Why a blog? 

I’m husband to Carrie Jane, dad to two (a daughter and son), adjunct professor of English and Rhetoric, member of a local church where I teach and serve, military chaplain, outdoorsman, hiker, angler, voracious reader, dog-lover, and some other stuff, I suppose, but that’s more than sufficient for this forum.

My Ph.D. dissertation: Biblical Anthropology in the Narrative World of Cormac McCarthy: Exile, Violence, and the Question of Return and Redemption

My M.A. (English) thesis: Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer as Christian Apologetic

Lily was my apprentice novella. It can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/Lily-Jon-Pirtle

I’m currently writing a book of short stories. 

Pretty regularly, I upload teaching on topics of great interest to me: Christian theology and Scripture, literature, worldviews, philosophy, and of course, lots of wildlife and nature videos of some of my ramblings.

You can reach me here: http://www.jonpirtle.com or email me: jap4our@gmail.com

I love literature, especially the classics (most of them, anyway), theology, philosophy, biography, and history. I appreciate the ways theology and philosophy manifest themselves in literature.

My Ph.D. explores my favorite contemporary American writer (recently deceased), Cormac McCarthy. I contend that McCarthy’s anthropological worldview was largely biblical in that it assumes the violation of divine law is evidence of man’s moral rebellion and fallenness, and that moral depravity and the possibilities of redemption and return are biblically paradigmatic of the human condition.

When I earned my M.A. in English, I was exploring the ideas of the atheist Albert Camus and the Christian writer Walker Percy. I found, and continue to find, great benefit in showing how ideas and presuppositions about what is true either conform to reality or pervert reality.

My goal? To ask, What makes more sense? Is this an atheistic world? Are randomness,  acts of violence, and boredom the best we should hope for in a looming void? Are those experiences, so prevalent in modern, postmodern, and post-postmodern literature, the best we should hope for? If so, life is a pretty sad tale.

However, maybe that worldview is wrong. Maybe there is another way. Is it possible that another worldview makes more sense, that another worldview actually corresponds to the way things are?

The worldview in Percy’s The Moviegoer begins somewhat in the same tone as Camus’ world; it is a world of estrangement. However, Percy’s protagonist moves on. How? He follows ideas to their logical consequences. He sees that atheism/materialism do not hold answers for what it means to be a man, to be a questioner, a seeker after eternal truths (not just whimsical distractions). Why, after all, would man question his experience if he is mere matter in motion?

Percy’s protagonist comes to see the world makes more sense via a theistic, not an atheistic, framework. Refusals to acknowledge God and revelation reveal more about fallen man’s nature than about ontology.

Ideas have consequences, and I hope this blog bears witness, not just to my personal interests, but to how ideas conform unto or pervert the truth. My particular theological/philosophical presuppositions will unfold.

If you love literature, or if you appreciate the ways in which people’s theology and philosophical worldviews invariably manifest themselves in art, literature, life, and culture, welcome.

Some of My Interests:

Literary fiction, church history, theology/philosophy/worldviews, Christian apologetics, drama, history, poetry, biography, non-fiction, and cultural studies.

                                                               Earned Degrees:

B.A. in English from WCU (1993); M.A. in English from WCU (2005); M.Div. from LTS (2011); military chaplain; literature and writing instructor; Clinical Pastoral Education-trained; and Ph.D. in church history (2023) from NTS.