I am starting my Philosophy of Religion class tomorrow (January 13^th) at the University of Oxford (by distance, of course). Thanks again to a friend of the blog for his donation, in order to pursue continuing education like this. I am critical of philosophy, often, but let me qualify that a bit further. I am only really critical of philosophy when it is used as a basis and the material for doing Christian theology. If these disciplines are kept separate and distinct, then I have no problem learning to think with the rigor of a philosopher. As long as the god thought from philosophical machinations is kept from the God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ, then I have no problem with engaging in some horizontal inklings like that; insofar that it might train the muscle of the mind to think with a type of scrutiny and articulation that latterly can be deployed in the service of communicating a Christian theology. I am simply referring to the formal aspects of thinking, in regard to the value of learning some philosophy. Again, once that is uncritically deployed in the development of a Christian theology, at both a formal and material level, then I think it is antiChrist. But when in Babylon, like Daniel and his friends were, then even tools learned from the University of Babylon can be evangelized and made useful for the purposes of God’s kingdom in Christ.