Thursday, December 6, 2012

J. P. Moreland's address to EPS 2012

Dr. J. P. Moreland is a fine Christian philosopher who is more interested in being faithful to the "Christian" aspect than to the applause of a narrow philosophical naturalism.  He recently gave some introductory remarks for the Evangelical Philosophical Society.  He briefly outlined three points for exhortation.
1.  He called the members to maintain high intellectual standards in their work in the field of philosphy.
2.  He encouraged efforts of collaboration.
3.  He urged--even begged at one point--for the Christian philosophers to avoid revisionist tendencies in their work.  He is obviously pained by those who attempt to subvert or revise the clear scriptural teaching in an effort for intellectual sophistication.  This point was his most important for his fellow scholars to hear and, hopefully, apply.

Some of my favorite lines are from this third point.  Dr. Moreland summarily argues:
My own view is that the goal of the Christian philosopher is not to try to see what are the minimal commitments that I have to keep so that I am logically consistent with the creeds. As a disciple of Jesus what I want to know is what did he believe--honestly, what did the Lord Jesus believe.  What does his word believe.... My heart is, I want Jesus to be Lord--I don't want to be Lord.