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The Natural Theologian

PhD Student in philosophy at Saint Louis University. I am a father and a philosopher. I write about life and philosophy. joelcarini.substack.com

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

21:01

Check Your Sources: Theology from the Bible and...

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/05/21

Scripture is the only source of theology that evangelical Christians all accept. As a result, the methodology of evangelical theology is to argue deductively from premises of a single source: the Bible. Excluded from theology are philosophy, empirical science, and literary imagination. Accordingly, evangelical theology is functionally biblicist.If a theologian introduces a premise that is not biblically-derived but is based in experience, that theologian invites suspicion that his premise is

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8:34

Which Evangelicals Are Woke?

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/05/10

Yesterday morning, I listened to Preston Sprinkle’s response to criticisms of his Exiles in Babylon conference. Sprinkle presents, in his books and on YouTube, an evangelical perspective that is arguably theologically orthodox, but sympathetic to Side B, celibate, gay Christians. He is also mildly left-leaning on politics, from an Anabaptist-inflected Christian perspective. Hence, “Exiles in Babylon.”Alisa Childers and Christopher Yuan criticized Sprinkle and his conference in a recent podcast

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17:25

Equality Is Moral, Not Mathematical

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/04/30

This article is the text of my presentation at a working group on theology and DEI hosted by the Princeton Initiative in Catholic Thought.Today, there is a confusion of moral equality with mathematical equality. Ethicists and theologians are out; number-crunching nerds - empathic as they may be - are in.Today it is held - especially by proponents of the doctrine of equity - that those most qualified to speak on the subject of human equality are social scientists: Whether human beings are equal turns

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19:05

The Theistic Argument from the Failure of Liberalism

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/04/15

What I found most difficult about evangelism as a child was the disinterest of my audience. Those whom I was supposed to evangelize - secular liberals in an affluent society - saw no need of the message I peddled.But today, secular ex-liberals approach me from every direction, desiring to talk about the failures and inadequacies of liberalism and secularism. Their minds are open to a word of wisdom from the Christian faith.And some even have open hearts.In Christian apologetics, the traditional

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9:39

Why I'm Against Concepts

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/03/28

I’m currently deep in the weeds of writing chapter two of my dissertation, “Content Empiricism: The Case Against Content Rationalism.”If I had to drop the jargon and say what I’m arguing for in English, I would say I’m against concepts.Concepts. They’re like the curtains of the mind. Whenever I want to argue that our minds are related to the things of the world, my discussion partner mentions “concepts.” The opaque curtains of the mind are drawn, and the room darkens.We only ever see the world

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14:39

Toward a Religious Right

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/03/26

To evangelical ears, this title will seem to read as an attempt to revivify the spirit of Jerry Falwell. And it will be said that his spirit seems alive and very well - too well.But I have a different audience in mind. In the intellectual circles of the political right, there are many open questions about the direction of the movement, chief among them whether and how religious the right ought to be.You see, while the popular voting bloc of the Republican party is relatively religious, the

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10:15

Five Ways Reinhold Niebuhr Is Still Relevant

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/03/22

I recently spent some time with Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man and Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr. This comes on the heels of my writing about Christian realism, a theology and philosophy indebted to Niebuhr.Niebuhr reminds me of Jordan Peterson. Like Peterson, he brought the claims of Christianity to public and political debate. Also like Peterson, Niebuhr arouses suspicion for whether he was really a Christian, this in spite of him

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16:49

Jordan Peterson: He Who Wrestles With God

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/03/07

The evangelical takes on Jordan Peterson’s “We Who Wrestle With God” tour are coming out. Jake Meador attended Peterson’s lecture in Omaha and says that Peterson’s ideology is focused on excellence to the exclusion of mercy. Aaron Renn attended in Indianapolis and says that Peterson’s message is, at the end of the day, a New Age alternative to Christianity.Anna and I attended on Valentine’s Day in St. Louis. It was a moving experience. Here are some of our reflections.Anna’s ReflectionsGoing to hear

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10:37

Are Thoughts Sins?

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/02/14

This is our first joint post. Enjoy!I (Anna) have been counseling many people who experience obsessive thoughts and actions due to OCD. Some of them experience a cognitive distortion where a person conflates the thought of doing something with actually having done it.Psychologists call this “thought-action fusion.” The mind conflates the thought with the action. Meanwhile, I (Joel) have been writing about sexual desire and sin, mainly same-sex attraction. I have argued that same-sex attraction is

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15:01

Alistair Begg: Christian Realist

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/02/07

Study: Non-Affirming Attendance at Gay Weddings Saves SoulsOver the last twenty years, out of the public eye, evangelical researchers conducted a longitudinal study of the relationship between evangelical parents and grandparents and their LGBTQ+ youth. They conducted interviews and gathered qualitative data about the “coming out” experience and the evangelical adult response, church participation, and the theological and ethical views of youth and adults.One finding stood out. When non-affirming

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18:45

Christian Realism: A Philosophy of Effective Action

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/01/30

I’ve critiqued the evangelical subculture for some of its mindsets that lead to ineffectiveness in public action.But during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, when the Neo-Evangelical movement was just getting up and running, theologians like Emil Brunner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr were articulating a compelling, non-partisan Christian political ethic known as Christian realism.Christian realism provides key solutions to the problems of evangelical ineffectiveness and deserves to

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18:14

Against Christian Nihilism

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/01/24

Christianity too often leads to this view: Nothing we do here matters.For some Christians, this is because of their “end-times” views: “It’s all going to end soon, and Jesus will return. There’s no time to do anything lasting, just to tell people urgently to get saved. Nothing else matters.”For others, it’s their desire to answer in a moment the question of salvation. This can be through conversionism: The real action in Christianity is the initial moment of conversion. Or it can be through the

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14:30

To Escape Ideology, Give In to It

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/01/17

I recently bought a bass guitar. After imagining, dreaming about, and lusting after a vintage instrument, I pulled the trigger. I could feel the dents and scratches in my mind, smell the aging wood, and sense the mojo of the object of my desire.Within days, the instrument arrived. I plugged it in to an amplifier, and it sounded, well, alright. For a deep, dark, vintage bass, it sounded way too bright. I compared it to my previous bass; not that different. Don’t get me wrong; after a few tweaks and a

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14:49

Five Strategies to Escape Ideology

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/01/10

I’m deeply interested in the idea that most thinking follows narrow, ideological ruts and that it takes real effort to escape these ruts and allow one’s thought to be shaped by the complexity and multiplicity of empirical inputs, by the reality of how things are.From several quarters, I receive pressure to hold that ideology, worldviews, presuppositions, socially-constructed conceptual systems, and so on, always color our vision such that the aspiration to empirical reception of the real is a

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14:38

Berating the Godfearers

The Natural Theologian ·

2024/01/02

Last week, a group of young men with shared interests in self-improvement, virtue, and masculinity gathered in a Zoom meeting for an evening discussion. While they found common ground on their shared interests, the discussion took a turn when a difference emerged between one of the members, Brent, and the rest of the group. While the leader of the group, and the majority with him, held to a six-day-creationist, literal reading of Genesis, Brent was a devotee of Jordan Peterson’s evolutionary path to

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16:52

How to Be a Non-Ideological, Feel-Good Religious Person

The Natural Theologian ·

2023/12/27

Since it’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s, here are three things I’m thinking about, topics that may inspire future full-length essays.The first one is the meaning of “gay,” the next frontier in my ongoing engagement with the question of homosexuality and the Christian life. The second is the inspiration and encouragement I’ve been receiving from Ali Abdaal’s new book, Feel Good Productivity. The third is the difference between ideology and empirical thinking that I’ve been trying to

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13:43

My New Book: "The Natural Theologian: Essays on...

The Natural Theologian ·

2023/12/13

In the last couple of weeks, I compiled all the essays I’ve written at this Substack over the last year into a book: The Natural Theologian: Essays on Nature and the Christian Life. It’s currently on sale as a hardcover and as an eBook at Amazon.For today’s post, I republish the book’s introduction, which I wrote specifically for the book. Enjoy the introduction, as well as a free PDF of the front matter, table of contents, and introduction.Introduction to The Natural TheologianEvangelical theology

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18:19

Are We Living in the Negative World?

The Natural Theologian ·

2023/12/05

Since 2014, changes in political ideology, toward cancel culture on the left, and political tribalism on the right, have been relatively obvious to observers. Conservative Christian concern is often focused on the cancel culture and the central place of sexual and gender ideology in it.However, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, co-author with him of The Coddling of the American Mind, originally observed changes on college campuses at the psychological level, before things ever

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14:25

Conservative Christian, Do Not Fear

The Natural Theologian ·

2023/11/29

Several years ago, for one day, I was a conspiracy-theorist.Changes were happening in the world that I could not understand. I sought an explanation, and I dove down an Internet rabbit-hole to find it.The personality I heeded was a brand-new Christian; he was also a conservative, to say the least. After several hours of taking in his perspective, I was a believer in his brand of conspiracy.But it was a dark place. It felt like the forces of evil had consolidated power; all these different changes

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7:57

"Gay": Identity, or Description?

The Natural Theologian ·

2023/11/08

One aspect of the “celibate, gay Christian” debate that I haven’t yet discussed is the idea that using the adjective “gay” treats it as part of one’s identity, and therefore a Christian should not “identify as gay.” This objection concerns language specifically, rather than the psychology of sexual orientation, which has been my focus.But my response to this claim about gay identity flows directly from my defense of the category of sexual orientation. “Gay” is an accurate description for people

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