Reflection 06: Thinking

God –
Whether God has a nature
Whether God’s nature is knowable
Whether God’s nature is rationally and/or propositionally explicable
How much God can be comprehended by natural reason
How to differentiate between ‘icons’ and ‘idols’ in talking about God
The contingency or necessity of the moral law, the laws of nature, and the laws of mathematics/logic
What it means for God to be ‘unchanging’
The difference between divine sovereignty and naturalistic determinism with respect to human agency.
What it means for God to be a ‘person’
How we are to understand prayer in the light of God’s omniscience
To what degree the rationalists are correct
To what degree the mystics are correct
The proper place of the biblical and Christological revelation in theology (central, I think)
The Bible as a special divine revelation and as a product of human authors
Theodicy

Morality –
The nature of actions, consequences, and ‘culpability’ or ‘guilt’
To what degree the deontologist is correct
To what degree the consequentialist is correct
To what degree the virtue ethicist is correct
The philosophical underpinnings of natural law theory
The place of retributive and punitive punishment
The nature of heaven
The nature of hell


People/Society/culture/government
The proper role of government (that is, delimiting its function and end)
To what degree the conservatives are correct
To what degree the liberals are correct
Whether there is such a thing as human nature and in what it consists
Relationships, friendship, love
The consequences of a mobile society
The formative influence of community and the loss in our society of ‘rites of passage’
The dangers attendant on an anthropological/sociological reduction of ethics, culture, and religion
What anthropology can and cannot say about the content of propositions, dogma, and doctrine
The nature, instruments, ends, and philosophical underpinnings of the ‘social justice’ enterprise
The philosophical underpinnings of any concept of ‘universal human rights’
The source and consequences of globalization, standardization, homogenization, and unification
To what degree culture is shaped by perceptions of truth
Reconciling religious and civic duty in a pluralistic society, and the concept of ‘tolerance’
The conditions of a ‘just war’

Church
Addressing post-modern disillusionment with the church
The need for teachers/mentors
The nature of ‘salvation’
The role of ‘community’

Metaphysics
To what degree the essentialists are correct
To what degree the existentialists are correct
Whether telos follows from or is prior to nature/essence
Reformed epistemology

And this is only a list of some of my most recent philosophical and theological speculations.
And I haven’t even begun to account for my personal, introspective, and self-evaluative reflections; my day-dreams and fantasies; my hopes and fears; my literary, artistic, and aesthetic musings; my imaginings; my devotional thoughts; my remembrances of people—friends, family, relatives, acquaintances; my prayers; and my academic/work-related cogitations.

Thinking is an enormous part of life. Okay, perhaps that was obvious to most people who know me, but it occurs to me that despite its significant place in my life, it goes almost completely unseen. Is this true for most people? I’m not sure—that an activity that involves so much time and energy should be shared with almost nobody or only on very rare occasions. I’m not sure I like that.
This is, in part, why I need to do more writing. I’ll be working on a paper or project and won’t be able to concentrate because my mind is so full; I need to find an outlet. A person will make a passing comment about God, the Bible, the church, politics, a book they read, an experience they had, and, unwittingly, set in motion two-or-three weeks of continuous speculation.
Is this normal?
What about other people?