Tag: Matthew Levering

Deeper Waters Podcast 8/25/2018: Matthew Levering

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Many of our debates today all go back to one idea. Is there a God? This is one of the fundamental questions of any worldview and how you answer it will affect the answer you give to most every other question. The majority of the world answers in the affirmative to this, but why?

Can there be given any evidence of the existence of deity? How long has this debate been going on and what can we learn from the great minds of the past? What also of those who have argued against the idea of theism? Do they have anything that should be seriously considered as well?

To discuss these questions, I decided to bring on a scholar who has studied this subject well and has taught it well. I decided to find someone who knows the philosophy behind the subject and is ready to discuss it. I decided then to bring on Dr. Matthew Levering, author of the book Proofs of God.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Matthew Levering holds the James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary.  He is the author or editor of over forty books on topics in dogmatic, sacramental, moral, historical, and biblical theology.  He is the translator of Gilles Emery’s The Trinity, and with Gilles Emery he co-edited The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity.  Among his books are Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology and Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church.  He co-edits two quarterly journals, Nova et Vetera and International Journal of Systematic Theology.  Since 2004, he has been a participant in Evangelicals and Catholics Together, and from 2007-2016 he served as Chair of the Board of the Academy of Catholic Theology.  He co-founded the Chicago Theological Initiative and has directed the Center for Scriptural Exegesis, Philosophy, and Doctrine since 2011.

We’ll be talking about, well, proofs of God. How do they work? Are any of them failed proofs? What about the arguments against God? How serious are they? Naturally, we will be spending some time talking about my favorite proofs, the Thomistic proofs. How well do they hold up and do atheists who argue against them really understand them?

How should Christians use these arguments? What is the relationship between faith and reason? Is it a problem that these arguments can get you to theism but none of them can get you to the Christian God directly?

I really hope you’ll be tuning in to this episode as I think it’s the first one we’ve actually done on the theistic arguments directly for the existence of God and it’s been a topic I’ve been wanting to discuss on the show for some time. I also hope that you will go on iTunes and leave a positive review for the Deeper Waters Podcast. It really means a lot to me to get to see them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

 

Book Plunge: Proofs of God

What do I think of Matthew Levering’s book published by Baker Academic? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Levering’s book is a textbook, but reading it you wouldn’t think that. It is a book that is simple to understand putting the classical proofs of God and others in ways that can be grasped by any reader. Levering does not assume you have prior knowledge of the subject. It’s as if this could be the first time you are seriously engaging the idea and he wants to help you out.

Something else interesting is that he also has a number of writers who wrote on the opposite end. Some like Kant didn’t think the classical proofs and such worked, but they gave other arguments for God. Some just outright didn’t think arguments worked like Hume and Wittgenstein. Their thoughts are included as well.

Levering is also very fair in the main body of the work. He gives the overview of each writer and it isn’t until the concluding part of the chapter that he starts giving some of his thoughts on what was said. Of course, none of this is exhaustive. The book is around 220 pages and you have over 20 thinkers to go through so you can only devote so much time to each one.

Levering starts with the church fathers. Right at the start, I find it fascinating that atheism was not being seriously debated at this time, and yet the early church was starting to answer questions before they came along. These were serious thinkers despite what might be said about them by atheists on the internet. It doesn’t mean they were right in everything or that all their arguments were good, but they were arguments and they were trying to seriously engage.

It won’t be a shock to anyone who follows my work that my favorite portion is when we get to the medieval period. Naturally, I tend to gravitate towards Thomas Aquinas and his ways. These are the ways that I use when I do apologetics and I find them to always be misrepresented somehow when someone attempts to refute them.

From there we go to the Reformers and then closer and closer until we get to the modern era. The latest we get to is Barth. I tended to think that as far as the arguments went, they lost much of their caliber after the ones from Aquinas and when later writers looked back and tried to respond, they tended to misrepresent the argument. How many times do I see atheists today trying to make arguments about the origin of the universe and thinking they have refuted Aquinas in the process?

I understand Levering wanted to keep the book reasonably small and readable, but I do hope there will come an updated version sometime with more time spent on more of the philosophers and seeing people after Barth. If not that, then perhaps we could do a sequel on modern proofs of God to see what people are saying and then give a brief look at arguments from the past. Another option would be a book contrasting proofs of God in the past with those of today.

Levering’s book is still a great one to read, especially when the only criticisms I can really come up with or asking if there’s a way even more can be put in. This will be a new book I will refer to when people ask me for evidences of God. If they want to focus on Aquinas, by all means choose Feser, but if you want overview of everyone, Levering is a great place to go to.

In Christ,
Nick Peters