Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): Sad... . Even if one is sympathetic to Groothuis's broad concern, one can't help but be disappointed with this text. This book is a bad regurgitation of other bad and reductive non-readings of `pomo'. Groothuis depends way too highly on secondary (and sometimes tertiary) sources. It escapes me how a former reviewer could call this work `scholarly.' I suppose if one considers Logic 101 tinged with the usual fundamentalist `defender of the Faith' rhetoric and aura (which hovers over every page), then this could be called `scholarly.'     The big problem I found is that even when Groothuis offers defensible criticisms, his alternatives end up being just as problematic as the positions he criticizes. For all his advocacy for a correspondence theory of truth, his tone betrays a penchant for certainty and formal coherence. He falls into the problem of the relation between thought and `reality,' representation to presentation, the role of language, and so forth. No doubt God comes to save the day with all these problems, yet on the very justificatory terms Groothuis advocates for, God escapes the measure of correspondence and becomes its condition of possibility. In other words, God becomes a structural metaphysical function which `saves' Groothuis's truth from the skeptic. The problem, however, is that Groothuis wants truth to be absolute, universal, and accessible to all, yet he is dependent on a moment (i.e. faith) which, by definition, retains a trace of contingency or `objective' undecidability.      Groothuis's more ethical concerns are where I am more sympathetic, but again, here his polemics and non-reading of the people he criticizes drowned out whatever constructive points he offers. Groothuis practices the same type of irresponsible reflection that some of the `pomo' Evangelical's do: uncriticality. Here, philosophy and reflection - whether Modern or postmodern - becomes a means to simply confirm and justify a complacent status quo, rather than challenging and transforming the status quo. The challenge presented in this book is for a nostalgic return to the good old days of Christendom.     Jesus did not come to `save' our metaphysical systems, but to redeem us and this world. That redemption is not contingent upon accurate representations as Groothuis seems to think. It is madness to the Greek (i.e. the logician) and a stumbling block to the Legalist (i.e. moralistic hypocrites). The task is not to make the faith less crazy or more socially repressive. As James tells us, the measure of `true' faith - and here I will grant a type of reference - is that we `attend to the widow and orphan.' Kerygma without service is dead, a worse lie than any humanism. Perhaps if we began `proving' our faith, that is, manifesting its truth in radical service and justice - we could actually demonstrate the truth to which we testify. I guess it is much easier to `defend the faith' with bad arguments which only convince the already convinced, than to `live the faith': serve the people no one gives a hoot about. After all, in the latter case one cannot fancy oneself a hero in quite the same way.
Output (English): NEG