Mike Wittmer

What I think. What I know. What I think I know.

  • Barth on natural theology

    The key to reading Barth is to remember that every word he ever wrote was meant to oppose natural theology (that’s hyperbole, but not by much). When stuck on a difficult passage, ask yourself how it aims to destroy the possibility of natural theology. Answer that question, and you’ll understand what Barth is doing there. Here are…

  • our year of understanding

    Last week the mayor of Grand Rapids declared 2012 the “Year of Interfaith Understanding,” and today’s paper included a column from our religion editor (Charles Honey) which supports the cause. I’m always happy to dialogue, and I agree that we need more understanding, but I wonder whether the planned program can be as religiously neutral as it claims.…

  • til’ Alzheimers we do part

    Russell Moore powerfully critiques Pat Robertson’s comment that a person with Alzheimer’s disease is essentially dead, so their spouse would be free to divorce them and remarry. I would add that Robertson seems to subscribe to a Platonic (and Cartesian) dualism, assuming that a person’s mind is essentially them, so that if their mind is…

  • uh-oh

    This column by David Brooks explains why intelligent conversations about morality are increasingly harder to come by. We just might be in trouble.

  • Barthisms

    I’m going to share some of my favorite lines from Barth as my class works through volumes II/1 and IV/1 of his Church Dogmatics. Barth once said that John Calvin’s writings were “a waterfall, a primitive forest, a demonic power, something straight down from the Himalayas, absolutely Chinese, strange, mythological; I just don’t have the organs, the suction…

  • iParent

    My friend Don Pearson has written a frightening and exceedingly helpful book on parenting. Don has witnessed some disturbing trends in his decades of youth ministry, and he writes about them in iParent: Gender Trends, Online Friends, and the Soul of Your Child. Don’s main argument—and he has numerous first-hand stories and research to back…

  • golden handcuffs

    Here is a devotional I just wrote for Our Daily Journey. As always, I would appreciate any constructive feedback before I submit it. Thanks! Friends of mine are acquainted with a media leader. He invited them to appear on his television show to talk about a family tragedy, and he was so impressed by their…

  • lie to me

    There is a lot of truth in Tom Friedman’s editorial in today’s N.Y. Times. We finally have a governor in Michigan who believes in speaking to us as if we were adults, and of course, his poll numbers are plummeting. Maybe our problem is not so much that politicians lie to us, but that we like…

  • what’s wrong with this picture?

    I was searching for something else just now, and I came across this advertisement for online education. Does anything in this picture bother anyone else, from an educational perspective? Would you want this man to be your pastor? (Before anyone accuses me of being sexist, I said “man” because in the picture it looks like…

  • summer’s end

    I realize that my friends at Southern Baptist Seminary are already approaching their mid-terms, but classes at GRTS don’t begin until tomorrow. Our late start coincides with the governor’s decision a few years ago to delay the start of our public schools until after Labor Day, so that the state can take advantage of the…