Exploring the interplay between belief and truth, the book delves into whether knowledge can exist without certain proof. Paul Tyson posits that all knowledge aimed at truth is rooted in faith, challenging modernist views that prioritize objective facts. He argues that knowledge is intrinsically linked to belief and is expressed through relationships, histories, and shared meanings. This perspective leads to a theological sociology of knowledge, emphasizing that understanding is shaped by faith rather than mere information.
Could it be that we have lost touch with some basic human realities in our day of high-tech efficiency, frenetic competition, and ceaseless consumption? Have we turned from the moral, the spiritual, and even the physical realities that make our lives meaningful? These are metaphysical questions--questions about the nature of reality--but they are not abstract questions. These are very down to earth questions that concern power and the collective frameworks of belief and action governing our daily lives. This book is an introduction to the history, theory, and application of Christian metaphysics. Yet this book is not just an introduction, it is also a passionately argued call for a profound change in the contemporary Christian mind. Paul Tyson argues that as Western culture's Christian Platonist understanding of reality was replaced by modern pragmatic realism, we turned not just from one outlook on reality to another, but away from reality itself. This book seeks to show that if we can recover this ancient Christian outlook on reality, reframed for our day, then we will be able to recover a way of life that is in harmony with human and divine truth.
Reframes the discussion between Christian theology and contemporary science,
arguing that it is good both for religion and for science when Christians
treat theology as their first truth discourse.
The book delves into the fragmentation of our understanding of reality, highlighting how society prioritizes abstract constructs like money and facts over the deeper meanings of love, purpose, and significance. It critiques the tendency to view quantitative measures as essential knowledge while dismissing qualitative experiences as subjective. Through exploring the need for reintegration of being, knowing, and believing, the author prompts readers to reconsider the relationship between objective facts and the mysteries of existence.
Kierkegaard developed a distinctive type of sociology in the 1840s—a theological sociology. Looking at society through the lens of analysis categories such as worship, sin, and faith, Kierkegaard developed a profoundly insightful way of understanding how, for example, the modern mass media works. He gets right inside the urban world of Golden Age Denmark, and its religion, and analyses “the present age” of consumption, comfort, competition, distraction, and image-construction with astonishing depth. To Kierkegaard worship centers all individuals and all societies; hence his sociology is doxological. This book argues that we also live in the present age Kierkegaard described, and our way of life can be understood much better through Kierkegaard’s lens than through the methodologically materialist categories of classical sociology. As social theory itself has moved beyond classical sociology, the social sciences are increasingly open to post-methodologically-atheist approaches to understanding what it means to be human beings living in social contexts. The time is right to recover the theological resources of Christian faith in understanding the social world we live in. The time has come to pick up where Kierkegaard left off, and to start working towards a prophetic doxological sociology for our times.
