The Pugcast

You may have heard feminists say, “The personal is political”—but are they right? Is the relationship between a mother and her child really a political relationship—or is it something else? In today’s show the guys discuss what else relationships like this could be. The term that they use is “pre-political”. Along the way the guys discuss the Kuyperian doctrine of “sphere sovereignty” as well as t...

In this episode Tom returns to the topic of Meaning in History (a three show aim) by looking at ways Modernity  rejected classical Christian understanding of history and meaning and developed alternatives which borrowed from Christianity while introducing radical alternative notions which still impact us today, often unwittingly. This show has the guys discussing Vico and Herder, along with many o...

Jumping off another suggested topic from our faithful listeners, the Pugsters talk about the medieval guild system. The guilds were a way to protect customers and, with export goods, the reputation of the city by guaranteeing the quality of products. They also guaranteed a level playing field for producers. Along with their economic role, the guilds performed social and spiritual functions, with t...

Today Chris introduces listeners to Political Scientist, Scott Yenor’s new book, The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies. Just what is an ideology anyway? Is it merely a philosophy in different clothes? Listen in and find out why it isn’t.

This week the guys discuss how many contemporary views of history assume or draw upon aspects of Christian historical understanding, inadvertently borrowing its teleological character, even when they undermine other essential aspects of it. Christian faith altered conceptions of history and brought to the fore a notion of history as being meaningful and being directed towards culminating purposes....

Working from the articles in the link, the Pugsters talk about aesthetics—the philosophical field focused on questions of beauty and taste. Rather than beauty being purely in the eye of the beholder, the guys agree that beauty is objective and rooted in the transcendence of God. And that means that there is a right and wrong way to respond to beauty or the lack thereof. In this way, aesthetics is...

In our time everyone is obligated to create an identity for himself. We're supposed to "self-create"--making ourselves into works of art that are utterly original, you know, like snow flakes. So why is it that people increasingly think alike and are so fearful of disapproval? In today's show the guys discuss the paradoxical relationship between mimesis (mimicry) and poesis (creation, or making). T...

In this episode, the guys engage with fresh insights the contemporary vision of reality, human nature and purposes as they are understood from a radically immanent, materialist frame. After noting how Christian themes are often ripped from their transcendent frame and redefined with an immanent one, the pugsters evaluate not only the problems and limits of such a move but also ways in which the ri...

The Pugsters return to a topic they’ve touched on before: the problems with the Enlightenment. Glenn starts off with a summary of changing ideas of authority, focusing on the transition from Reason and Revelation to Reason over Revelation to Reason without Revelation. That gets the guys into the Enlightenment, autonomous reason, and some of the problems associated with it. Glenn then looks at Roma...

In today's episode Chris introduces the subject of mystery and the ways modern people and ancient people used the term--surprise, surprise, they didn't mean the same thing--at times, they even mean things that contradict each other.  Chris also delves into the way in the modern outlook in general can mystify people and keep them from seeing the truth of things; he uses Carl Trueman's new book as a...

The guys finish unpacking the discussion of Plato from Ed Feser's article Woke Ideology is a Psychological Disorder. After noting how Plato understands the sick society, where democracy as a social disorder leads to tyranny, the guys engage Plato's insights, noting positives and yet critiquing the limits of Plato's vision in light of the the riches of the Christian understanding of the virtue. The...

In today’s episode the guys unpack Plato's understanding of human psychology and social order. They note his positive insights as well as limits as they set forth fuller Christian insights into the ways in which improper ordering of our desires tends toward destructive political orderings.

Today the Pugcast is joined by Nate Spearing, highly decorated combat veteran with 14 years and 12 deployments in Army Special Operations. Nathan has a broad range of experiences domestically and overseas and has spent his entire professional life walking out a theology of violence as a Christian in war. Nate was homeschooled, and today is the father of five children. Along with his wife, they are...

This week, the Pugsters look at some of the themes in Michael Heiser’s books dealing with the worldview of the biblical authors. Glenn leads the discussion, which revolves around two big ideas: the idea of a heavenly court, with angelic beings having authority over areas such as nations; and the account of the Nephilim in Genesis. For the latter, Heiser uses 1 Enoch, a document that shaped much of...

In today’s show Chris introduces a term coined by the French intellectual, Paul Ricouer—the hermeneutic of suspicion. In the 19th century, theorists including Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud promoted the idea that rationality was nothing more than rationalization. Beneath the surface of any argument was something selfish and irrational. They believed that interpretation should begin with suspicion. One...

Early postmodern promoters argued that the end of metanarratives like Christianity and the Enlightenment would lead to a peaceful plurality of group narratives, without the aim of any to dominate. This would lead to an end of oppressive worldviews with totalitarian aims. But mutations in postmodern thinking, those connected with Critical Theory, have taken a totalitarian turn, positing new absolut...

In an earlier episode, the Pugsters talked about Tolkien’s ideas of the value of pagan myth and the need to Christianize it. In this episode, Glenn picks up on that and applies it not to mythology but to culture, specifically, the religion of pre-Christian Ireland and what happened when it was Christianized. In pagan Ireland, the Druids were walking encyclopedias of everything related to the cultu...

In today's show, Chris introduces an important study of individualism that was published back in 1985 by Robert Bellah and a team of sociologists, entitled: Habits of the Heart--Individualism and Commitment in American Life". A best-seller at the time, the book is almost forgotten today, which is a shame since the world we live in is the world they warned us about and hoped we'd avoid. The team, t...

Celebratory fun highlights this Pugcast. As the gang records on St Patrick’s day, Tom thought it would be great to share in the celebrations by highlighting some fun-filled facts from Stephen Mansfield’s book In Search for God and Guinness.  The book is far more than a story of the relation of Christianity and the Guinness family and beer. It also covers the long history of beer and the divine, an...

Working off the introduction to Bradley Birzer’s J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, the Pugsters talk about Tolkien, Lewis, and Chesterton and their ideas about myth and faerie. Tolkien believed that just like pagan philosophers grasped truths that were most perfectly expressed in the Gospel, the stories of myth and faerie were bits of “splintered light” that pointed beyond themselves to deeper re...