Date of Award

3-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

Department

Seminary

First Advisor

Tim Dolan, DMin

Second Advisor

David McDonald, DMin

Abstract

The problem addressed in this dissertation has three dimensions: imminent global catastrophe, the elitist tyranny responsible for it, and Christian detachment from both.

The purpose of this dissertation is not to solve the problem in any of those three dimensions. The aim is threefold—to deconstructively demonstrate the reality of the problem; to expose its historical roots in philosophy, science, and theology; and to offer a case-study example of how it the problem may be clearly viewed and understood for the purposes of 21st century Christian life. The case study is not simple or easy, but neither is the problem it addresses.

Semiotics—theory of signs—is the philosophical frame of reference, as pioneered by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). James H. Fetzer provides intensional realism as a Peircean semiotic philosophy of science. Christian realism based on Peirce’s theory of signs is a key theme, drawn from Leonard Sweet’s Christianity. The constructive example that finishes the dissertation it represents an individual’s apologetic Christian realism as a single-case study example, including philosophical and scientific foundations. At the same time, it also represents a viable de-secularized immanent frame and social imaginary for individual as well as relational Christian being and presence in 21st century reality.35

35 Sweet, So Beautiful and Leonard Sweet, Giving Blood: A Fresh Paradigm for Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014), Kindle; James H. Fetzer, Scientific Knowledge: Causation, Explanation, and Corroboration, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 69 (Dordrecht, NL: Springer Netherlands, 1981); James H. Fetzer, Computers and Cognition: Why Minds Are Not Machines, Studies in Cognitive Systems vol. 25 (Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001); .Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); the works of Charles Sanders Peirce (see APPENDICES: Abbreviations, Citing Charles Sanders Peirce). Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries; Taylor, A Secular Age; Taylor, “Buffered and Porous Selves.”

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