Year in Review
This year, as every year, has been a mixture of successes and setbacks. But my writing has remained a constant. I've written on St. Augustine, refugees, Protestant Christendom, and family; reflected on sex, children, nativism, and metaphysics; theorized about friendship, iconography, Henry More, Leibniz (just a bit), and, of course, Descartes. I've begun learning Arabic, have tried to improve my German, kept up my Coptic, and have been slogging through Greek.
On this website I've started (slowly—too slowly!) a series of guides. I've written a couple brief reflections on Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics. I've articulated my views on abortion and attempted some extremely amateurish music theory. I translated a Coptic Psalm.
In The Scottish Journal of Theology, I published a journal article on St. Augustine, sex, and friendship, and I wrote an MA thesis on Henry More, René Descartes, and secularity (which I am in the process of revising for publication).
At Ad Fontes, I wrote an essay examining what Kierkegaard can teach us about John Williams' extraordinary novel, Stoner; I argued that there are only misunderstandings in the "Protestantism and modernity" debates and proposed looking afresh at what Protestant Christendom actually was before either consigning it to irrelevance or seeing it as the efficient cause of every modern evil; and I contended that Protestants should learn from the way that ideas are disseminated on the Catholic right (and, implicitly, that Protestants with money should begin funding the sorts of organizations that can replicate this intellectual ecosystem).
At Mere Orthodoxy, I attacked the right's nasty turn against refugees and its increasingly antagonistic rhetoric towards immigrants already in the United States; wrote a review of Kanye West's excellent new album, Donda, arguing that it is essentially about piety; and reflected upon my failures as a father.
Overall, though, I haven't written as much for this website as I would have liked. Some of my excuses are good, and others are only good to the extent that I considered them sufficient reason to not write for this site as much as I would have liked. My aim in the coming year for The New Philosophy is to continue my series of guides on Bullinger's Decades or else begin a series on the Synopsis of a Purer Theology. Either way, I hope to do a series working through a classic of the Reformed tradition. I also hope to continue writing on early modern philosophers, especially Descartes but also Leibniz and Suarez, and I anticipate doing more writing about patristics. I also hope to include a bit more miscellany.
I'd like to conclude simply by thanking you, my readers, for supporting me by taking the time to read my writing and in some cases by supporting me financially via subscriptions to this site. I am grateful for your interest in my work, and I hope to continue this work well into the future, In sha'Allah.
