This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about front-line

theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Molar, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in

Louisville, Kentucky.

Dr. Roger Scrutin has been for the last quarter century or more one of the most prominent and

influential public intellectuals in the English speaking world. He is currently

adjunct scholar of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. He also

has served as a fellow of Blackfriars Hall in Oxford and his research

professor for the Institute for Psychological Studies. He is a writer, philosopher, and public

commentator. His many books are among the most influential in the fields of philosophy and cultural studies and it is a great honor to welcome Dr. Roger Scrutin to thinking in public.

Dr. Scrutin, welcome. We're very glad to have this conversation.

Well, thank you very much for inviting me.

You are, first of all, at least in my mind, a philosopher.

I have used your modern philosophy text in my modern theology classes.

How would you describe the modern world as you just try to

situate it in the larger frame of thought that something came before modern philosophy

and perhaps you would argue something has come after.

Where are we in terms of the stream of Western thinking?

Well, that's a very leading question.

Obviously the modern period as we understand it is something which came into existence in the 17th century

with the rising consciousness of Europe of its own peculiar destiny and also the birth of modern science and the kind of public culture of skepticism towards traditional religious forms and I think partly that was a result of the religious conflict of the 17th century.

But I think there was a slow, steady opening up of the human spirit to doubt and hesitation,

...