So this lecture amounts to, for me, at the initiation of a line of inquiry. This is really a work I'm just beginning.

And so, as such, it's subject to fairly rapid disconfirmation of its thesis. So it's something of a risk.

Somebody smarter or better informed than I might

at the conclusion, make a simple and incontrovertible point that I failed to consider, and to which

there is no convincing answer, at which point I suppose we can all just go home, unless some

people want to stick around and pick over the thesis's corpse.

On the other hand, if my thesis is not so easily defeated or at least proves worth thinking about

that sparks a fruitful discussion, then I'm likely to continue this line of inquiry. So it all

depends on you. I do spend the next couple years doing.

And so here's the thesis.

The 17th century writers, Baruch Spinoza and Blaise Pascal,

show us two different ways of being religious

in the post-medieval world,

and that these two ways are perhaps, to some degree, and with several thousand

other qualifying phrases added, paradigmatic, and at least to that degree, instructive as to how

people go about being religious today.

So I'll proceed as follows.

First, I'm going to explain what I mean by this strange phrase that I blame Philip Porter

for post-medieval, though it derives from David Gorell.

I'll explain briefly what I mean by that.

Second, I'll try and explain why I think Spinoza and Pascal are good candidates for

comparison as religious thinkers in the post-medieval world. And third, I'll sketch a view of

...