: Brill, 2024. 133–161.


Available at: Brill online.


Volume Overview:

The early Frankfurt School and feminism can and should inform each other. This volume presents an original collection of scholarship bringing together scholars of the Frankfurt School and feminist scholars. Essays included in the volume explore ideas from the early Frankfurt School that were explicitly focused on sex, gender, and sexuality, and bring ideas from the early Frankfurt School into productive dialogue with historical and contemporary feminist theory. Ranging across philosophy, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, science studies, and cultural studies, the essays investigate heteropatriarchy, essentialism, identity, intersectional feminism, and liberation. Set against an alarming context of growing gender and related forms of authoritarianism, this timely volume demonstrates the necessity of thinking these powerhouse approaches together in a united front.  


Chapter Opening:

"So far as we know, Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Michel Foucault (1926–1984) never met. Nor, for the most part, did they read each other’s work. Yet their critiques of Western society are strikingly similar—so similar, in fact, that they have drawn comparable criticisms from Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth. They have also received analogous defenses from feminist Critical Theorists, such as Amy Allen and Deborah Cook, who challenge Habermas and Honneth’s criticisms." [continue reading]

"Knowing" in Ordinary Saints: Living Everyday Life to the Glory of God

"Knowing," chapter by Calvin G. Seerveld, in Ordinary Saints: Living Everyday Life to the Glory of God. Edited by Ned Bustard (Baltimore: Square Halo Books, Inc., 2023) pp. 71-74.


[231 pages, ISBN 9781941106297]

Find it on: Square Halo Books

Over forty writers celebrate Square Halo’s twenty-fifth anniversary with essays on such topics as knitting, home repair, juggling, traffic, pipes, chronic pain, pretzels, and naps.

God Picks up the Pieces: Ecclesiastes as a Chorus of Voices

God Picks up the Pieces: Ecclesiastes as a Chorus of Voices. By Calvin G. Seerveld, Sioux Center: Dordt University Press, 2023. 

[138 pages, ISBN 978-0-932914-16-3]

Find it on: Tuppence

A fresh literary translation from the Hebrew of the biblical Older Testament book of Ecclesiastes, introduced and arranged as script for oral choral presentation, with comment on its meaning.

Philosophies of Liturgy: Explorations of Embodied Religious Practice

Philosophies of Liturgy: Explorations of Embodied Religious Practice. Edited by J. Aaron Simmons, Bruce Ellis Benson, Neal DeRoo. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.

Available at: Bloomsbury Academic


Publisher's Overview:

Mainstream philosophy of religion has primarily focused on the truth and justification of religious beliefs even though belief is only one small facet of religious life. This collection remedies this by taking practice and embodied action seriously as fundamental elements of any philosophy of religion.

Emerging and established voices across different philosophical traditions come together to consider religious actions, including public worship, from perspectives such as trauma and social ontology, sound and silence, and knowledge and hope. Embodied religious practice is viewed through the lens of liturgy, intrinsically connecting religious rituals to human existence to show clearly that, no matter where one finds oneself in terms of the so-called 'analytic-continental' divide, philosophy of religion must be concerned with more than just beliefs if it is to adequately deal with the subject matter of 'religion.'

The purpose of these studies is not to reject what has gone before but to expand the focus of philosophy of religion. This approach lays the groundwork for investigations into how beliefs are situated in our theological, moral, and social frameworks. For any philosophy of religion student or scholar interested in how thinking and living well are intimately related, this is a go-to resource. It takes seriously the importance of historical religious traditions and communities, opening the space for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary debates.


Table of Contents

Part I: On Spiritual Practice
1. Clare Carlisle – “What is Spiritual Practice”
2. Christina M. Gschwandtner – “Why Philosophy Should Concern Itself with Liturgy: Philosophical Examination of Religion and Ritual Practice''
3. John Cottingham – “Engagement, Immersion, and Enactment: The Role of Spiritual Practice in Religious Belief”
4. John Sanders – “Liturgical Jellyfish”

Part II: Liturgy and Social Existence
5. Michelle Panchuk – “Power and Protest: A Christian Liturgical Response to Religious Trauma”
6. Bruce Ellis Benson – “Religion as a Way of Life: On Being a Believer”
7. Terence Cuneo – “Blessing Things”
8. Kevin Schilbrack – “Liturgical Groups, Religions, and Social Ontology”

Part III: Materiality and Religiosity
9. Neal DeRoo – “Material Spirituality and the Expressive Nature of Liturgy”
10. Wendy Farley – “Dark Times and Liturgies of Truth: The Uses and Abuses of Reason”
11. Sharon L. Baker Putt – “Compassionate Action: Taking Eckhart, Farley, and the Beguines to Bethany”
12. Emmanuel Falque – “After Metaphysics?: The 'Weight of Life' According to Saint Augustine”

Part IV: Knowledge, Sound, and Hope
13. Nicholas Wolterstorff – “Knowing God by Liturgically Addressing God”
14. Sarah Coakley – “Beyond Belief: Liturgy and Cognitive Apprehension of God”
15. Joshua Cockayne – “Corporate Liturgical Silence”
16. Brian A. Butcher – “'You Have Given Us the Grace to Pray Together in Harmony':
Orthodox Liturgical Singing as a Criterion for (Philosophical? Theological?) Aesthetics"
17. J. Aaron Simmons and Eli Simmons – “Liturgy and Eschatological Hope”

Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude: Analytic, Continental, and Religious

Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude: Analytic, Continental, and Religious. Edited by Joshua Lee Harris, Kirk Lougheed, Neal DeRoo. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.

Available at: Bloomsbury Academic

Publisher's Overview:

Existential gratitude - gratitude for one's very existence or life as a whole - is pervasive across the most influential human, cultural and religious traditions. Weaving together analytic and continental, as well as non-western and historical philosophical perspectives, this volume explores the nexus of gratitude, existence and God as an inter-subjective phenomenon for the first time.

A team of leading scholars introduce existential gratitude as a perennially and characteristically human phenomenon, central to the distinctive life of our species. Attention is given to the conditions under which existence itself might be construed as having a gift-like or otherwise gratitude-inducing character.

Drawing on a diversity of perspectives, chapters mark out new territory in philosophical inquiry, addressing whether and in what sense we ought to be grateful for our very existence. By analysing gratitude, this collection makes a novel contribution to the discourse on moral emotions, phenomenology, anti-natalism and theology.


Table of Contents

Introduction – Joshua Lee Harris, Kirk Lougheed, and Neal DeRoo

Part I. Gratitude in Human Life
1. Grounding Existential Gratitude: A Social Form Account – Joshua Lee Harris (The King's University, Canada)
2. Gratitude and Resentment: A Tale of Two Weddings – Graham Oppy (Monash University, Australia)
3. Gratitude and the Human Vocation – Brian Treanor (Loyola Marymount University, USA)

Part II. Gratitude and Existence
4. Generous Existence? Gift, Giving, and Gratitude in Contemporary Phenomenology – Christina Gschwandter (Fordham University, USA)
5. Analogia Gratiae: Creation, Existence, and Gift in the Christian Metaphysics of Erich Przywara – Eric Mabry (St. Mary's Seminary and University, USA)
6. Gratitude for Life-Force in African Philosophy – Thaddeus Metz (University of Pretoria, South Africa)

Part III. Gratitude and the Divine
7. The Dilemma of Gratitude – Michael Almeida (University of Texas at San Antonio, USA)
8. Is Gratitude Necessary? Avicenna on Existential Dependence – Catherine Peters (Loyola Marymount University, USA)
9. Do we Owe Gratitude to God for Our Existence? – Kirk Lougheed (University of Pretoria, South Africa)
10. Thank You: William Desmond's Ethic of Gratitude and Personal God – Ethan Vanderleek (Marquette University, USA)

Social Domains of Truth: Science, Politics, Art, and Religion

Social Domains of Truth: Science, Politics, Art, and Religion

Lambert Zuidervaart. New York: Routledge, 2023.

Available at: Routledge Publishers

Publisher's Overview:

Truth is in trouble. In response, this book presents a new conception of truth. It recognizes that prominent philosophers have questioned whether the idea of truth is important. Some have asked why we even need it. Their questions reinforce broader trends in Western society, where many wonder whether or why we should pursue truth. Indeed, some pundits say we have become a "post-truth" society. Yet there are good reasons not to embrace the cultural Zeitgeist or go with the philosophical flow, reasons to regard truth as a substantive and socially significant idea.

This book explains why. First it argues that propositional truth is only one kind of truth—an important kind, but not all important. Then it shows how propositional truth belongs to the more comprehensive process of truth as a whole. This process is a dynamic correlation between human fidelity to societal principles and a life-giving disclosure of society. The correlation comes to expression in distinct social domains of truth, where either propositional or nonpropositional truth is primary. The final chapters lay out five such domains: science, politics, art, religion, and philosophy. Anyone who cares about the future of truth in society will want to read this pathbreaking book.


Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Truth Is Not a Minted Coin
1.1 On the Very Idea of Truth
1.2 Kinds and Domains of Truth
1.3 Holistic Alethic Pluralism

2. Propositional Truth: Facts and Propositions
2.1 Facts and States of Affairs
2.2 Beliefs and Propositions
2.3 Decontextualized Disclosure

3. Accurate Insight and Inferential Validity
3.1 Knowledge and Propositions
3.2 Truth of Propositions
3.3 Propositional Truth and Objective Knowledge

4. Alethic Pluralism
4.1 Functionalism: Michael Lynch
4.2 Practical Pluralism
4.3 Social Domains of Truth

5. Propositional Truth and Discursive Justification
5.1 Alston’s Minimal Alethic Realism
5.2 Putnam’s Internal Realism
5.3 Post-Anti/Realism

6. Truth as a Whole and Authentication
6.1 Isomorphism, Fidelity, and Disclosure
6.2 Kinds and Types of Truth
6.3 Bearing Witness to Truth
6.4 Modes of Authentication

7. Truth and Science
7.1 Science as a Social Domain
7.2 Scientific Realism and Theoretical Truth
7.3 Science in Society

8. Truth and Politics
8.1 Hannah Arendt: Speaking Truth to Power
8.2 Michel Foucault: Linking Power to Truth
8.3 Political Truth

9. Truth in Art and Religion
9.1 Artistic Truth
9.2 Art and Politics
9.3 Religious Truth
9.4 Religion and Science

10. Philosophy, Truth, and Wisdom
10.1 Art, Religion, and Philosophy
10.2 Truth and Historicity
10.3 Social Critique and Practical Wisdom

"Missing in Action" in Pro Rege

"Missing in Action," article by Calvin G. Seerveld, in Pro Rege, Fine Arts faculty issue (51:2, December 2022), 45-52.


[8 pages]

Find it on: Pro Rege

An article about Genevan Psalms 51 and 89.

Shattering Silos: Reimagining Knowledge, Politics, and Social Critique

Shattering Silos: Reimagining Knowledge, Politics, and Social Critique.
Shattering Silos: Reimagining Knowledge, Politics, and Social Critique publishers page
Lambert Zuidervaart. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022.

Available at: McGill-Queen's University Press

Publisher's Overview:

Questions first raised by Hannah Arendt in the 1960s take on new urgency in the post-truth era, as political leaders blithely reject facts in the public domain: Is truth politically impotent? Are politics inherently false? Is the search for truth still relevant?

Shattering Silos, a companion volume to Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation and Art, Education, and Cultural Renewal, provides a path-breaking response. As in his two previous books, Lambert Zuidervaart challenges the boundaries philosophers set up between epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. Knowledge, he argues, takes different forms in various social domains, and all are subject to political struggle. A critique of contemporary society must draw on many social domains of knowledge, including the arts and religion, and should recast politics as a striving for truth in the broadest sense. Proposing a new conception of truth - one that emphasizes the unity of knowledge and truth, as well as their diversity among different social domains - Zuidervaart asks what such holism and pluralism suggest about how we understand politics and society. This book proposes a new understanding of large-scale social change, challenging how most people think about knowledge and truth.

Interweaving epistemology, social criticism, and political thought, Shattering Silos aims to help redirect an allegedly post-truth society.

Dancing in the Wild Spaces of Love: A Theopoetics of Gift and Call

Dancing in the Wild Spaces of Love: A Theopoetics of Gift and Call. Currents in Reformational Thought series. James H. Olthuis. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2022.



Publisher's Description:

In the twenty-first century, amid globalized violence, rising demagogues, and the climate emergency, contemporary philosophers and theologians have begun to debate a fundamental question: Is our reality the result of the overflowing, ever-present creativity of Love, or the symptom of a traumatic rupture at the heart of all things? Drawing on decades of research in postmodern philosophy and experience as a psychotherapist, James H. Olthuis wades into this discussion to propose a radical ontology of Love without metaphysics. In dialogue with philosophers like John D. Caputo, Slavoj Žižek, Luce Irigaray, and others, Olthuis explores issues from divine sovereignty and the problem of evil to trauma and social ethics. Experience in therapeutic work informs these investigations, rooting them in journeys with individuals on the path to healing. Olthuis makes the bold claim that while trauma, pain, and suffering are significant parts of our human lives, nevertheless Love is with us to the very end. Creation is a gift that comes with a call to make something of it ourselves, a risky task we must take on with the promise that Love will win. We are all dancing in the wild spaces of Love: ex amore, cum amore, ad amorem.

Post-Truth? Facts and Faithfulness

Post-Truth? Facts and Faithfulness. Currents in Reformational Thought series. Jeffrey Dudiak. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2022.



Publisher's Description:

In Post-Truth? Facts and Faithfulness, Jeffrey Dudiak explores the fissures and fractures that vex our so-called "post-truth" era, searching for a deeper, dare we say truer, understanding of the cultural forces that have led North American society to become so polarized. Eschewing the kind of easy responses that trade pluralistic solidarity for tribalistic certainty, Dudiak diagnoses a deeper breakdown in social trust as the underlying issue that has everyone today scurrying for comforting, ideological cover. In this context, Dudiak reminds the reader that truth is more, and runs deeper, than simple correspondence to the facts.

Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings: Scholarly and Artistic Comment on Art, Truth, and Society in Honour of Lambert Zuidervaart

Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings: Scholarly and Artistic Comment on Art, Truth, and Society in Honour of Lambert Zuidervaart. Currents in Reformational Thought series. Edited by Héctor Acero Ferrer, Michael DeMoor, Peter Enneson and Matthew Klaassen; cover art by Joyce Recker (small wooden house in foreground with a nest of twigs inside and gnarly sticks protruding through the roof into the slightly cloudy blue sky)
Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings: Scholarly and Artistic Comment on Art, Truth, and Society in Honour of Lambert Zuidervaart. Currents in Reformational Thought series. Edited by Héctor Acero Ferrer, Michael DeMoor, Peter Enneson and Matthew Klaassen. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2021.


Publisher's Overview:

Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings pays tribute to Lambert Zuidervaart, one of the most productive Reformational philosophers of the present generation, by picking up the central concerns of his philosophical work--art, truth, and society--and working with the legacy of his published concern to see what more can be understood about our world in light of that legacy. Zuidervaart is an internationally recognized expert in critical theory, especially the work of Theodor Adorno, and a leading systematic philosopher in the reformational tradition. His research and teaching range across continental philosophy, epistemology, social philosophy, and philosophy of art, with an emphasis on Kant, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Habermas. He is currently developing a new conception of truth for an allegedly post-truth society. At the Institute for Christian Studies (2002-2016), Zuidervaart held the Herman Dooyeweerd Chair in Social and Political Philosophy and served as founding Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics. He was also an Associate Member of the Graduate Faculty and Full Professor, status only, in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, and a member of the Advanced Degree Faculty at the Toronto School of Theology. Zuidervaart is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings seeks to promote new scholarship emerging from the rich and dynamic tradition of reformational intellectual inquiry. Believing that all scholarly endeavor is rooted in and oriented by deep spiritual commitments, reformational scholarship seeks to add its unique Christian voice to discussions about leading questions of life and society. From this source, it seeks to contribute to the redemptive transformation and renewal of the various aspects of contemporary society, developing currents of thought that open human imagination to alternative future possibilities that may helpfully address the damage we find in present reality. 

As part of this work, Currents in Reformational Thought will bring to light the inter-and multi-disciplinary dimensions of this intellectual tradition, and promote reformational scholarship that intentionally invites dialogue with other traditions or streams of thought.

Contributors:

Janet Wesselius
Shannon Hoff
Allyson Carr
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Henry Luttikhuizen
Lauren Bialystok
Karen Nisenbaum
Martin Jay
Clarence Joldersma

Artistic Contributors:

Joyce Recker
Michaeleen Kelly
Linda Nemec Foster
Sue Sinclair
Diane Zeeuw
Deborah Rockman
Jay Constantine
Ron and Miriam Pederson
Janet Read

Seeking Justice Together: A Virtual Conference with CPJ


Seeking Justice Together is a virtual conference hosted by Citizens for Public Justice from May 17 to 20 exploring how we are called to seek justice together through intersectional, interpersonal, and interconnected approaches. ICS/CPRSE is one of the event’s supporters, sponsoring a workshop on the 19th on decolonization processes within faith communities, under the leadership of Decolonizing Christianity Canada and Kenosis.


Through a variety of additional keynotes and workshops, participants will explore living examples of what it looks like to seek justice as people connected to one another and to the lands in which we live. Participants will consider how our identities, histories, systems, and geography shape our experiences of power and privilege, and how this informs the ways in which each of us are called to seek justice together. Speakers and facilitators will address issues of racism, Indigenous/settler reconciliation, 2SLGBTQQIA+ rights, disability rights, poverty in Canada, climate justice, and refugee rights.

If you'd like to join all or part of this conference, visit the event website here for more information on keynotes and workshops, as well as instructions for how to register: https://cpj.ca/seeking-justice-together.
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)