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John Martindale

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John is Currently Reading

John Martindale is currently reading

Modern Art & Death of a Culture

by Hans R. Rookmaaker

bookshelves: currently-reading, apologetics, christian, art, history, religion, philosophy

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John Martindale said: " A truly interesting read. I do occasionally question his judgments and wonder if he is reading too much into something, and yet, often it does seem Rookmaaker is providing a deep and insightful analysis.
In Western culture, he argues, art initially w A truly interesting read. I do occasionally question his judgments and wonder if he is reading too much into something, and yet, often it does seem Rookmaaker is providing a deep and insightful analysis.
In Western culture, he argues, art initially was full-bodied and wholistic. Never about mere representation, copying nature, or making a pretty picture, but instead, it meant to convey deeper realities, in both form and content. Back before the Enlightenment, when the world was enchanted, meaning, truth, and morals were baked into the fabric of reality, and even non-believers couldn't help but function within the Christian worldview and express it in their art. With the enlightenment, however, during the great disenchantment, there was a move towards scientism. The metaphysical priors that were once certainties were now cast into doubt and eventually considered unknowable or false.
For all the goods that the more scientific framework gave us, it also emptied the world of much that made it meaningful and worth living. Love becomes nothing more than unconscious genes that are driven to replicate themselves, causing zombie-like meat-machines to lust and thus fulfill a determined end--perpetuating the species. Humans have no choice, and there is nothing more to it. The significance, meaning, and sense of choice are all merely delusions and untrue. Anyhow, no wonder the Romantics rejected it and embraced the half that the analytical philosophers claimed was fantasy.
Anyhow, art may express this. For artists committed to the scientific worldview, they wanted to create works without any human subjectivity and also convey what was objectively true. Thus, art was reduced to the basic building blocks and geometry. Stuck within this box, that was what art became. Simply a block of color or a black square. No meaning, no interpretation.
The Romantic tradition and all the movements that flowed from it embraced the wild, exotic passions, fantasy, emotional, childish...but with WWI, it took a dark turn towards nihilism and the absurd. The artist no longer had permission to convey beauty or goodness, only the ugly, repugnant, boring, or politically and sexually subversive.

Rookmaaker, working as the worldview apologist, mentions how doubts in scriptural authority lead to the unraveling. Thus, implying that the right thing for us to return to is the medieval/reformational mentality that began to seem so problematic during the 18th century.
But here is the problem: the lost certainties in the Bible and church tradition were completely justified, as this certainty is not what either church tradition or the Bible can provide. As the previous authorities were neither univocal nor clear, the only way they could function after the reformation was through authoritarianism or subtle cult-like pressure. In both cases, there is a select group of people who rubber-stamp their own opinions with the Bible or Apostolic authority, and then, either with force or cult-like charm, manipulate others to agree with them. As freedom to read the bible had resulted in a flowering of new interpretations, authoritarians had to stamp this out--playing a part in the 12,000,000 people who died in the following (at least in part, religious) wars. Anyhow, at the utter failure of Scripture and catholic church to provide a foundation for certainty and morality, no wonder philosophers (like René Descartes) began to grasp this certainty elsewhere.
We historically assumed Bible/tradition gave us certainty, but that bubble popped. Next, we demanded it come from reason or experience, but both of these failed to bring what enlightenment thinkers hoped for. Honestly, THAT certainty is NOT our portion. It is not. If there is a God, this God did not give it to us. It cannot be had through revelation, and it cannot be had through reason.
We now have 400 years of the brightest minds seeking it, and all have failed--leading texistentialism and post-modernism. Christian fundamentalists react; they just want to find certainty in the Bible. Christians, like me, who grow up in this context, then live out the very thing that happened in history. We are enculturized to think the Bible is our absolute foundation--that it is inerrant, univocal, clear, comprehensive, and God's timeless and immutable Word, but then we grow up and learn that it is instead diverse, ambiguous, ancient, complicated, and in some places, incredibly problematic--which thrusts us to seek a sure foundation elsewhere.
Christian apologists are like, "Modern philosophy failed in her search, so now let's go home. We, like the prodigal son, never should have drifted." But, what apologists fail to mention is that we only went searching for other sources of water, since the Biblical/Apostolic cistern was cracked and dry. Just because ALL the other holes we dug did not lead to springs of life, is not a reason to go back and try to find certainty from the Biblical revelation or the church fathers! That is a mirage. It always was.

Anyhow, this certainty, this is what Ecclesiastes would call "Profit", it is not our portion, there is no profit under the sun. Reality is too vast and complicated. Perhaps, our portion is ENOUGH. Messy, but enough. We can argue and debate and pursue truth through the fog. We can embrace the perhaps, the maybe, and the qualifiers. ...more "

Mar 17, 2026 04:40PM · see review

John Martindale is currently reading

The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth

by David Bentley Hart

bookshelves: currently-reading

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John Martindale said: " It is foolish for me to try to write, I can't pretend to understand even half of what Hart wrote. But at risk of revealing how stupid I am, I'll mention my impressions so far. (I am now reading the chapter “Trinity”)
Hart seems to be responding to th It is foolish for me to try to write, I can't pretend to understand even half of what Hart wrote. But at risk of revealing how stupid I am, I'll mention my impressions so far. (I am now reading the chapter “Trinity”)
Hart seems to be responding to the Nietzschean critique of Christianity, that it is merely a violent struggle of power over others and the Christians concept of God's agape is thus a fiction. Part of the answer thus far is the Apatheia (impassibility) of God, Hart writes “The Trinity is already infinitely sufficient, infinitely “diverse”, infinitely at peace” Creation is therefore, an uncompelled and unnecessary act of pure generosity.
It is interesting reading this as an open-theist. Hart would say I don't believe in God, but a god who is in the process of becoming. For Hart, immutability, timelessness and impassibility are not optional. He mentions an attempt to reconcile a God who suffers and one who is dynamic within history, with the absolute Being of philosophy leads to the conclusion that all temporal becomings are infinitely part of God's timeless Being--which means that evil, since it is integral to the narrative of history (even if God ultimately triumphs over it) is part of God's very identity and Being, which is unacceptable to all but the most heartless Calvinist.
I am convinced that though the church fathers tried to mix the Greek snake oil with Hebrew holy water, that the two (The timeless, immutable and impassible God and the dynamic, passionate and active God of the scriptures) can never be amalgamated. Hart however believes that timelessness, immutability and impassibility don't contradict the story of God as creator, redeemer and consummator of all things, yet he has far from convinced me thus far how the two are not in conflict. In light of this, he wrote “Because God is Trinity, eternally, perfectly, without any need of negative probation or finite determination. God does not have to change of suffer in order to love us or show us mercy—he loved us when we were not, and by this very “mercy” created us – and so, as love, he can overcome all suffering” as I continued reading, I got to Hart's definition of Divine impassibility: “God's impassibility is the utter fullness of an infinite dynamism, the absolutely complete and replete generation of the Son and procession of the Spirit from the Father, the infinite “drama” of God's joyous act of self-outpouring –which is his being as God. Within the plenitude of this motion, no contrary motion can fabricate an interval of negation, because it is the infinite possibility of every creaturely motion or act; no pathos is possible for God because pathos is by definition, a finite instance of change visited upon a passive subject, actualizing some potential, whereas God's love is pure positivity and pure activity. His love is an infinite peace and so needs no violence to shape it, no death of which to triumph, if it did, it would never be ontological peace but only metaphysical armistice.
What? Dynamism, Drama, self-outpouring, plenitude of motion and pure activity as part of the definition of impassibility? Uhh.... and a hunk of granite is lighter than a feather and black is white, and water is not wet, ok... I must keep reading.... ...more "

Apr 15, 2016 08:30PM · see review

John Martindale is currently reading

Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy

by Gregory A. Boyd

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Nov 15, 2015 03:03PM

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John’s Quotes

“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”
― P.C. Hodgell's novel Seeker's Mask:

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“Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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“Propositions are to stories (and to reality) as powdered milk is to what comes from the udder. Propositions are dried-out stories with much of the vitality removed. They may say something technically true, just as powdered milk is still technically a form of milk, but they do not win our hearts and are not enough on which to nourish a life.”
― Daniel Tayler

tags: story, the-skeptical-believer

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“What we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise,
but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it.
We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a
surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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