-addisonphillips

I and Thou: All Real Living is Meeting

2012-01-29T17:30:00.001-08:00

"-What, then, do we experience of Thou?
-Just nothing. For we do not experience it.
-What, then, do we know of Thou?
-Just everything. For we know nothing isolated about it anymore."

I am reading I and Thou by Martin Buber. If I've read anything that could serve as a starting place for Christian thought, for right thought in general, it would be this book. The book is concise and carefully worded so as to tease out the relation itself.

I and Thou is the philosophy of standing in relation and of being a person - which are two sides of the same coin. One comes to be an I, to be fully themselves, when standing in relation, standing in relation to Thou. One is also able to speak the other primary word, I-It, but here the human experiences, appropriates, and uses. It stands over against the I. Thou stands with I, in relation. The I of I-It is no person, but only that which is individuated from other objective surroundings. The I of I-It also does not have reality for reality is only experienced in relation and the I in I-It stands in no relation.

I can do this book no justice. I recommend reading it for yourself.

Rolling out of the Hills: thoughts on music and the hyperreal

2012-01-29T15:50:00.002-08:00

I love folk music. I also love Bluegrass and Traditional Irish music.

I remember when I was on my Irish road trip driving through the countryside and listening to traditional Irish music. The rolling green hills and the music seemed to fit together with an uncommon perfection. I could imagine the music rolling out of the hills as easy as waves rolling on the sea. I felt that I glimpsed something of the inspiration that struck the men and women who began the tradition of music in Ireland long ago.

I believe one of the reasons I like folk, Bluegrass, and traditional Irish music so much is because of their connection with the earth. The music has meaning, simplicity, and profundity. It is an expression of nature, it refers back to nature. Traditional Irish music and the others relate to the basic goodness of the human experience.

By contrast, much of current popular music relates to nothing. Baudrillard argues that we live in a hyperreal world. The signs and representations that we deal with no longer refer to the world at all, rather they refer to other sign systems. Our world is composed of overlapping sign systems. When I say that current popular music refers to nothing I mean that it simply refers to other kinds of music. Current popular music does not derive its meaning from something inherently meaningful like nature, instead it refers to other symbols, other music. Popular music then is largely an abstraction and hyperreal.

What is Profound

2012-01-28T18:09:00.000-08:00

"I might say: if the place I want to get to could only be reached by way of a ladder, I would give up trying to get there. For the place I really have to get to is a place I must already be at now.
Anything that I might reach by climbing a ladder does not interest me."
-Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

What do you want out of life? - I think this is an important question that everyone need ask themselves at some point - preferably sooner than later. There are a great variety of ways of looking at the world, but I believe that they all have at least one thing in common - that this life is unique. This life is the only one like it that you will ever have. What then do you want out of life?

I seek to orient my life around that which is most interesting and that which is most profound. Those things that are profound leave the soul full and satisfied, indeed they fulfill the entire being. What is most profound is what you already have. The things one can acquire over a lifetime serve to only get in the way of what is best. God brings you into this world with all that is most wonderful and profound. Blessed are the poor for they are not distracted by everything superficial and meaningless.

Most profound is relating to God and relating to loved ones. Most satisfying is a walk in the rain or the wind in the trees. Most breathtaking is the look of one who knows you. Most invigorating is a race to that fence post. Most wondrous are the squirrels playing in the tree outside my window. Deepest is my hand in yours. Most fascinating is the wood grain on the boards of porch. Most sublime is the breathing and blood-pumping and the appreciation of being alive, of existing at all. Most sublime is being for another.

What I can buy doesn't interest me. I have no concern for any sort of 'progress' I can contribute to. If I climb a ladder I leave the only things I want in my life.

What is a Self?

2012-01-28T13:35:00.003-08:00

What is a self or what is most essentially me? What persists in a person during the course of their life which enables them to refer to a person 20 years in the past as themselves? I believe that most people have an intuition that there is a center of consciousness or some such thing which persists through time. That center of consciousness is that thing which is most basically the person. Even if a person's moral fabric dramatically changes over a period of time we still want to say that it is the same person, the same center of consciousness. So, the particular person survives dramatic changes to their character over time because of the persistence of the center of consciousness (I speak of normal cases).

To help illustrate the intuition that I am referring to I contrast dramatic character change with death. When a person undergoes dramatic moral or character change we say that the person prior to the change is still the same person (numerically identical rather than qualitatively identical) as the person after the change. The person prior to the change does not cease to exist (so we think) to make room for the different person that results after the change. If we believed that the person who undergoes dramatic character change ceased to exist or was not the same person after the change we would react to character change much in the same way we react to death. We would feel an intense sense of loss, that a person we knew is gone and will be seen in this life no longer.

I believe we have a second, contradictory intuition. We believe that if all of a person's personality characteristics and moral fabric were removed from them they would no longer be the same person (despite the persistence of a center of consciousness). A totally blank consciousness, an empty subjectivity staring out into the world is not the same as me or you. We believe then that a person is both nothing over and above the center of consciousness that they are (otherwise the person could not persist through time/endure changes in personality characteristics) and that a person is more than their center of consciousness. Where then is the self in all of this? What actually is me and how do I persist through time?

What happens as I change over time? What connects me with who I was yesterday or 10 years ago? Once again, our intuition says something like a center of consciousness in which our personality characteristics adhere is what persists, but we have already seen how reducing the self to a center of consciousness goes against our other intuitions concerning what makes a person themselves. It would seem that we have no language for talking about what it means most basically to be oneself. Whatever process gave rise to language did not produce terms to adequately talk about self-hood. Whatever I am, whoever I am is ineffable.

Apocalypse

2012-01-28T07:00:00.002-08:00

"But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
-Jesus

With last year's hype over the strange religious figure attempting to predict the date of the end of the world and this year's "Mayan Apocalypse" I think views of the date of the apocalypse are worth discussing. Well, to be honest, in my view there isn't much to discuss. I believe what Jesus said about the date of the end of the world and he was quite straightforward on this topic. We cannot know when the end of the world will come, only God the Father knows. Therefore, if there is a date that anyone is confident about for the end of the world we can be certain it will not happen on that date. He will come like a thief in the night.

What I am more concerned with are the philosophical/theological implications of an individual claiming to know the date of the end of the world given what Jesus said about that knowledge. What is being implicitly claimed when an individual declares to have knowledge of the time that the end will come when Jesus said that only the Father knows? To claim to know when the end will come is the worst kind of blasphemy; it is to claim to be God the Father. Watch then what you claim to know.

--Stay Awake.

What is Valuable

2012-01-20T12:15:00.000-08:00

"One is constructive and picks up one stone after another, the other keeps taking hold of the same thing." -Wittgenstein

What is valuable? What is interesting? What is profound? What is worth our time? Our culture is one of speed and cheap entertainment. Serious reflection is excluded. We must always move on to the next bigger, better thing. We pass over in the night all those things most fundamental, most mysterious as if they have been understood. We are wonder-struck by the latest gadget but life and existence are mundane. The arts are shoved aside to make way for engineering as if to say that "progress" in some material sense of the word is all that matters. The pursuit of meaning, transcendental or relative is labeled pointless from the outset.

"Even in eternity a day will not pass when I will not ponder what it means to be," a man once said. "Yes, but how will anything ever get done?" replied another man. This is a tragic answer.

Some believe that philosophical reflection is a luxury, but this is false. Philosophical reflection has been a necessary aspect of being human since the beginning of history. Reflection has taken the form of mythology, oral story telling, philosophy, and religion. Only in modern society has reflection been passed over as a waste of time. It is inefficient to reflect. Reflection is not productive. Everything is subservient to material ends and thereby the world is rendered absurd. Here is the abortion from human life.

Jacques Ellul: The Betrayal by Technology

2012-01-16T18:50:00.002-08:00

Meet Me Halfway

2012-01-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

"Supposing truth is a woman - what then?" -Nietzsche

Modern society conditions us to think scientifically, to believe that all knowledge is or can be reduced to scientific knowledge. William James says, rightly, that this mindset will exclude us from certain kinds of knowledge. There is no reason to assume that all knowledge is scientific knowledge, and if there is knowledge which is not scientific knowledge we exclude ourselves from ever knowing it by restricting our learning and thinking to science. Why would a person make the unjustified assumption that all knowledge is scientific knowledge? Arrogance? Obsession with control? I don't know.

James also observes that there are kind of facts which don't exist without being believed in. Belief sometimes creates the fact. For example, a woman may not have feelings for a man until the man first expresses his feelings to her. The fact of the woman's feelings for the man is created by the man's belief (and subsequent action) that the woman likes him. His belief which motivates his action is therefore wrong in the moment of action. Yet, the fact meets him halfway. As his belief causes him to step halfway, the belief is created and meets him halfway.

What if there is a great amount of knowledge of the aforementioned kind? We must meet the facts halfway, our beliefs create the fact. Does God exist? Well, God may not exist for any one particular person if they are unwilling to meet God halfway. God is not a scientific fact, God is a person.

Heart-Mouth Dialectic

2012-01-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

"Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person." -Jesus

What morally defiles a person? Is a person morally defiled because of the state of their heart or because of their actions? Or both? Or some combination? I think a close examination of Jesus' words can shed some light on these questions.

Jesus says that it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person. In other words, it is one's actions or the objective stance one takes in the world that defiles a person. Yet, Jesus also says that what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart. What comes out of the mouth is what comes from the heart. What the mouth speaks was already in the heart. So, one is defiled by the physical stance one takes in the world rather than by the state of one's heart despite the fact that this physical stance is merely an expression of a heart which is already morally evil. I believe this goes against our intuition. One wants to say that a person is already morally defiled by the evil intentions in their heart.

It seems that no matter the state of a person's heart, one is not defiled if the heart does not express itself in word or deed. The heart and mouth operate in a dialectic, in Merleau-Ponty's words, "...the thing expressed does not exist apart from the expression." The expression of the mouth gives meaning and existence to the state of the heart and the state of the heart gives meaning and content to the expression of the mouth. Each gives meaning to the other, one does not exist without the other.

The one who is silent is not defiled. At times silence is wisdom, at other times it is a rejection of what it means to be human. One can then avoid defilement in either of those two ways.

Wittgenstein comments on Kierkegaard and the Bible

2012-01-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

I think Wittgenstein gets it right with this take on scripture.

"Kierkegaard writes: If Christianity were so easy and cosy, why should God in his Scriptures have set Heaven and Earth in motion and threatened eternal punishment? Question: But in that case why is this Scripture so unclear? If we want to warn someone of a terrible danger, do we go about it by telling him a riddle whose solution will be the warning? - But who is to say that the Scripture really is unclear? Isn't it possible that it was essential in this case to 'tell a riddle'? And that, on the other hand, giving a more direct warning would necessarily have had the wrong effect? God has four people recount the life of his incarnate Son, in each case differently and with inconsistencies - but might we not say: It is important that this narrative should not be more than quite averagely historically plausible just so that this should not be taken as the essential, decisive thing? So that the letter should not be believed more strongly than is proper and the spirit may receive its due. I.e. what you are supposed to see cannot be communicated even by the best and most accurate historian; and therefore a mediocre account suffices, is even to be preferred. For that too can tell you what you are supposed to be told. (Roughly in the way a mediocre stage set can be better than a sophisticated one, painted trees better than real ones, - because these might distract attention from what matters.) The Spirit puts what is essential, essential for your life, into these words. The point is precisely that you are only supposed to see clearly what appears clearly even in this representation. (I am not sure how far all this is exactly in the spirit of Kierkegaard.)"

-Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

Propaganda and Christianity

2012-01-05T19:09:00.001-08:00

Ellul speaks for himself.

Excerpted from Jacques Ellul. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. New York: Vintage Books, 1965.

"Obviously, church members are caught in the net of propaganda and react pretty much like everyone else. As a result, an almost complete dissociation takes place between their Christianity and their behavior. Their Christianity remains a spiritual and purely internal thing. But their behavior is dictated by various appurtenances, and particularly by propaganda. Of course, a certain gap has always existed between "ideals" and "action." But today this gap has become total, general, and deliberate. This widening of the gap, particularly its systematic widening, is the fruit of propaganda in the political or economic domain, and of advertising in the private domain.

Because Christians are flooded with various propagandas, they absolutely cannot see what they might do that would be effective and at the same time be an expression of their Christianity. Therefore, with different motivations and often with scruples, they limit themselves to one or another course presented to them by propaganda. They too take the panorama of the various propagandas for living political reality, and do not see where they can insert their Christianity in that fictitious panorama. Thus, like all others, they are stumped, and this fact removes all weight from their belief.

At the same time, because of its psychological effects, propaganda makes the propagation of Christianity increasingly difficult. The psychological structures built by propaganda are not propitious to Christian beliefs. This also applies on the social plane. For propaganda faces the church with the following dilemma:

Either not to make propaganda-but then, while the churches slowly and carefully win a man to Christianity, the mass media quickly mobilize the masses, and the churchmen gain the impression of being "out of step," on the fringes of history, and without power to change a thing.

Or to make propaganda-this dilemma is surely one of the most cruel with which the churches are faced at present. For it seems that people manipulated by propaganda become increasingly impervious to spiritual realities, less and less suited for the autonomy of a Christian life.

...

Christianity disseminated by such means [propaganda] is not Christianity.

...

[When the church uses propaganda] it submits to the laws of efficiency in order to become a power in the world, and, in fact, it succeeds: it does become such a power. At that moment it has chosen power over truth.

...

When the church uses propaganda, it always tries to justify itself in two ways: It says, first of all, that it puts these efficient media in the service of Jesus Christ. But if one reflects for a moment, one realizes that this means nothing. What is in the service of Jesus Christ receive its character and effectiveness from Jesus Christ. The media that possess in themselves all their effectiveness and contain in themselves their own presuppositions and ends, cannot be put in the service of Jesus Christ. They obey their own rules, and this cannot be changed in the slightest, either by the content of their transmissions or by theological reasoning, despite what simplistic reasoning can make some people believe. In fact, a statement by the church that it is placing the media at the service of Christ, is not a logical or ethical explanation, but a pious formulation without content.

One tries to escape from this trap by saying that one cannot see why the church should be prevented from using such an instrument of dissemination or power, so long as it does not put its confidence in such instruments; for one recalls from the Bible that confidence in anything other than God is condemned. But here it is enough to ask oneself: if one really does not believe in these instruments and really does not put one's confidence in their value and effectiveness, why use them? If one uses them, one has confidence in their value and effectiveness; to deny this is hypocrisy. Of course, in connection with all this, we are thinking of real propaganda, not of some limited use of press or radio to transmit Mass or service."

Identity: Paul and the Self

2012-01-05T06:46:00.000-08:00

"They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."

In Philosophy, transcendental arguments seek to elucidate the conditions for the possibility of some fundamental phenomenon. For example, Edmund Husserl engaged in transcendental phenomenology and his aim was to elucidate the conditions for the possibility of conscious experience. At one point he writes of the experience of listening to music; he observed that for humans to experience music as we do there must be a kind of remembrance of the note just passed as well as an expectation of the note immediately to come. Without such remembrance and expectation there would be no continuity to the sounds, they would be merely successive disconnected sounds and would not be music at all. And yet, neither our remembrance or expectation can be remembrance or expectation as typically conceived for the conscious activity of either remembrance or expectation would prevent the full experience of the present note or sound. Husserl therefore proposed retention and protention as the conditions for the possibility of the experience of music. Retention is the conscious mind's ability to let a note of music linger in the mind as successive notes are played and protention is the ability of the conscious mind to prepare itself for the successive note based on the experience of the present one.

The above cited passage from Ephesians prompts a transcendental question in my mind, "What are the conditions for the possibility of Paul commanding the believer 'put off your old self... and put on the new self'?" One may argue that Paul is simply using metaphor to describe the moral transformation that takes place in the person who believes in Christ. I believe it possible to understand Paul's words as metaphor, but I am lead by this passage to understand that Paul is referring to a profound existential or physical/metaphysical reality. Paul speaks of the old self as being "corrupt" while referring to the new self as "created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." The old self seems to be of a fundamentally different nature than the new self. I do not think it is adequate to understand Paul's words as merely metaphor, he seems to be speaking of a literal and deep transformation of the person as such.

We ask then, "What are the conditions for the possibility of a self being commanded to put off themselves and put a new self on?" It is first noticed that Paul's command is directed at the self or at selves. He assumes that his listeners are selves, persons, or moral agents with the capacity of self-reflection and understanding themselves as individuals. Paul addresses selves and in so doing assumes a conscious core to the individual, a zero-point of orientation, and a subjectivity with an identity which persists through time. Paul tells the selves (his listeners) to "put off your old self." What is a self but a self? Paul seems to be telling his listeners to put themselves off, to rid themselves of themselves. How is this possible? How can a self put itself off? I think of a shirt trying to take itself off of itself. Our conceptual imagery is brought to a halt. We enter paradox. We cannot conceive of what Paul means, and yet we still feel his command can be obeyed.

Paul continues by commanding the self (the self which is no longer a self because it has taken off itself) to put on a new self. With this second command Paul assumes that there is something continuous between the person who has taken off their old self and the person who is now expected to put on a new self. What is the continuity? Our intuition tells us that it is the self which gives the person continuity through time, but here this cannot be the case for Paul has already commanded the the self be put off. In addition, it is a NEW self which Paul commands the no-self (because of the old self being put off) to put on. If a person puts on a new self (especially after having put off their old self) is the person the same person? Our sense is that the self is the most basic thing to a person's identity and if the self is lost the person is lost. Paul does not take this sentiment into account. Paul assumes a person with an identity of some type to be continuous through this entire process of putting off the old self and putting on the new self.

If it is not the self which makes a person most fundamentally themselves then what is it? What makes me, me? Evidently I am not myself and yet I am. I feel that I am nothing over and above myself and yet there must be something which I am that is over and above myself. Maybe our concept of the self needs to be more fluid or more expansive?

More Thoughts on the Soul

2012-01-04T08:40:00.000-08:00

"I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?"

What separates man from beast? Qoheleth (the author of Ecclesiastes) has observed all that is done in the world (1:14) and he has seen no difference between man and beast. Man and beast are both dust and spirit and one cannot observe where the spirit of the man or the beast goes when they perish. The spirit is the life-force given to all living things by God, it is this spirit and the dust of the earth which compose both man and beast.

Qoheleth draws no physical or metaphysical distinction between man and beast. There is no soul in man that distinguishes him from the beast. What then is the difference between man and beast? Out intuition tells us that there is some kind of profound difference between man and beast but Qoheleth does not speak of it. And yet he does. Qoheleth has implicitly distinguished between man and beast in the very composition of the book.

Man is self-reflective, man has language, reason, insight, foresight, hindsight. Man is nowhere and everywhere different from the beast. Man and woman are created in the image of God, but, just like God himself, one cannot put a finger on this image. The image of God is not the soul, indeed there is no soul. The image of God is everything that a man is, that a woman is. The image of God is everything that it means to be human.

The Problem of Evil

2012-01-02T12:13:00.001-08:00

He put another parable before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' So the servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he said, 'No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"

The Problem of Evil is an oft discussed philosophical problem that is of great significance in the minds and hearts of many who believe in God and many who don't. The Problem of Evil is typically (though not always) presented in a transcendental, metaphysical, or abstract fashion. In its most simple form the Problem of Evil can be reduced to four short propositions, they are as follows: God is omniscient. God is omnipotent. God is omnibenevolent. Evil exists. The juxtaposition of these four propositions is intended to show the impossibility or improbability of them all being true.

The argument goes that if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent then evil would not exist. If God had these three qualities it would be impossible for evil to exist because God knows about the evil, God has the power to stop it, and God is only good and would therefore act so as to exclude all evil. In order to resolve this dilemma one must deny the truth of one of the propositions. It seems that it is impossible to deny the truth of the statement, "Evil exists." No one would deny the existence of evil. One therefore must (as the argument goes) deny the truth of one of the propositions about the attributes of God. To deny that God is any of the three things listed is to deny that God is God and is therefore to deny God's existence.

Abstract metaphysical thinking of the type employed above has been highly criticized by many of the most influential philosophers of recent centuries. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Williams James were all suspicious of the ability of metaphysical thinking to get at truth. William James wrote, "Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly." Metaphysics are clear and organized, deceptively so, and in so being they fail to account for the complexities and subtleties which are the fabric of reality.

I do not believe abstract metaphysical thinking is an appropriate way to address the Problem of Evil, and evidently neither did Jesus. Jesus does not attempt to provide a transcendental account of how and why evil exists in the world. For Jesus, evil simply is the case in the world and God has a problem with it. The problem presented by Jesus is not how evil can exist given God's existence, but rather, the time at which God will act to remove evil.

Jesus says that God has an enemy who brought about evil in the world. The metaphysically-minded philosopher would ask why an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God would allow an enemy to bring evil about in the world, but Jesus does not. That an enemy brought about evil is the case. The question Jesus addresses is, "Why is God waiting to put an end to evil?" His answer is simple. If God were to eradicate evil then the good in the world would be eradicated along with it.

Evil is the case in this world and evil is part of how this world is the case. The world is a whole and evil is part of it. Evil has its roots deeply embedded in the world. God will eradicate evil, but when God does so God will remake the entire world because part of how this world is the case is that it has evil, the whole world must therefore be remade. God will not remake the entire world until all good that can be brought about in this world has been brought about.

Thought for the New Year: The Myth of Progress

2012-01-01T11:29:00.000-08:00

On this first day of a new year, a day of hope and new horizons, a day of reflection on the year past and the setting of new sights for the year to come, I believe it a good opportunity to reflect on one of the fundamental myths which form the foundation of our culture. The Myth of Progress, the idea that the human race is continually moving in a positive direction, is the unfounded assumption which fuels our science, technology, and economy and is the basis for much of the way we view the world and act.

As far as I am aware, the Myth of Progress finds its first explicit expression in the philosophy of Hegel. The Myth of Progress paints a picture of the human race moving in a continually positive direction with respect to morality, knowledge, wisdom, prosperity, and the general fulfillment of what it means to be human. To accept this myth uncritically can have catastrophic repercussions both personally and globally.

It can be said that the small percentage of the world's population that lives in the West has increased their material prosperity over the last several centuries, but at what cost? How many countless human beings have been destroyed to benefit the prosperity of the West, not even to mention the negative impact on the environment? Does air-conditioned television-viewing offset the suffering of countless slaves which gave the West such an economic advantage for so long? Has any progress really taken place?

Science and technology, the engine and harbinger of all things progress, is accepted by nearly everyone with no criticism whatsoever. Jacques Ellul, the famous critic of technology, emphasizes the fact that technological progress is ambivalent in nature. There is great depth and manifold implications to the notion that technological progress is ambivalent, but one simple example is that the same technology which increases our prosperity can also be used to destroy us. Technological progress carries us along while no progress is made in humanity's moral compass.

The heart of humanity is never changing, but our designs are increasingly complex and our power is always on the rise. What does it actually mean to progress? The idea of progress that is widely presented is no progress at all.

"The trouble about progress is that it always looks much greater than it really is." -Nestroy

C.S. Lewis on Individuality

2011-12-31T15:12:00.002-08:00

The following is a long quote from Screwtape Proposes a Toast on the topic of individuality in modern society. Lewis' thought on this subject is much like Kierkegaard's.

"Now this useful phenomenon [I'm as good as you] is in itself by no means new. Under the name of Envy it has been known to the humans for thousands of years. But hitherto they always regarded it as the most odious, and also the most comical, of vices. Those who were aware of feeling it felt it with shame; those who were not gave it no quarter in others. The delightful novelty of the present situation is that you can sanction it-make it respectable and even laudable-by the incantatory use of the word democratic.

Under the influence of this incantation those who are in any way inferior can labor more wholeheartedly and successfully than ever before to pull down everyone else to their own level. But that is not all. Under the same influence, those who come, or could come, nearer to full humanity, actually draw back from it for fear of being undemocratic. I am credibly informed that young humans now sometimes suppress an incipient taste for classical music or good literature because it might prevent their Being like Folks; that people who would really wish to be-and are offered the Grace which would enable them to be-honest,chaste,or temperate, refuse it. To accept might make them Different, might offend again the Way of Life, take them out of Togetherness, impair their Integration with the Group. They might (horror of horrors!) become individuals."

Identity: What am I?

2011-12-31T12:59:00.000-08:00

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up- for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and watering the whole face of the ground- then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. -Genesis 2:5-7

I do not believe that human beings have a soul. The initial motivation for this belief was a sense that I gained after more fully appreciating the philosophical implications of the soul, but I believe the Bible supports my position. In fact, as I have considered the Biblical view on the subject I've come to hold that there are many positive implications to disbelieving in the soul. Exclusion of belief in the soul, I hold, provides a better understanding of God and the human experience.

My sense that there is no soul derived from my fundamental belief that the physical world is good (because God made it so) and from my reading of Plato and Nietzsche. Plato's idea of the soul and his doctrine of the forms, historically, has had a massive impact on Christianity and Western Civilization in general. Plato's idea of the soul is the one that exists predominantly in western consciousness, it is essentially an immaterial or non-physical copy of the person. Plato's forms are perfect copies of those things that exist on earth. For example, a physical chair is only a chair to the extent that it instantiates the form 'chairness' which exists in some Platonic heaven. Chairness is some kind of infinitely perfect chair. Nietzsche held, I believe rightly, that this dualistic conception of reality is a fatal abortion from life. A kind of perfect immaterial copy of this world like Plato talks about renders this world redundant. Why does the body exist at all if there is a more pure immaterial copy? Why does the world exist if there is a perfect heavenly version?

Some Christian theologians, Aquinas for example, have argued that we are essentially both body and soul and that a human existence would not be human (or worth living at all) if we existed only as a soul. A maneuver along these lines is helpful in that it preserves the Christian idea that the physical world is fundamentally good (whereas Plato believed the physical to be bad) but I see no need to retain the idea of the soul at all. For the Christian, belief in the soul is unnecessary and unwarranted.

The Biblical perspective on the soul (or lack thereof) begins in Genesis 2. Genesis 2 gives an account of God's creation of human beings. Whatever your perspective on how Genesis should be read, one can easily argue that if nothing else, it provides us with the meaning of the origin of the world and humanity and God's relation to it. Genesis 2:7 reads, "then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." No where in the account of the creation of man is the creation of the soul mentioned. The 'breath of life' is to be understood as just that, a breath of life, a life-giving force, a vivifying force. Man is not a coin with one side spiritual and the other physical. Man is all physical. Man is made of earth and animated by God. There is nothing else to a man (I do not mean this to be taken in a reductionist fashion as will be seen later).

In Genesis 2:22 God creates woman. Again, God fashions the human only from physical ingredients. One would think that if the soul were an essential part of the human being (as most conceive of it as being) God would have removed part of Adam's body and soul to fashion Eve from. No such action is taken. Eve is of man and man is of the earth. A soul is not mentioned in relation to either Adam or Eve.

Adam's first encounter with Eve is also revealing about what it means, most deeply and profoundly, to be human. At the sight of Eve Adam responds, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Adam employs no Platonic notions like "soul mate" at the sight of Eve. Adam is of the earth, he is flesh, and in Eve he finally finds one like himself at the deepest level. He finds another of flesh.

One may then ask what separates humanity from the animals? Animals are also fashioned from the earth and God has also given them the breath of life. The distinction that the Bible draws between humans and animals is that humans are created in the image of God. I believe shifting our focus from the soul to the image of God in humans as that thing which most fundamentally makes a human a human has many positive implications for the Christian life.

When we conceive of the image of God as being that thing which makes a human most fundamentally human we are forced out of a complacency that may be induced by the concrete concept of a metaphysically distinct soul. In other words, if our identity is largely founded on the idea that we have a soul we can become lazy because there is nothing to be done with regard to being human. Simplistically put, "I have a soul, I am human." If the image of God is what we understand the foundation of our humanity to be based on then there is adventure to be had and work to be done. We cannot know what it means to be human without knowing the God in whose image we are created.

The shift of focus from the soul to the image of God creates the need for somewhat of a reorientation in the Christian life. Currently, the average Christian is only interested in those things concerning their state of salvation. To realize that we have no soul is to create the need to concern oneself with their existential state. Of course, the two play into one another, but I think it important for us to be seeking not just our salvation but also our identity in Christ.

Two significant questions remain unaddressed. First, what does it mean to be only physical? And second, what of the references to the soul throughout the Bible? The answer to the first question will shed light on the second.

What does it mean to be only physical? As mentioned above, I am not taking a reductionist approach to anthropology. The fact that there is no soul does not make the human any less, in fact, I believe, it makes him more. Disbelieving in the soul should result in an expanded view of what it means to be human rather than a reduced or contracted one. Essential to being able to rightly understand how the elimination of belief in the soul is not a reduction of anthropology is to examine what is meant by "physical." When I say that the human is only physical I do not have the modern "matter in motion" concept of physical in mind.

I try, to the greatest extent possible, to let the Bible inform my understanding of what is physical. The Bible says that the world as God created it as good. The world as it exists was brought into being by the spoken word of God. The physical world, or matter itself is inherently spiritual. Indeed, the distinction between spiritual and physical is probably not helpful at all. There is nothing about the physical world that is not spiritual.

In order to avoid the confusion of terms then, I prefer to say that humans are flesh rather than saying "physical." I don't know what flesh is, but that is the Biblical perspective on what humans are. Flesh is not a fusion of physical and spiritual. Flesh is neither physical or spiritual, it is both spiritual and physical. God created us as flesh and it is good. To invoke the concept of the soul is to suggest that the flesh as God made it is not good enough, but it is good indeed.

What does one make of the references to the soul throughout the Bible? In order to rightly understand the Biblical references to soul one must shift their thinking from metaphysical to existential. When the Bible speaks of the soul it is not referring to an aspect of our being which is metaphysically distinct from our bodies. The Bible's use of the word soul is a literary device used to refer to a particular dimension of our being. Jesus tells us to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. We do not conceive of our hearts or minds as being metaphysically distinct from our bodies, so why would we conceive as the soul so being? The soul should be conceived of, existentially, as an aspect of our being like our hearts or minds. The soul is existentially or somehow psychologically distinct, not metaphysically distinct.

The non-belief in the soul also adds an additional significance to the Resurrection. In the Resurrection Jesus was not just saving part of what it means to be human, he was saving us, all that we are. We are flesh and he saved our flesh. Without the Resurrection we are lost.

Finally, in my discussion of this topic with a friend the question arose, "If we don't have a soul, what happens to us between when we die and when we are resurrected?" There are never satisfactory answers to questions along these lines, but I hazarded an answer which follows the shift here presented from metaphysical thinking to existential thinking. What happens to us when we die? God remembers us.

What is Life?

2011-12-31T10:35:00.000-08:00

I have an interest in the notion that a thing cannot be known without knowing what it is not. One cannot know what a thing is at all unless one knows what it isn't. In his dialectical way of thinking, Hegel goes as far as to say that all things are the same as their opposite (or exist in their opposite) because they find their existence in their opposite. A thing's opposite provides a distinction that a thing could not exist without at all. Knowing what something isn't then, is an essential component of knowing what a thing is.

Life or the experience of being alive either throws a wrench in the idea that a thing cannot be known without knowing it's opposite (or generally what it is not) or (if this type of thinking proves true) life presents itself as being in some sense essentially unknowable. Life or the experience of being alive exists as a concept (or pseudo-concept) in our understanding which has no opposite or Other with which is may be contrasted. All of our experiences are experiences of life or of being alive, we do not and cannot have an experience of death. We do not know what death is and therefore do not know what life is.

One might suggest that we do know what death is; death is the absence of life. Consequently, we know what life is because we know what death is. But, conceiving of death as merely the absence of life has no positive content and therefore no content at all; consequently it has no ability to provide a contrast for life. The negation of the concept of life (or what we think is our concept of life) has no real content and no ability to provide a contrast for life. A riverbank and a river give meaning and definition to each other. Both the river and riverbank have positive content. We can in some sense conceive of them by themselves, albeit ultimately due to our understanding of the other. We then need some sort of positive content for death if it is to enable us to understand life.

Because we do not know what death is, and, by necessity, can never know, we cannot know what life is. We are left with the impression that maybe life isn't meant to be known or understood, but lived. Maybe the meaning of what life is is given in the living of it.

The conclusion that life is meant to be lived rather than strictly understood leads to another line of thought. If what life is is meant to be understood by living then maybe life is meant to be understood existentially/ethically rather than conceptually or more metaphysically. If life can be understood existentially then there may be a way to live in which an understanding of what life is is given. Conversely, there may be a way to live in which an understanding of what life is is not given. Jesus leads me to believe that this is case.

The dialectical thinking formerly discussed appears again in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus says, "Whoever chooses to save his life shall lose it, and whoever will lose his life shall find it." By choosing life one finds death, but by choosing death one finds life. To live a life that seeks life is to fail to gain life or know life. To live a life that is oriented toward dying is to know life. The understanding of life is given in the experience of choosing to die to oneself in daily life. The experience of existential suicide gives knowledge of life.

"Abraham represents faith, and that faith finds its proper expression in him whose life is not only the most paradoxical conceivable, but so paradoxical that it simply cannot be thought." -Kierkegaard

Identity: Consciousness and Infinity

2011-12-31T09:58:00.000-08:00

In an obscure lecture, Immanuel Kant stated that God is not infinite in the mathematical sense, but rather, God is infinite in that he transcends all of our categories. While I tend to believe that God is, in a sense, infinite in both of these respects I find Kant's observation to be insightful. I find Kant's observation especially insightful with respect to understanding something of what it means to be created in the image of God.

No scientist or philosopher has ever provided an answer to the question, "What is consciousness?" The phenomenon that seems to be most essential to being human totally eludes all attempts at categorization or classification. No one knows what consciousness is. In this respect then, human consciousness appears to be infinite. Human consciousness is infinite in that it transcends all of our categories.

If human consciousness is infinite, what then is the difference between the human infinite and the infinity of God? I am tempted to draw a distinction between qualitative and quantitative infinity. I say "tempted" because I am certain that it will be ultimately unsatisfactory. Yet, for lack of a better distinction I will suggest that while God is infinite both qualitatively and quantitatively human consciousness is infinite only in a qualitative sense.

Form and Content

2011-12-31T09:36:00.001-08:00

It seems to me that when most people set out to study the Bible they set out to study its content and they neglect to concern themselves with its form. The average reader is attentive to what the Bible says, but frequently not to how the Bible says it. It is essential for the reader of the Bible to look at both form and content for form determines content, form draws a limit to what can be said.

The reader of the Bible, specifically in the West, encounters the text with many implicit modern presuppositions. The average reader may encounter the text assuming the law of non-contradiction, they may well assume that the meaning of the text will be at the surface level (as in a science text book), and they may assume that words are meant to exactly represent a particular meaning (as in computer programming) rather than evoke a sense or experience or meaning. When the reader supplies their own form to the Bible, when the Bible is forced into an alien form, the content of the Bible is changed. To understand the Bible one must be attentive to what is said AND how it is said.

Jacques Ellul discusses this topic in his work on Ecclesiastes, Reason for Being. He argues that most modern interpretations of Ecclesiastes fail to understand the meaning of the book because scholars and teachers approach the book with certain unjustified modern presuppositions. The modern mind wants cogent arguments, clear lines of reasoning, and consistency. The modern mind arrogantly assumes that only modern methods are intellectually respectable and capable of understanding the world. The one who believes in the Bible must believe that modern thought is wrong because the Bible does not present itself to the reader in a modern form.

"At bottom, every ideal of style dictates not only how we should say things but what sort of things we may say." -Lewis

Faith and Works

2011-12-30T21:46:00.000-08:00

"You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness" -and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." -James

"As long as he does not convert it to action, it does not matter how much he thinks about his new repentance." - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

"...the thing expressed does not exist apart from the expression." -Merleau-Ponty

I am unsatisfied by the common theological maneuver which says that works are an expression or outflow of one's faith. An explanation along the aforementioned lines presupposes that faith and works are distinct in such a way that one can exist without the other. I believe this is false. I hold that faith and works are imperceptibly twisted together (to borrow language from Merleau-Ponty).

James says that faith without works is dead. Unfortunately, James' words allow the reader to believe that faith can exist apart from works, albeit a dead faith. I do not think that James intends to leave room for the idea that faith can exist at all without works. For this reason, the above-mentioned quote from Merleau-Ponty can be useful for bettering one's understanding of what James means.

Merleau-Ponty writes "...the thing expressed does not exist apart from the expression." This concept preserves the common relationship between faith and works as thing expressed/expression, but links them together more closely and, I believe, more accurately. Faith is that which is expressed and works are the expression. Faith does not exist at all without works. Faith comes into existence in the act of expression through works.

What is a work? That is dependent on the life of the particular believer. Jesus said, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." What is important to remember is that there is no such thing as a merely inner disposition of faith. Faith does not exist apart from outward expression.

Thoughts on Christian Thinking

2011-12-29T06:27:00.000-08:00

Throughout the history of Christianity there have been four accepted sources of authority from which doctrines and teachings can be based. The traditional sources of authority are scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Different branches of Christianity have emphasized certain sources of authority as having precedence over the others. For example, Catholicism gives precedence to tradition as a source of authority. Protestantism, on the other hand, gives precedence to scripture. The slogan of the Protestant Reformation was "Sola Scriptura," which means "Scripture Alone." Protestants hold that scripture is the final and only source of authority for the formation of Christian doctrines and beliefs.

While I find Sola Scriptura a good sentiment and a reasonable way to respond to the corruptions of the Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation, it is ultimately overly simplistic and naive. That Sola Scriptura is an insufficient perspective on how Christian doctrines should be developed is evidenced by the explosion of Christian denominations and pseudo-Christian cults Post-Reformation.

The reality is that no one is capable of looking at scripture alone. All readings of scripture are informed by an individual's culture, traditions, implicit philosophical presuppositions, and personal experiences. I believe it is right to use scripture as the only measure of faith, but we must thoroughly examine our measure of scripture. Until a person has become aware of all of the traditions, philosophical presuppositions, and personal experiences that govern their reading of scripture they will not be able to read scripture alone. Tradition, reason, and experience must then be given authority in Protestantism not as the basis for faith, but as the basis for reading scripture.

One will never become aware of and/or overturn all of the external influences which dictate their understanding of scripture so Sola Scriptura is, in fact, never possible. The best that a Christian thinker can do is to examine the foundations of their thinking, examine the presuppositions, traditions, and experiences which shape the way they think and pray for understanding as they read scripture. One must also hold their intellectual framework loosely, always implicitly acknowledging how badly it may be flawed.

The Wrong Way to Believe in God: Undoing Naturalism

2011-12-28T17:15:00.001-08:00

Formerly, my belief in God, at least at a cognitive level, was situated within a naturalistic framework; that is to say my beliefs were self-contradictory. For, naturalism, broadly defined, is the belief that there is no God and nothing like God. My belief in God provided me some kind of an escape from the austere, mechanical world that naturalism posits and gave me an escape from the crushing finality of the nothingness of death. I now realize that this is the wrong way to believe in God. God is not a solution to the lack of meaning of the naturalistic/scientific world we have constructed for ourselves.

The Christian cannot hold their belief in God while maintaining an otherwise naturalistic ontology. The Christian cannot give science all authority for investigating the way the world is and then throw the Bible in as the one exception to the rule. If one accepts science as the best means for investigating the way the world is then the Bible will eventually be pushed aside (indeed it already has). The methodologies of science cannot reveal God. Science scrutinizes, dissects, and manipulates nature in order to gain knowledge. God will not and cannot be known in this way. In fact the world and humanity cannot be known in this way either.

The Bible states that God's existence and many of his attributes are plain to be seen. God's existence is an experiential given. How is this so? One only finds this kind of talk cryptic because of having been conditioned to think in a scientific way, in a reductionist fashion. I believe that the Bible is telling us to look not at the constituent parts of nature but to look at the content of our experience as such. We must look at the way the world is given us in conscious experience. We have been trained by science to look past the meaningful way that the world is most basically presented to us. God designed us to see him plainly in the way the world appears to us, not through the contrived methodologies of science.

God's existence is plain, it is given in our most basic experience of the world. Because of how we are designed to see God I believe that looking at the way things appear to our consciousness is the way that we are intended to gain true knowledge of the world. The term for investigating the content of conscious experience is 'Phenomenology.' Heidegger said that only with Phenomenology is ontology possible. To believe in God rightly one must throw out their naturalistic ontology and begin again phenomenologically.

Propaganda

2011-12-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

The following is a long quote from Ellul's Propaganda (emphasis added). I believe Ellul offers a concise and insightful summary of an essential component of American culture.

"This sociological propaganda in the United States is a natural result of the fundamental elements of American life. In the beginning, the United States had to unify a disparate population that came from all the countries of Europe and had diverse traditions and tendencies. A way of rapid assimilation had to be found; that was the great political problem of the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. The solution was psychological standardization - that is, simply to use a way of life as the basis of unification and as an instrument of propaganda. In addition, this uniformity plays another decisive role - an economic role - in the life of the United States; it determines the extent of the American market. Mass production requires mass consumption, but there cannot be mass consumption without widespread identical views as to what the necessities of life are. One must be sure that the market will react rapidly and massively to a given proposal or suggestion. One therefore needs fundamental psychological unity on which advertising can play with certainty when manipulating public opinion. And in order for public opinion to respond, it must be convinced of the excellence of all that is "American." Thus conformity of life and conformity of thought are indissolubly linked."

Human Speech and the Incarnation

2011-12-24T08:30:00.000-08:00

"If a lion could talk, we would not understand him." -Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein said that a lion does not have the same form of life as a human being. There is no touch point, no common ground whereon to begin communication between a human being and a lion. The lion's form of life is so completely other than that of a human being there is no way of ever understanding the lion's speech. To understand what the lion said, indeed for the lion to produce anything like what we would consider language, the lion would need to begin to share the form of life of a human being, but then, of course, the lion would be a lion no longer. The lion need become human for us to understand him.

God does not share in the form of life of a human. God dwells in unapproachable light and thick darkness. God created and sustains the heavens and the earth. God is the alpha and the omega. God transcends all human categories, He is wholly other than human. How then could we ever understand him? How can we listen to God if He cannot speak? How can we hear from God if He is not human?

Two thousand years ago God was born of a woman. God came not in glory and splendor, but as a helpless baby. In his humility and helplessness God began to share in the form of a human life. We respond, "Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone." He came that he might share in our form. He came that he might speak to us.

More Thoughts on Being and Having

2011-12-23T16:25:00.001-08:00

"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" -Jesus

My recent reading of the thoughts of Jacques Ellul and Gabriel Marcel have caused me to completely reevaluate my understanding of the above verse. Ellul's and Marcel's interpretation of the above verse not only has a more intuitive appeal to me than my previous interpretation, but I also believe it fits better with what the verse actually says and its context.

Before I continue I find it pertinent to point out the meaning of the Greek word that is translated as "soul" in the above verse. The word translated here as "soul" is psuché in Greek and can mean "the vital breath," "breath of life," "the human soul," "the soul as the seat of affections and will," "the self," "a human person, and "an individual." The word can refer to anything from an inner life-force to the soul to the self. It seems to me that any and all of these definitions refer to existence or being as such. In order to simplify the terms in this discussion then, it seems acceptable to translate the above verse as: "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his being? Or what shall a man give in return for his being?"

Formerly, my understanding of this verse was based on what I believe to be quite conventional wisdom. If a person proverbially "sells their soul" in order to gain possessions or become rich then they have obviously lost themselves in the process of acquiring possessions. One can sell their soul in many different ways. One might say that a person has sold their soul if they spend all of their time working or neglects their family and relationships for work or even deals with money in dishonest ways in order to maximize profit. One can sell their soul to gain possessions through the neglecting of good things in life as well as acting in unethical ways. When a person is willing to sacrifice anything or do anything in order to increase their wealth we should say that they have sold their soul. All of this is also to imply that there are ways of accruing possessions which do not rob a person of their soul or being; this was previously the extent of my understanding of the above verse.

While my previous understanding of Matthew 16:26 was focused on the pursuit of possessions Marcel's and Ellul's understanding is focused on having as such. Ellul writes, "The more you have, the less you are." Having as such robs one of being as such. The way in which a person comes to acquire their possessions is irrelevant, the more one has the less they are, period.

As I mentioned above, I believe the context of Matthew 16:26 supports Marcel's and Ellul's interpretation. Just before Jesus makes the statement about possessions in Matthew 16:26 he makes a more general statement. He says, "For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Jesus says that to lose one's life is to gain it, to save one's life is to lose it. Losing life is gaining it. Saving life is losing it. In the same way, having is losing being. Not having is gaining being.

There is no way to accrue possessions while keeping one's being. The more you have, the less you are. Possessions literally drain the life, the being from you. Possessions disperse the person, they kill the person. Surely this is one of the dimensions of the meaning of Jesus' saying, "Blessed are the poor."

Enslavement to Comfort

2011-12-22T17:21:00.001-08:00

In The Embers and the Stars Erazim Kohák writes of how many in the West have become enslaved to comfort. His take on the way that comfort can enslave a person has a great appeal to me, I believe his insight on this topic is valuable.

Kohák writes that in the past people were willing to sacrifice comfort in order to gain something greater. Now, for many, comfort is the greatest object a person can achieve and it therefore trumps all other potential ends. Many have literally become enslaved to comfort. People are willing to sacrifice anything in life in order to achieve the end of comfort.

Formerly, every man and woman would have counted it worth the discomfort of the creeping cold in order to enjoy the beauty of the starry heavens. Now, many people choose the mind-numbing glow of the television set because the television is in a temperature controlled environment. There is much more wonder and enjoyment to be had in the night sky than on late-night television but that matters little when comfort trumps all.

The enslavement to comfort literally forces a person away from the canopy of stars and into that incandescent glow. The one who is enslaved to comfort is stripped of their free will. No matter how wondrous a night sky may be their slave master does not permit them to enjoy it. "Into the status quo!" the slave master shouts. "Into the numbing nothingness of continual comfort!" the slave master orders.

How Job Did Not Act

2011-12-18T10:06:00.001-08:00

A thought from Kierkegaard on Job that spoke to me:

"Perhaps there might be someone who on the day of sorrow was also reminded that he had seen happy days, and his soul would would become even more impatient. "Had he never known happiness, then the pain would not have overcome him, for what is pain, after all, other than an idea which he does not have who knows nothing else, but now happiness had so educated and developed him as to make him conscious of the pain." Thus his happiness became pernicious to him; it was never lost but only lacking, and it tempted him more in the lack than ever before. What had been the delight of his eyes, he desired to see again, and his ingratitude punished him by conjuring it up as more beautiful than it had formerly been. What his soul had rejoiced in, it now thirsted for again, and his ingratitude punished him by painting it as more desirable than it had previously been. What he had once been capable of doing, that he now wished to be able to do again, and his ingratitude punished him with visions that had never had reality. Thus he condemned his soul to living famished in the never satisfied craving of want."

Edifying Discourses

A Thought from Kierkegaard

2011-12-17T10:04:00.002-08:00

"When love dwells in the heart, then man comprehends slowly, and does not hear at all the hasty word and does not understand its repetition, because he ascribes to it a good intention and a good meaning; does not understand the long, angry or derisive speech, because he still expects one word which will give meaning to the speech. When fear dwells in the heart, then a man easily discovers the multiplicity of sin - weakness and deceit and faithlessness and scheming, so that

Every heart is a trap,
Every rogue like a child,
Every promise but a shadow.

Christianity and Philosophy

2011-12-10T08:42:00.001-08:00

Christians have a sense that Jesus resolves all philosophical/existential problems. The experience of salvation through what Jesus accomplished on the cross brings with it a peace that quiets one's being. The most basic questions like, "Is there meaning in life?" or "Why do I exist?" or "What is the meaning of suffering?" all somehow find resolution in the experience of knowing Christ. Yet, the answers to all of these questions remained inchoate in our understanding. The mind has little to no grasp on how these questions are resolved and yet we maintain the sense that they resolved indeed.

I believe that the mind can never gain a grasp on the answers to these questions. These questions can never be answered propositionally, abstractly, or intellectually. Only existence can answer existential questions. Yet, I believe that the mind must always and never be at rest in searching for understanding on these matters. To give up searching OR to settle on one answer is to fail to understand. To know with certainty and always investigate more is to understand.

I believe that philosophy is the best tool we have to be always approaching an understanding of the answers to these questions that we, as Christians, already know. Philosophy (specifically in the Socratic style) knows by not knowing, it finds answers in the questions themselves, and yet is discontent with mystery. I've found no better way to address these questions.

"There is no intellectual, conceptual answer to existential problems... God has not given us a system or wisdom to resolve the enigmas of our existence, but Jesus Christ. Only Existence responds to our existence." -Maillot

Jesus and Irony: The Escape from Absurdity

2011-12-10T06:06:00.000-08:00

"We cannot live human lives without energy and attention, nor without making choices which show that we take some things more seriously than others. Yet we have always available a point of view outside the particular form of our lives, from which the seriousness appears gratuitous. These two viewpoints collide in us, and that is what makes life absurd." -Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions

The sense of absurdity arises when one is able to step back from their intimate involvement in everyday life and, from this new perspective, see how small, finite, etc. their lives are. The seriousness with which a person takes the happenings of their everyday life seems suddenly absurd, pointless, meaningless from this bird's eye view. The typical religious remedy to the feeling of absurdity is to join one's life with God, with the infinite. I am unsatisfied with this deus ex machina, I do not believe one can escape the sense of absurdity by simply adding God to the mixture of one's life. I certainly do not experience my sense of absurdity being relieved by merely believing in God.

No change to the framework of one's understanding of life can remedy the sense of absurdity. Also, no addition to one's current life can remedy absurdity. The only way one can escape from the feeling that their life is absurd is by changing its internal structure, one's life must take on a new composition.

Thomas Nagel's recommendation for escaping the sense of absurdity is to approach life with irony. He suggests that if life is meaningless then so is the idea that life is meaningless; the best we can then do is to approach life with irony. I agree with Nagel on the count that irony is the key to escaping the absurdity of life, but I disagree with his source of irony.

The internal change that must take place in a person's life in order to escape absurdity is that the substance of one's whole life must become irony. The only person who offers a life ironic enough to allow an escape from life's absurdity is Jesus. Jesus tells us, ironically, if you want to save your life you must lose it. Again, ironically, he tells his followers, "If anyone would be first he must be last and servant of all."

Why does Jesus' irony allow an escape from absurdity? Jesus provides a way of living which, in a relevant sense, takes life less seriously. Jesus commands his followers to devote their time and energies to losing in life. To understand and live what Jesus taught is to escape from absurdity because one no longer devotes their time and energies to living but rather, to dying; and in this life is found, ironically.

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Personalism

2011-12-09T19:22:00.001-08:00

"I wish to set forth my faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance." -G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Modernism, broadly defined, is a period in the history of Western thought which concerned itself with achieving certainty in knowledge. Modern thought began with the goal of achieving knowledge about the world that could be considered true with 100% certainty; this was later altered to the pursuit of knowledge that could be considered true to a high degree of probability. Postmodernism is the label given to the tendency in Western thought which succeeded Modernism; the West is currently in a Postmodern intellectual climate. Postmodern thought, broadly defined, holds that there is no objective truth to be known about the world, rather there are many changing truths about how reality is.

Many theologians have problems with one type of thought or the other. I have a problem with both and neither. The Christian needs neither type of thinking in order to know God, but if a Christian decides to study either then he need study both.

Personalism is a loosely defined category of philosophical thought. Personalistic thinking has been present in the writings of many philosophical thinkers since the dawn of Christianity, but a strictly defined Personalistic school of thought has ever existed. Personalism is the ontological view that the basic category of reality is the person. The idea that the person has ontological primacy can be seen to flow easily from Christian doctrine, and historically this is its source. Jesus claimed to be the truth Himself. Official Christian teaching states that God is a person, indeed he is three persons, and he is the foundation of reality. I believe that some form of Personalism must be held by any serious Christian thinker.

If one is a Personalist in their thinking, which again, I believe any serious Christian thinker must hold to some form of Personalism, then both Modernism and Postmodernism are problematic. A person is necessarily both familiar and unfamiliar, knowable and mysterious. A person is not a person at all if they are knowable with 100% certainty. The only things knowable with 100% certainty are those things which man himself manufactures, robots are not persons. A person is also not a person if there is nothing true to be said about them or nothing stable in them. Our sense is that in order for a person to be a person to us a person must possess some knowable features and these features must have some kind of persistence through time.

I believe that in order for the Christian to rightly understand God and his world she must either embrace both Modernism and Postmodernism or reject them both. To embrace one and not the other is to be unable to place the person at the heart of one's ontology, and this is necessary as a Christian.

Rain

2011-12-04T18:10:00.001-08:00

How do you experience rain? I experience rain in different ways, but there does seem to be one way of experiencing rain which gives a truer sense of what rain is. There are many useful ways to experience rain, but there is one which is true.

Rain nourishes. Rain is the drink which quenches the thirst of the land. Rain feeds the earth itself and is the lifeblood of all plant life. Rain waters the trees which give us shade and air to breathe, it waters the crops that fill our bellies. Rain washes. Rain cleanses all that it runs over, it renews the streets of cities and wipes away the grime of war. Rain travels and cycles. Rain makes its rounds across the world century after century filling every sea and stream and lake. Today's rain is yesterday's Atlantic. Rain transforms. Mountains are worn down to knobs and crevices are turned to canyons by rain.

Rain is vitalizing. A cold spring rain brings with it the sense of newness and life. Rain brings green and fertility. Rain brings hope. A farmer's crop withers in the pounding summer sun until rain brings its mercy. Rain is ruinous. A planned day at the beach or in the forest is foiled by a summer rain. A woman's day is brought low as she is soaked by a sudden downpour. Rain is depressing. When rain comes it's as if heaven itself is in tears. Heaven sheds raindrops and sadness grips a man as he stares out his window.

Rain is a metaphor. The love of God is showered on us as a soaking rain. Calamity strikes with beating heavy water drops that soak to the bone and weigh us down.

What is rain? Is it all of these things? None of them? Does it have existence in itself or is it a mere metaphor? It destroys and creates, it evokes contradictory emotions, it illustrates.

Whatever rain is it certainly cannot be spoken of. We can say rain unifies. Standing in the middle of a downpour with no shelter one can feel the continuity between themselves and the heavens and the earth, all is linked by the rain. A storm is a standing ocean, a medium where all things flow together. Still, this understanding of rain is certainly linked to a particular mood or disposition.

Standing in rain, experiencing its sheer existence, appreciating the awareness of it. This is rain. Feet on solid, soaked ground, raindrops taking turns touching all of the body. Drips and drops from finger tips and eyebrows. One billion tiny wet droplets. The understanding that none of this had to be. Nothing need exist. Existence is not necessary. Yet here I am. Here is the rain.

The Necessity of Existential Thinking in Christianty

2011-12-04T14:04:00.001-08:00

Existentialism is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with questions of human existence and personal identity. Existentialism asks, "What does it mean to be human?", "What does it mean to exist?", "What kind of being is a human?" I believe that the way one answers these questions plays a decisive role in one's faith. I also believe that the failure to ask these questions can hinder one's faith.

We cannot understand who we are in Christ without asking existential questions. We cannot live a life pleasing to God unless we understand who we are in Christ. Existential questions then, are essential.

We can act in a way that is either in line with our character or against our character. The majority of our decisions are in line with our character, the person we are or see ourselves as. If to obey Christ is acting against who we are, we will obey him and love him in an entirely inadequate and insufficient way. On the other hand, if to obey Christ is in line with who we are, we will obey and love him in the way we have been commanded.

For example, if I have $15,000 to spend the way I spend it will most likely be determined by existential factors. If I see myself as a person who must measure up to the standard of success presented by American culture then I will use the money to buy a motorcycle, upgrade my bathroom, etc. If I understand myself as one who only desires to know and follow Jesus more, if I measure myself by the standard of the Kingdom of God, I will give my money to someone in need. I will look like Jesus and know Jesus more.

No matter how extensive our knowledge of Jesus is, if he does not change our identity he will always be nothing more than an external presence, an idea at best. Existential questions ask, at the deepest level, "Who am I?", "What constitutes my being?" When we understand and feel in ourselves that our very being, the organic composition of our souls, is love and desire for God, it is then that we can live for him.

Meaningless Prosperity

2011-12-04T11:16:00.001-08:00

"...the most basic human need...is for meaning. Humans can bear an incredible degree of meaningful deprivation but only very little meaningless affluence." -Erazim Kohák

Middle and upper class America lives with an unprecedented wealth of material possessions and an equally unprecedented poverty of meaning. The American mindset that health and wealth will yield happiness in life has led the culture to a downward spiral of meaninglessness. Middle and upper class America have reached highest level of material prosperity thus far achieved in human history through a hard work ethic and a belief that happiness is truly found in material success. After achieving this success Americans are finding themselves still dissatisfied. Consequently, most people continue to accumulate more and more possessions. I believe this continued accrual of possessions testifies to an implicit belief that material things do truly bring happiness, but only in a quantity greater than one possesses at the current moment.

The actual reason that Americans are not finding happiness in their possession is because having things cannot bring happiness. The pursuit having for the sake of having is meaningless. Americans have and they feel the meaninglessness of it, but their attempt to remedy this feeling of meaninglessness is to have more. As a result, life becomes more meaningless. The adding of more possessions to one's current holdings is the adding of more meaninglessness to a life characterized by meaninglessness.

Why is the pursuit of having meaningless? One could simply answer that having is meaningless because it is a wholly selfish pursuit. A life ruled by a selfish pursuit is entirely directed inward forcing the individual to find everything they need in this inward pursuit. Due to the finitude of the human being one cannot find meaning in themselves, a selfish life is therefore meaningless. Yet, I think there is another reason why the pursuit of having for the sake of having leaves a person feeling so empty and dissatisfied.

In The Embers and The Stars Erazim Kohák cites the work of a little known German philosopher who was killed at an early age by the Nazis. This German Philosopher held that the Western world is moving into a new period of prehistory. A people group is considered historic when it has writing, art, etc. When a culture leaves behind some form of written expression of itself it is considered historic. In other words, a people group must do more than produce and consume in order to be historic. Once a people group achieves a certain level of material success they have excess resources which enable the development of art and culture, all human energies then are not solely dedicated to the task of production and consumption. The Western world, middle and upper class America more than nearly anywhere else, is moving into an orientation which is solely focused on production and consumption. We are dedicating all of our energies to production and consumption, the only things which matter are efficiency and capital.

There is an important difference between the emerging prehistoric culture and the former prehistoric peoples. The activities of the former prehistoric peoples was inherently meaningful because the production and consumption served to allow a people to survive. Production and consumption had a reference point outside of themselves, they served the purpose of allowing the people to continue living. Such is not the case in middle and upper class America. We do not produce and consume in order to survive anymore. We now produce in order to consume and consume in order to produce. We are engaged in a meaningless circle.

"Woe to the rich," Jesus said. Woe to those who have and desire to have more only for the sake of having. I have heard many say in response to Jesus' preference for the poor, "There is nothing wrong with having things." They are correct, of course. But this is not the end of the discussion. One's eternal destiny may not be jeopardized (directly) by having things, but the meaningfulness of one's life will be.

You're gonna want it all back...

2011-12-04T11:11:00.001-08:00

Every time I listen to the song "Murderer" by Wintersleep I am struck by the repeated line, "You're gonna want it all back." The line evokes for me a sense that connects with the existential dimensions of Christianity.

The song speaks of violence and hatred toward others, especially others different from oneself. The words paint a reversal of the intuitive perspective on violence. Violence is typically understood as an offender robbing an offended of something, whether that be their life, health, pleasure, etc. "You're gonna want it all back" speaks of what the violent one loses in his violence.

The violent person loses something more valuable than what they could ever take from the one on which they perpetrate violence. The violent person loses a part of themself. They're going to want that part of themself back. They're always going to want it back. They will always want it back because they will never have it back.

I believe this is true of all sin. All sin not only has eternal consequences and future consequences, but has immediate existential consequences. Our sin robs us of who we are. You're gonna want it all back. You're gonna want it all back.

Identity: Being-toward-death and Judgement

2011-12-04T09:19:00.001-08:00

"My listeners, do you at the present live in such a way that you are yourself clearly and eternally conscious of being an individual?" -Kierkegaard

In their existentialist philosophy, Kierkegaard and Heidegger both address the question of what it means to truly be. Kierkegaard writes of what it means to be an "individual" while Heidegger concerns himself with "authenticity." According to both of these thinkers it is necessary to have an awareness of one's distinctness from the masses in order to be an individual or have authentic being. Kierkegaard writes in hopes of separating his readers from the "crowd" while Heidegger looks to pull his readers away from "Das Mon" or "The They."

It is impossible to have true being when one is part of the crowd or part of The They. One's identity is dispersed into a buzz of nothingness, one never actually truly exists at any particular point. In the crowd or The They one's very thoughts are not original or derived from within the person but are thoughts of the collectivity. The one in the mass is not one at all, but rather, is many. Because the one is not one it is impossible to have authentic relationships with other people, have a sense of personal responsibility, and, for Kierkegaard, impossible to have faith. For, authentic relationship can only occur between one and another, so if there is no one there can be no relationship. Similarly, without a sense of one's individuality a person is never responsible for their actions and they cannot maintain a disposition of faith.

Kierkegaard and Heidegger both maintain that there is one essential individuating phenomenon, but they disagree on what it is. For Heidegger, "Being-toward-death" creates authentic being. Heidegger calls death a person's "ownmost potentiality for being," in other words, death is the one experience in a person's life which cannot be shared, it belongs only to the one who experiences it, it is "ownmost." Being-toward-death is not a morbid attitude where a person must constantly think about their demise, rather it is a kind of implicit acknowledgement of one's finitude which brings along with it the awareness that because death is ownmost and totally individual a person is distinct from the masses. Death individuates from The They.

For Kierkegaard, the reality of God's judgement forces a person to see themselves as an individual. According to Kierkegaard, eternity disperses crowds. Eternity is too big for crowds, each person can be placed infinitely far from the next and this reality prevents the crowd from assembling. God judges individually, he asks of each person, "Why did you act so?" There will be no appeal to the crowd, the crowd is gone. A person cannot answer, "Because they..." God does not ask about them, he asks about the one who stands before him. When God judges a person they will turn to their right, then to their left and find no one, the crowd is gone, the judgment falls on the individual. In realizing that one will be judged as an individual a person is forced out of the crowd, they become aware of their individuality. The opinion of the crowd no longer satisfies them for they know that in eternity the crowd and its opinion disappear. The one who is an individual must seek to know God for themselves.

As Christianity declines in the West God's judgement is lost as an individuating phenomenon. People either no longer believe in God or they do not take him seriously. Consequently, according to Kierkegaard, more and more people are losing their being. Without an awareness of God's judgement the individual is disappearing and the result is a faceless crowd, a mass of nothingness. There is no longer any individual identity.

Yet, if we look to Heidegger there still may be hope for the Western person existing as an authentic person or having an individual identity. If people in the West acknowledge their finitude, their death, their ownmost potentiality for being, the individual can still exist. Unfortunately, no one believes in death. In the modern West death is less present than in any other culture in history. Life expectancy is at historical highs, child mortality rates are at historic lows, death is hardly a present reality in the life of a person in the West. Meanwhile, science and technology forge ahead with hopes of further increasing life expectancy and general comfort. As science and technology move forward, death is constantly pushed back. There are many scientists and innovators now who see no reason why technology could not, in surprisingly short order, make death a part of humanity's past.

According to the great existentialist philosophers, there is nothing left to serve as an individuating phenomenon for most of the Western world. The trajectory of Western culture is away from God and away from death. Consequently, we are moving away from being.

Identity: Technology and Being

2011-11-24T08:01:00.001-08:00

"The only thing completely explainable is what man himself manufactures." -Jacques Ellul

One of my greatest interests, both academically and personally, is the meaning of technology. Specifically, I am interested in the existential implications of technology. One might pose the question: "How does technology affect personal identity?" or "How does technology affect what it means to be human?"

In the quote above Jacques Ellul pinpoints one of the very unique characteristics of technology. Only technology is completely explainable. Technology is fully explainable because it just is what we made it to do or be. Our designs and blueprints offer a full explanation of the workings of any piece of technology.

Nature, on the other hand, is not fully explainable. Very powerful arguments can be made in favor of the position that all of our scientific knowledge about the world amounts to nothing, but I will not go into that here. The fact that nature is not fully explainable is easily demonstrated. Ludwig Wittgenstein said that explanation must stop somewhere and this is quite obvious when we look at science. We are told by physicists that objects in motion stay in motion but no one dare ask why objects in motion stay in motion. That objects in motion stay in motion is a brute fact about the way the universe is and the question about why that is is not able to be asked in current science. If someone someday were able to explain why objects in motion stay in motion they could do so only by citing a supposedly deeper fact about the way the universe is and, once again, explanation would stop short.

Human consciousness and the human being as a whole is a far more enigmatic area of study than nature. While scientists like to believe they have a good grasp on the inner workings of the universe, no one dare make such a claim about human consciousness, the human mind, or the human being. In an recent interview from bigthink.com a theoretical physicist from New York University stated, "We still have no idea what consciousness is." Consciousness, rather than merely failing to be fully explainable, has proven to be completely inexplicable. Whatever it is that makes a human a human totally eludes classification and understanding.

Now, whether our failure to understand what it is to be human stems from a lack of adequately sophisticated science or from some fact about the way consciousness is which requires it to be, at bottom, mysterious there are important considerations which must be made concerning technology. If it turns out that human consciousness is merely too complex to be understood by current science but may be understood somewhere in the next few hundred years, then it is problematic to be continually joining ourselves more and more to our technology. Technology is simple and completely explicable and the more technology envelopes our daily lives the more we will be infected with its simplicity. The more we are influenced by technology the more technological we will undoubtedly become in our everyday activities and consequently we will become less and less human.

Indeed, it may even be that the possible understanding of consciousness that is achieved by science in the next few hundred year will not be the simple result of advancing science but the convergence of two realities. Our understanding of consciousness may end up being the result of the the increasing capacities of science coupled with the decreasing complexities of consciousness due to ever-increasing technological saturation in our lives. It will be as two lines converging, the line of scientific complexity headed upward and the line of the complexity of human consciousness with a downward trajectory.

Alternatively and drastically more problematic, it may be that human consciousness is necessarily mysterious. I personally hold that there is something essentially mysterious about what it means to be conscious and what it means to be human. I have many reasons for why I hold this position, but that is irrelevant for this discussion. If what it means to be conscious or human is essentially mysterious then the joining of ourselves with technology is sure to destroy our humanity. The joining of ourselves with technology is the joining of the most simple thing in the universe with the most complex. It is the joining of the most explicable with the most inexplicable. It is the fusion of the mysterious and the obvious.

It is often taken for granted that technology is a force for good. Technology decreases suffering, increases productivity, and increases leisure time. But what does it mean to have a fulfilling life? Is life only about material prosperity? John Stewart Mill said that it is better to be a dissatisfied human than a satisfied pig, his insight seems highly applicable to the question of technology. If technology will eventually destroy what it means to be human then are we prepared to live as highly productive, happy, leisurely pigs? I choose to be human and all suffering that entails.

Being and Having

2011-11-16T12:38:00.001-08:00

"The more you add to what you have, the less you are. Accumulating more, concentrating all your effort in the quest for things you can have, means losing your being in the process. You cannot escape from it, not even using all the efforts of modern thought and science. Being involves something different than the quest for having. Adding to what you have means losing your being. Jesus said it this way, "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" (Matthew 16:26)

-Jacques Ellul

I came across this quote in the book Reason for Being by Jacques Ellul. It expresses an understanding I have had for quite some time but, up to this point, have been unable to express. Not only that, but Ellul has also illuminated the meaning of this saying from Jesus from Matthew 16 in a way I have not previously encountered.

Previously, I have expressed my existential discomfort with the pursuit of material possessions in terms of "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." I have asserted that the accumulation of excess material possessions causes one's heart to be in material objects. Material objects are perishable, so to invest one's heart in material things is to destroy one's heart. To have treasures which are material is to destroy part of your being, indeed the core of your being.

I like Ellul's take on this tension between having and being better than mine because it is more of an instantaneous account of what happens when we accumulate treasures. Ellul's account seems to match my intuition much more closely than my own account does. The idea of accumulating material treasures and investing your heart in them has in it the idea that your heart will eventually be destroyed. Your heart will be destroyed eventually as those material objects will be destroyed eventually (even though everything is in a constant state of deterioration, so to place one's heart in material treasures is to begin the deterioration of one's heart immediately.) But, my intuition is that I am immediately robbed of something immensely valuable when I consider laying up material treasures for myself. The feeling of immediacy is what makes Ellul's quote appeal more to my intuition.

"The more you add to what you have, the less you are." Ellul says. I believe Ellul is right. To exert great effort in the pursuit of material possessions is to "forfeit" one's soul. Having is a pursuit wholly opposed to being. What does life consist of, what constitutes being? A difficult question no doubt. An exhaustive account of being or the quest for being is surely left for another discussion, but we can know what being and life do not consist in. Jesus said, "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." Our life, our very existence is not derived from what we possess. To spend one's time accumulating an abundance of possessions is counter to being simply because our energies are spent toward that which our life does not consist in.

What is the best way to be alive? To have being? It is to avoid the accumulation of an abundance of material possessions. When we save up material things, we save up for ourselves death and non-being by neglecting to do those things which will contribute to our being.

God is being. He says, "I am." His nature is existence. To be united to Him, to love Him is to truly be. If we are focused on adding more to our possessions we are not focused on loving Him, we are focused on something else. Christ is being, He said, "Before Abraham was, I am." To be near Christ, to love Christ, to be like Christ is to have being. Jesus did not have an abundance of material things. He had food and drink and with that he was content.

Seven Stars

2011-11-02T07:39:00.000-07:00

"In his right hand he held seven stars..." -Revelation 1:16

One of my favorite images from Revelation is the depiction of Jesus holding seven stars in his right hand. Several verses after the mention of the seven stars John the Revelator writes that the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. Despite this self-interpretation of the meaning of the seven stars I believe the highly mysterious and enigmatic nature of the book of Revelation allows for a further interpretation.

The sense that is evoked in me by my reading of verse 16 is a sense of unknowable power or mystery and power inextricably and imperceptibly intertwined. I believe that this is the sense which John intended to evoke with this description. It is the sense which Jesus intended to evoke when he appeared holding seven stars. In antiquity stars were representative of both mystery and power. Additionally, the number seven is symbolic of perfection or completeness in the Bible. The seven stars in Jesus' right hand represent that he holds all power and all mystery. His power is perfect and he is the possessor of all mysteries.

Jesus holding seven stars is what it looks like for all authority on heaven and on earth to be given to him. The seven stars are what it looks like for all knowledge and wisdom to be in his possession. And yet, the seven stars say so much more completely what it is that Jesus holds. Do not let my words limit what the seven stars mean.

The above picture is some album art from Josh Garrels' earliest album called "Seven Stars." It's my favorite rendering of seven stars.

The Last Masquerade

2011-09-28T09:19:00.002-07:00

A wan new garment of young green touched,
as you turned your soft brown hair.
And in me surged the strangest prayer
Ever in a lover's heart hath been.

That I who saw your youth's bright page,
a rainbow change from robe to robe,
Might see you on this earthly globe,
Crowned with the silver crown of age.

Your dear hair powdered in strange guise,
Your dear face touched with colours pale:
And gazing through the mask and veil
The mirth of your immortal eyes.

-G.K. Chesterton

Own your Beliefs

2011-09-28T07:52:00.001-07:00

"If you meet someone who suffers from such a derangement of feeling, the derangement consisting in his not having any, you listen to what he says in a cold and awful dread, scarcely knowing whether it is a human being who speaks, or a cunningly contrived walking stick in which a talking machine has been concealed."
-Kiekegaard

There is a point in the process of learning where one must absorb a great deal. Until a person has absorbed or memorized a fairly large quantity of information they are unable to genuinely relate to any ideas because they have no point of reference or point of contact whereby they can examine the ideas. However, the time period in which one is merely absorbing must not last forever, indeed it must not last too long at all. One must begin, as quickly as possible, to begin genuinely grappling with ideas. Grappling can result in the rejection of some ideas, the acceptance of others, and the deferring of judgement on still others. Types of partial acceptance and rejection are also possible. The most important outcome of this grappling is that the process makes ideas your own.

Few things are less moving and less pleasurable than a conversation with a person who does not own any of their ideas or beliefs. They have not made them their own so they have no emotional attachment to them, there is no enthusiasm behind them, and they seem to have no real significance at all.

It is particularly important to own one's beliefs in Christianity because the primary principle of Christianity is love. If all beliefs are not joined to love then they are not beliefs at all. If one does not own their beliefs then there is no way any kind of love will come along with them.

What are the signs that a person has owned what they believe? I think one of the main signs (already mentioned) is any kind of enthusiasm or emotion which accompanies the beliefs. Of equal importance, I think, is the ability to express one's beliefs in one's own words. Expressing one's beliefs in one's own words or on one's own terms does not entail rewriting doctrine, but it does require some degree of creativity. It is possible to talk about one and the same thing in many different ways, and this is the nature of owning one's beliefs.

The person who does not own their beliefs and, as a consequence, does not put their beliefs into their own words or form of expression appears to others as a "cunningly contrived walking stick in which a talking machine has been concealed." Genuine belief and genuine expression of belief requires individuality, creativity, and ownership.

A Woman's Intuition

2011-09-28T07:15:00.001-07:00

It is an obvious fact to state that men and woman can come to know the exact same truths about the world. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent to me that there is a stark difference in the way by which men and women arrive at the same point. At times I want to say that men arrive at truth by a much more wandering path, and yet in another sense it seems that it is women who follow the more wandering path. There are also times when it seems that women arrive at truth much more quickly than men, and the opposite is also true.

Maybe the only substantive distinction I can draw (and someone may have an example to prove that I'm looking at this wrong) is that men seem to arrive at truth more incrementally whereas women seem to encounter it wholly and immediately. Both approaches have their upsides and their downsides. However, I believe that men's approach is becoming increasingly thwarted by our highly rational and reductivist world. Everything is reduced to reason and broken down to the simplest parts, so anyone advancing along a rational and incremental road will quickly find themselves lost among a plethora of different possibilities. On the other hand, a women's approach to truth is left unaffected by the current intellectual landscape. There is a sense in which women have an advantage now for encountering the truth. Whether my distinctions are helpful or accurate, all of this is simply to say that I see a clear difference in men's and women's approaches to truth.

And yet, my evaluation of contemporary culture and its affects on men's and women's approach to truth is in no way exhaustive. While I claimed above that women currently have a kind of advantage when it comes to encountering truth it seems that the advantage may have always existed in some form. Take the following story as an example:

Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at the table. And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, "Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor." But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, "Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. In pouring this ointment on my body, she had done it to prepare me for burial. Truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.

I believe that this story reveals something of the nature of the way in which men and women arrive at the knowledge of the truth. The disciples have followed Jesus around for three years and still every time Jesus mentions his death to them they don't get it. They, more than anyone, should understand Jesus' mission but they don't. The woman in the story, on the other hand, who we know nothing about, who may have known extremely little about Jesus immediately understood Jesus' destiny. She anointed him with perfume for his burial. She just got it. She just knew. By way of some kind of intuition she perceived who Jesus was and what he was about and she found him irresistible.

There is something genuinely valuable in the way women approach truth. One might say as a whole that men are more careful in their pursuit while women are more haphazard. One might also say that women just get it and men don't. The point is that the approach of both men and women are essential, highly valuable, and complementary. I love hearing the perspective of a woman because they intuit things or just plain get things that I don't. Also, because they arrive at truth by a different way than I do they always pick up insights along their path that can't be found on the path that I have taken.

Jesus Willed Only One Thing

2011-09-28T06:39:00.001-07:00

Purity of heart is to will one thing and our model for willing one thing is Jesus. Jesus willed only one thing, he demonstrated what it looks like to will one thing. Jesus said, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." Jesus resigned himself over to the will of God. Jesus had a desire to not endure the pains of the cross, he willed that he would not be crucified and yet he negated his will by always willing that God's will be done.

It can be seen throughout the Gospels that Jesus willed many things in many different situations and toward many different people, but here in the Garden of Gethsemane it is revealed that he always only willed one thing. His willing of one thing for the course of his entire life prepared him for this crucial moment, the moment of life or death. He was willing and able to accept death because for the course of his entire life he had always only willed one thing. He had never willed to keep his life and so now, when it was demanded of him, he was able to freely give it. He had never willed to keep his life because he had only ever willed one thing and that one thing was not to keep his life. Jesus had always and everywhere willed only one thing and that thing was his Father's will.

Why is it that I find Jesus so compelling? I believe that a pure heart is the most beautiful of things and beauty is irresistible. Jesus had the purest of hearts from the greatest oneness of will. The Gospels are a painting of a life, a varied and at at times seemingly random life that is knit together by always expressing the purity of the heart of its main character. The stories of Jesus in the Bible are snippets of his life and every depiction of his life that has been passed down to us is a snippet of his heart willing only one thing.

Important to remember is that Jesus did not act as he did in order to teach. He did not will one thing to show us what it looks like to will one thing. Indeed, if he willed one thing in order to teach then he did not will one thing at all. Willing one thing is the end and means and purpose of a life. Willing one thing is final and it is only. Rather, Jesus did everything out of his will of that one thing. He was totally oriented toward that one thing and he desired to will only that one thing. Christianity is just what happened when one man truly and only willed one thing.

Establish your Heart

2011-09-23T08:47:00.001-07:00

"Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand."

James directs his readers, "Establish your hearts." What is an established heart? What does it mean to have an established heart? How does one go about establishing their heart? When other things in life are established, such as laws, organizations, or states, their establishment is their solidification. To establish a law is to essentially bring the law into being; the same is true of the other cited examples. The act of establishing gives firmness and reality to that which previously had none. Establishment is the taking of something from the status of a mere idea to the state of existing in reality.

If to establish is to give a firmness, reality, or a foundation to then it seems that James believes it is possible to essentially not have a heart. If a heart is not established then it is, in a sense, not a heart at all. It is nothing at all, it has not been established.

Now, it is not possible to establish something on nothing or for nothing. All things which are established are done so on the basis of something or for something. A law is established on the basis of a sense of justice. An organization is established on the basis of a need for unity among adherents to a particular cause. A state is established on the basis of pursuing the mutual prosperity and safety of all those involved. It is impossible for us to conceive of any kind of entity being established for or on nothing because no such thing can exist or has ever existed.

Another key to the establishment of an entity is that the thing for or on which it is established be a stable or worthy thing. Indeed, to establish an organization, law, etc. on that which is not stable is not to establish it at all. If I establish an organization based on staring at a particular egg, as soon as that egg goes bad and rots there is no longer any organization and it is seen that the organization was never truly established in any real sense. The requirement of a stable or unchanging basis for establishing things can be observed by examining the many personality cults which have arisen and fallen apart. They were never established at all because they were based around something which was not stable and could not last.

Given what we have examined about the nature of the act of establishing we can return to our original questions. What is an established heart? An established heart is a heart which has existence, it is a heart which is founded on something, and it is founded on something that is stable and of enduring substance. What does it mean to have an established heart? To have an established heart means to actually have a heart (as opposed to not having one) and for that heart to be founded and built on a thing which is stable and solid.

How does one go about establishing their heart? The way in which we establish our hearts is clearly not the same way in which a person establishes a law, organization, or state. Hearts are different from these other things. A law is established either by royal decree or by the vote of many or a few. An organization is established by the efforts of a few and usually by the support of many others. Yet, a heart is different. A heart is not involved with large groups of people and it has more to do with the identity of an individual then it does with cooperation between individuals (and yet it is intimately and necessarily involved with an individual's relation to other individuals).

James seems to be telling us that a heart is established by patience. Specifically, a heart is established by patience toward one thing. A heart established on more than one thing will be uneven, unstable. It will not be established. A heart is established by patiently waiting to be united with God, to be with Christ, for Christ to return. There is no other way for a heart to be. There is no other way for a heart to be established. A heart cannot be established without patience and without a worthy, solid, and unchanging object of its affection. There is nothing else but God for a heart to be established on. A heart which is "established" on anything else will be seen, as time passes, that it was not established at all. A heart that is established on that which is not God will eventually crumble. It will cease to be a heart, it was not established. A heart that is established on God and something else that is not God will also crumble, its foundation is uneven and not fully founded on that which is solid.

But how does patience relate to the establishment of the heart? Is the heart not for loving, for knowing, for feeling? Can the heart not be established by merely loving God? Well, what does it mean to love? Paul lists patience first among the things that love is. Love is patient. In waiting patiently love is proven. In waiting patiently love is refined. That which is worth loving with all of one's heart is certainly worth waiting for. There is no love at all without patience. It is through patience that the heart is truly established because it is through patience that love is truly established and demonstrated.

So God waits. The coming of the Lord is at hand, but He will not come until all of the hearts of his sons and daughters have been established. He waits in active hope that still more hearts will blossom into existence by beginning to patiently wait on Him.

Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing

2011-09-19T08:37:00.001-07:00

Kierkegaard has a beautiful devotional titled "Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing." The basis for the book is James 1:8 and he spends the majority of the space in the book psychologically evaluating what it means to will one thing and what many of the barriers are to willing one thing. The title of the work alone speaks beauty and simplicity to me. I believe Kierkegaard is getting at the heart of Jesus with the idea behind this book. Jesus said that only one thing is necessary and he said that the law is fulfilled in one commandment: Love God and love neighbor.

One of my favorite illustrations in the book is when Kierkegaard writes of a man who is courting a wealthy woman. The double-minded man, the man who does not will only one thing, is pleased by the fact that his marriage to the woman will result in financial gain. The man without a pure heart allows his love for the woman to be tainted by her situation and the gain which will come to him as a result. The man who courts the wealthy woman and wills only one thing, the man with a pure heart, hates any financial gain he may come to acquire by his marriage to the woman. The man has a disdain for the woman's wealth, not out of jealousy or in any way which causes feelings of contempt for the woman, but for quite the opposite reason. The man has contempt for the woman's wealth because it presents the possibility of his love for her losing its purity. The man who wills only one thing wants to do nothing but love the woman with his whole heart and with a pure heart. Any other thing which may cause him to love the woman with any less than a whole and pure heart is an enemy. He wants only to love the woman and he wants nothing to get in the way. The man with the pure hearts acts in a way which eliminates other possible competitors for his love.

God desires love from a pure heart. We can only love God with a pure heart if we will one thing. We can only will one thing if we love God with all of our heart because no other thing can be willed in such a complete and exhaustive way. If our heart is not willing to love God above all things then it cannot will one thing at all. Our hearts, if not willing to love God over all things, will to love many things as a substitute. The many things we will as a substitute for God are not eternal or infinite, they are temporal and they are failing. To will only one thing which is a finite thing is impossible because that finite thing will fail us, it does not possess the quality of being capable of being the object of a heart's willing one thing.

Our prayer then, in all of life, should be this: "One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple." No matter what we pray for, no matter what we ask for, our hearts must in truth be still only willing one thing. In truth we must not will to have anything other than one thing. Though we utter prayers for material provision, for the love of a spouse, for security, we must still, in truth, will only one thing.

The pure in heart will have their reward. The reward for the pure in heart will not be any kind of gain other than the gain of that one thing which was willed. Like the man with the pure heart who marries the wealthy woman for whom there is no reward at all other than the love of the woman so there is no reward for she who wills only one thing besides the receipt of that one thing.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. -Jesus

Anti-systematic Theology

2011-09-18T13:41:00.001-07:00

‎"The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges." - W.V.O. Quine

I believe strongly that endeavors which seek to discover rules about the way the world works always result in the most superficial interpretation of the world possible. I believe the same thing with regard to discovering rules about the way the Bible works. The world is not governed by any sort of rules or eternal laws. Humanity creates rules and laws for the world because they are useful and because it provides a sense of control. The goal of science is to discover laws which can be applied universally to situations of the same type in order to predict and thereby manipulate those situations to our advantage. Much of theology and specifically Systematic Theology runs parallel in methodology to the Natural Sciences.

Systematic theology seeks to examine all passages in the Bible which make reference to a given topic and use this exhaustive picture of a given subject to discover a particular consensus or rule that captures the Bible's overall perspective on that subject. While I do find it enlightening to examine a great number of passages from Scripture which address a certain topic I do not think that rules of interpretation are supposed to be discerned from these groupings of scripture. While the Bible does exist as a whole, the fact is that it was written across a vast quantity of time by a large number of different people. What Paul said should not be logically reconciled with what James said. If Paul and James contradict one another then our job is not to logically reconcile their views (thereby destroying one or both views) but rather, we are to hold the two seemingly contradictory views in tension or as paradox. The unity of the Bible does not require us to weave an alien logical framework through it in order for it to make sense. Indeed, the sense that it has is lost by our attempts at logical reconciliation of seeming contradictions.

If we believe the breadth of scripture needs to be woven together by logic to prevent it from falling apart then we must not believe that God knew what He was doing when the canon was formed. Take for example the following two passages:

You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. -James 2:24

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works... -Ephesians 2:8-9

We have a few choices for what we can do with these two passages. We could believe that either Paul or James is wrong and simply throw one of the passages out. We could employ some fancy theological moves to effectively argue that either James or Paul didn't mean what they said. Or we could accept that both are true and we could seek God in prayer and in our lives to understand how the tension of the Bible's paradoxes resolve themselves as we live out our faith.

Right theology must be anti-systematic in that it must not attempt to logically reconcile the Bible's seemingly contradictory stances on things just for the sake of having a settled opinion about something. The desire to have a settled opinion results in the generation of lies about God. The idea of having a settled or concrete understanding of God is itself a wrong desire. God is not concrete, settled, or dead. God is living, dynamic, and moving.

Even as I argue that Systematic Theology (or at least logically-reconciling Systematic Theology) is wrong theology, I will admit that, like the Natural Sciences, it does have a degree of usefulness or pragmatic value. Still, I believe that if Systematic Theology as here construed is not handled appropriately it will be more detrimental than useful.

How then do I suggest Systematic Theology should be handled? There are two concepts I have encountered in Philosophy which I believe may be useful for understanding how Systematic Theology should be handled. First, Kierkegaard believed that faith and the life of faith is lived out in a continual double movement. He painted faith as a paradoxical double movement of infinite resignation coupled with infinite belief. In order to properly (or faith-fully) engage in life we must renounce or resign everything over to God, we must depart into the infinite and then return again to the finite living and acting fully in this world. I believe Kierkegaard's double movement should be applied to all of life (as he asserts) which includes Systematic Theology. If we are going to employ the methodologies of Systematic Theology we must first infinitely resign them over, paradoxically we must give them up before we use them.

The second helpful Philosophical concept is a ladder metaphor used in Wittgenstein's first major work 'Tractatus Logico Philosophicus.' Wittgenstein says, "My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through, them on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly." The right way to treat Systematic Theology may be as a ladder which can be climbed up and then thrown away. Systematic Theology may be useful at some stage of a Christian's relationship with God, but it must eventually be tossed away. We must eventually become comfortable with the paradox present in the Bible. Indeed, I think the climbing of the ladder of Systematic Theology can have an effect which enriches our understanding and appreciation of Biblical paradox. So study Systematic Theology if you wish just make sure to throw it away someday.

My thoughts here are a work in progress. Some thoughts that have been stated need revision. Some thoughts I have I am unsure of how to express at this point. Other thoughts have not yet been thought of.

Body and Earth: Thoughts on Environmentalism

2011-09-18T12:16:00.001-07:00

I had a lot of time to think this summer while working on various landscaping jobs. During my last job in Center, Washington the incessantly running nose that I was dealing with made me realize how much of a continuum our bodies are with the world around us (sorry if that's gross). Our lives are primarily lived indoors and I think this makes us forget about how much of the earth is in constant flow through our bodies. Our food comes out of a bleach-white refrigerator and our waste goes down shining porcelain. Yet, this clean entry and clean exit of material from our bodies is illusory. Our food does not come from purest-white refrigerators and the destination of our waste is not made of glimmering porcelain. We are very much one with the earth, with the environment which God placed us in.

The food we eat grows up out of the dirt. The waste we leave goes back down into the dirt. God did not just create us from the dirt and forever separate us from the dirt. It is from the dirt that we came, it is to the dirt we will return, and it is in, through, and with dirt that we live. The living of our lives is of dirt, we are an extension of earth.

I feel like we often misunderstand the story of God's creating humanity. God formed humans from the dust of the ground but God did not transform the dust into non-dust, into something other than dust. God transfigured dust into flesh and bone but that particular collection of dust was only transfigured for a fleeting moment. The food we eat constantly replaces much of our body so that the dust that we are can return to its former dusty state. The vast majority of the body is entirely replaced many times during a human life. If I am still alive in 40 years most of who I am right now will be dirt and most of who I will be is dirt right now. More than fascinating, a right perspective on our connection with the earth is life altering.

If a person does not believe that the earth is inherently valuable and deserving of preservation surely they will believe that their own body is worth preserving. To destroy and pollute the earth is to destroy one's self. Destruction of the earth is a suicidal action. Who you are going to be the future is part of the earth right now, so to poison the earth is to poison one's self. Modern technology and the amenities of civilization make it easy to forget how dependent on and connected with the earth that we are, but for the sake of our own continued existence and for the sake of avoiding suicidal actions we must force ourselves to be aware of the dirt that is in us.

The Meaning of the World

2011-09-16T13:31:00.001-07:00

“I don’t discover the truth, I invent it” – Lacan

The following are some preliminary thoughts on free will, meaning, and creativity. It seems evident to me in the Bible and in all of life that there is an intricate interplay, a romance between the will of humanity and the will of God. No one can conceive of how it works and yet it's implications stretch into every crack and crevice of this existence. From my experience I have found that there are people (both Christian and non-Christian) who primarily focus on God's will or primarily focus on the will of humanity. Rarely do I find (even in my own self) a healthy understanding (or surrender to) the paradoxical interplay of these two realities.

Here I am concerned with the implications of this interplay of wills on our understanding of the meaning of the world. I have heard it said by one philosopher that we often look for the meaning in the events of our lives when often there is simply no meaning, only events. For example, if we see two birds flitting about in the air we may be tempted to look for the meaning in such an event when there may be none to be found. There are times when we attempt to discover meaning in an event when the right course of action may be to create meaning instead. I do believe that all events 'speak' something, but I want to distinguish what events speak from their meaning or content.

All events 'speak' the glory of God. God's glory, power, and divine nature are facts which are given in our experience of the world around us. These facts about God which are 'spoken' or 'declared' by the world have an immense depth of eternal meaning which requires our complete attention to appreciate and experience. The infinite and eternal knowledge that is given in the immediacy of our experience of the world is the metaphysical foundation for any other meaning we create in the world. The interplay between the temporal meaning created by humanity and the eternal meaning that is 'spoken' of God is yet another instance of the mysterious romance of wills that exists in this world. The temporal meaning provides some contrast or reference point for understanding what is 'spoken' of God and the eternal meaning prevents the temporal meaning from degenerating into nonsense and despair.

Humanity's role as creator of meaning goes back to Adam. In the Hebrew language and throughout the Bible names are invested with great meaning. Names are indications and makers of one's destiny. The importance of a name is attested to by the fact that God changes the names of Abraham, Israel, and Paul (from Abram, Jacob, and Saul). Names and meaning are inseparably connected, in fact it seems that in some cases the two words are synonymous.

In the Garden of Eden God brings all of the animals to Adam for him to name. God gives Adam the task of creating the meaning for all living things, for creating the meaning of the world. Part of Adam's role as keeper and authority over the Garden is his role as creator of meaning.

So then, the meaning of our world is largely dependent on us. Will the meaning of the world be destruction, pollution, war, genocide, and death? Or will the meaning of the world be creation, beauty, light, purity, and hope? With the Fall of the human race our task is not as easy as Adam's was. We now have to fight our sin nature as we create meaning. We must beware lest the sin in us create the meaning of our world rather than our inner self which delights in God.

Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. -Genesis 2:19-20

The Structure of Truth

2011-09-16T05:16:00.000-07:00

If we want our words to carry any sense when we speak they must be arranged in a logical manner. What then does it mean for our words to be arranged logically? Logic is derived from our experience of the world around us. A basic logical principle is the law of non-contradiction e.g. object X cannot be both A and not A or a mountain cannot be both snow-capped and not snow-capped. It is the degree to which a sentence conforms to the way the world is which determines the degree to which it can be regarded as true.

If the truth of our sentences is determined by their ability to conform to the way the world is then it is pertinent to ask how the world really is. We cannot decide on the logical laws and guidelines to govern our language until it has been decided how the world actually is. There are certainly some logical rules which can be derived from our experience of the world around us, but for Christians it is a basic fact that there are many aspects to the world and to God which are not plain in the world but have instead been revealed through Scripture. What then does the Bible tell us about the way the world actually is and how does this inform our logical structures?

I believe that the Bible reveals three fundamental facts about the way reality is which have pervasive implications on our logic. I believe the Bible reveals that reality is linear, circular, and dialectical/paradoxical. The linear aspect of reality can be traced through history and from Genesis 2:15 to Revelation 21:10. Humanity began in the Garden of Eden and it is moving toward the New Jerusalem. Many religions believe in an eventual return to a former and ideal state of human existence, but this is not the case in Christianity. The Bible reveals a story which does not turn back on itself but continues in unfolding newness for eternity. Human history is moving in a straight line. At the same time, the Bible also reveals how reality is a circle. In the beginning there was only God and in the end there will be, in a sense, only God. Reality's circular movement from God to God can be seen in Genesis 1:1, John 1:1, and 1 Corinthians 15:28 (among other places). Lastly, the Bible reveals that reality is dialectical/paradoxical. I've spent a lot of time writing about the dialectical/paradoxical nature of reality so I will simply cite Jesus' dual nature as the only needed example.

The implications of the nature of reality as revealed by the Bible is that the structure of Truth is linear, circular, and dialectical/paradoxical. If Truth is linear, circular, and dialectical/paradoxical then our language must also be. If our language does not reflect the structure of reality and of Truth we will speak lies (or at best partial truths which can be seen as lies). If our desire is for Truth, or even if our desire is for our language to carry any sense at all then we must consider the way the Bible paints the picture of reality.

Revelation and Dialectic

2011-09-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

The way we understand the world is ruled by opposites. Nearly everything we know is based on knowledge of the characteristic which opposes it. We know black because of white. We know hot because of cold. We know light because of dark, positive because of negative, etc. and all vice versa. Pairs of opposites provide distinction and definition to each other. If everything were understood in some relationships of three rather than two in direct opposition it seems that there would be far less definition in the world. It would be difficult, if not impossible to distinguish the true relationship between a relationship of three characteristics.

I have made speculations in the past about why our knowledge consists in opposites but I won't go into it here. Plus, I'm probably wrong. For now we must simply grant that opposites work in a dialectical way that gives meaning to one another.

I am here asserting that because our understanding consists in opposing pairs that revelation of God must also occur in opposing pairs or in a dialectical structure. Revelation must come to us in opposing pairs and only in opposing pairs. Without opposition, without a paradoxical or dialectical structure, revelation would be non-nonsensical. I believe this is why the Bible consists of an Old and New Testament. Essentially, the Old Testament is meaningless without the New Testament and the New is meaningless without the Old. Jesus did not come to abolish the law or the Old Testament, He came to fulfill it by completing the dialectic.

I believe that the Old and New Testament also operate in a dialectical tension within themselves in order to reveal God, but I believe there is also an overarching dialectic which relates the Old Testament as a whole to the New Testament. The overall impression of God in the Old Testament is a God who is distant, harsh, legalistic, wrathful, enormous, powerful, and unapproachably holy. The overall impression of Jesus in the New Testament is near, gentle, loving, graceful, merciful, vulnerable, and everything human. How are we to understand God's wrath if we don't know His mercy? We cannot understand either without understanding both. God's wrath and mercy give meaning to each other. His justice and love give meaning to each other. His law and grace give meaning to each other.

There must be two revelations of God and there can only be two revelations of God. If anyone tries to introduce a third revelation of God alongside the Old and New Testament God will lose His meaning. His nature is presented with lucidity by the tension between the Old and New Testaments and the introduction of any additional information will only dilute that lucidity. To add to the Bible is to cloud our vision of God.

Theology and Continental Philosophy

2011-09-06T08:32:00.001-07:00

"...Tolstoy found that truth could not be approached directly, that every attempt at direct expression became a simplification and therefore a lie, and that the "shortest way to sense" was rather long and indirect." -Richard Pevear

There is a divide in the western philosophical tradition. The divide is a methodological one and the two schools of thought are Analytic and Continental/Existential. Analytic philosophy holds that all truth is accessible and expressible by the laws of logic, all truth can be logically deduced. Continental/Existential philosophy believes otherwise. Tolstoy is within the Continental tradition and the above quote accurately captures how that tradition views the ways truth can be accessed and expressed.

For the Continental philosopher, truth is far too complex, far too subtle to be captured by language. To speak directly about something then is misleading because it implies that truth can be expressed in a simple linear fashion. Paradoxically, one speaks about truth in a far clearer manner by being less clear in their speech. The best description of truth is indirect and to give into the temptation to speak directly and plainly is to speak untruth.

When I read the Bible I see it fitting into the Continental/Existential tradition much more readily than it fits into the Analytic. I am not proposing that the Bible IS Continental philosophy or should fall into that tradition, but rather that the Bible seems to lend itself much more easily to a Continental-style interpretation than an Analytic one. The Bible seems to be a very "long and indirect" way of getting at truth. The fact that God has primarily revealed Himself in a long history easily lends support to my position.

Jesus was much closer to a Continental philosopher than an Analytic one. He never said what the Kingdom of God IS, He only said what it is like. Jesus took an indirect route, not a direct. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, a wedding banquet, a farmer, etc.

I believe the nature of truth as attested to by Jesus places it outside of the Analytic tradition and somewhere near the Continental/Existential. Jesus said "I am the truth." If truth is a person it cannot be accessed by logic. If truth is a person it cannot be talked about directly, especially if that person is infinite. I believe that to speak directly about even a finite person fails miserably at conveying any truth. For example, if I say, "John is an introvert." I have applied a label to him and actually forced him to conform to an outside standard. In truth, John is not an introvert, he is something inconceivably more complex and my labeling him only creates misunderstanding.

So then I believe theology should be indirect and not direct, it should suggest and not merely state, it should be Continental and Existential and not systematic and Analytic.

The Meaning of Life

2011-08-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of your life? You are creating the meaning of your life. The shape, character, and purpose of your life is being created moment by moment by you.

We look for the meaning in each tiny individual event when it is the event itself which is the meaning. It is the event which shapes our lives and determines the purpose of our lives. It is our reaction to the event itself which gives it meaning; the event in itself has meaning only as it relates to our own lives and existence. If we look for the purpose in the events we will miss it for truly the meaning is in ourselves.

We are created in the image of God and as created we ourselves are creators and givers of meaning. All in all is for the glory of God. The sum of our lives is made to be for the glory of God but how we do that is up to us. God created each of us to glorify Him uniquely. We must take up the responsibility of bringing Him unique glory.

Could the modern Christian's tendency to watch so much television and be so content with the material comforts of life be rooted in a misunderstanding of God? Has the doctrine of faith alone not only taught some that no change of life is required for the one who follows Christ but also that faith alone establishes the whole meaning and content of their lives? Faith does give meaning to your life but it is not the whole meaning of your life. Or rather, faith is the whole meaning of your life but there is still more meaning to be found, to be discovered, in faith. Faith is the form and ground of our meaning, but we must supply the content.

The meaning of life is left to the individual to decide. Will you stare at a television every day in search of meaning? Will you let the Prince of the Air supply the meaning for your life? Or will you go live life?! Will you live a life of faith?! The Meaning is found in the living!

Stare not at a screen, but into the eyes of your beloved. Look not on the things which the Prince of the Air desires and covets but look on your neighbor and love him. Do this or your life will be meaningless.

Approaching the Kingdom of God

2011-08-01T15:56:00.001-07:00

Here is a short poem by my brother Colten Kisner.

Like an illuminating city branching across mountain tops,
and as far as the expanse between the seas,
is the approaching kingdom of God in His children's eyes.
We watch, always awake, as the glow grows brighter and brighter, closer and closer,
like the stars in the night sky overtop, quiet, sleeping towns.

Kierkegaard's Journal

2011-07-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

The following is a short entry from Kierkegaard's journal. It is one of the earliest. The notion expressed in this entry is a critical theme seen throughout his religious philosophy. I love the way the idea is here expressed:

15 April 1834

"You always need one more light positively to identify another. Imagine it quite dark and then one point of light appears; you would be quite unable to place it, since no spatial relation can be made out in the dark. Only when one more light appears can you fix the place of the first, in relation to it."

Believe the Truth

2011-07-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

"But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth." -2 Thessalonians 2:13

In this verse Paul pinpoints two things as crucial for salvation. He says that God employed two means to bring the Thessalonians to salvation. It is the work of the Spirit in the individual along with belief in the truth that saves. Yet we also cannot really separate these two actions. Paul separates them, I believe, in order to be more explicit but truly they are two components of the same action. For we know from places like John 6 that no one can believe in the truth without the work of God. So sanctification of the Spirit and belief in the truth are both two acts and one.

Paul separates the two actions to make clear our responsibility in the mystery of God's gospel. We are responsible for believing the truth. Our salvation is dependent on our belief in the truth. Jesus said that He is the truth, and I believe the truth of Jesus is a pervasive reality because Jesus is an all-pervasive reality. Our belief in the truth does not have implications on our so called "religious" life alone, but it has implications on every aspect of our life. If we only believe the truth in the "religious" areas of our life we have not really believed the truth. By isolating the truth to a specific section of our life we accept a shard of truth and simultaneously embrace a world of lies.

So our salvation is dependent on fully embracing the whole truth in its all-encompassing reality. The truth of Jesus has implications on how you spend your spare time, how you send your money, what car you buy, what clothes you buy, how you view women, how you view men, how you view yourself... If we would be saved we must believe all of the truth. All of it. Jesus came preaching a whole Kingdom not a plan to improve some areas of your life. He will overthrow the world and He wants to overthrow it in you first, everyday, until He comes.

Identity: Image of God

2011-07-28T22:07:00.001-07:00

Sartre said that in the case of human kind, "Existence precedes essence." What Sartre meant was that there is no substantive truth about what it means to be human. Rather, he argued, the only truth about what it means to be a human is that we are condemned to be free, we are condemned to choose for ourselves who we are. What it means to be human, what it means to be you, is as yet undetermined. You are making yourself into who you are everyday with every decision.

Sartre also said that for human existence to precede its essence God would have to not exist. We can therefore conclude that Sartre was wrong or at least that he was only looking at a very limited picture. The truth is that God does exist and there is therefore an essence which precedes human existence. All humans are created in the image of God. It is then essential for us to know God in order for us to know what it is to truly be human. If humans were created as the image bearers of God, we can never be fully ourselves, we can never be true to ourselves in any way without knowing He whose image we bear.

Sartre contrasts humans for whom he asserts "existence precedes essence" with a paper cutter which has an "essence which precedes existence." He says that before a paper cutter is created the creator of the paper cutter has a concept in his mind, the essence of the paper cutter exists in the creator's mind before he brings them into existence. The paper cutter is therefore not free to be anything other than a paper cutter. The paper cutter is not free to determine its essence, it is necessarily a paper cutter. If the paper cutter could attempt to change itself into a pencil it would simply cease to exist. Its essence is determined and it can therefore do no other.

The case with which Sartre contrasts human existence reveals his problem with asserting that there is an essence which precedes human existence. Indeed, it seems obvious that Sartre is concerned with humanity's reduction to nothing more than an object. Sartre emphasized the centrality and importance of the subjective and of freedom and the thought of objectifying humanity was horrendous. To turn humanity into objects is to strip them of all dignity, individuality, and uniqueness.

I can identify with Sartre's concerns. To equate human existence to the existence of a paper cutter is to strip humanity of its dignity indeed. Yet, I also believe to try to understand God's creation of man in the same way that we understand man's creation of a paper cutter is absurdly simplistic. It seems to me quite obvious that an omnipotent God could create man as a being for which his existence precedes his essence and his essence precedes his existence. Christianity has no problem dealing in paradox; the heart and soul of the Christian faith is paradox.

Man is a being for which his essence precedes his existence. His essence is the image of God. We were created to display the glory of God in our being. Man is a being for which his existence precedes his essence and there are at least two ways to understand this truth. Either God deliberately created us as free beings who are able to make independent choices and have complete reign of our actions and/or intrinsic to the idea of man being created in the image of God is that we are created free. God is a completely free being, constrained by nothing. It may be that it is not possible for God to create a being in His image without giving them complete freedom. More precisely, for a being to be created in the image of God is for that being to be free. To be free is what it means to be created in the image of God. God determines who we are. We determine who we are. We are a paradox.

Psychology's Place in Christianity

2011-07-28T14:19:00.003-07:00

Due to psychology's pervasive claims at being the discipline which best understands the individual I find it pertinent to ask what place, if any, psychology has in Christianity. An enormous number of people, Christian and non-Christian alike, depend on psychological counseling and psychological drugs in order to cope with problems in life and life in general. Should Christians seek psychological help with their problems? Are psychology's methods compatible with what the Bible teaches about psychological pain and healing?

I believe psychology does have a place in Christianity but I believe it must be understood in a very specific way. Also, I hold that psychology is especially useful in a western context and less so in the developing world. Psychology is especially useful in the west because of western culture and the nature of the media in the west.

I believe psychology's greatest value is in its ability to prod an individual in order to reveal the source of pain or trouble in their lives. I believe God can use the methods of psychology to pinpoint areas in our past which are causing problems in the present but psychology can go no further than this. Psychology can be a pointer but no more. Once psychology has been used to pinpoint a problem, it is only the love of Christ poured out into our hearts by the Spirit of God which can heal the wounds that psychology locates.

Quite obviously, psychology is not necessary for the psychological healing process. Jesus said the poor are blessed and the poor are exactly the ones who have no access to psychological counseling. In this particular instance I believe the blessing of being poor is made manifest in their ability to find psychological healing without psychological counseling. The poor do not have money or material things to depend on or place their identity in so they are less hindered to fully experience the love of Christ and its healing power. People with material means cloud their lives and identities with things that obscure Christ's love.

The way in which the poor can experience psychological healing without any psychological counseling segues into why I believe psychology is especially useful in the western world and less so outside of the western world. I believe the primary use of psychology in the west is to navigate through a jungle of lies that an individual has fully believed in which prevent them from fully embracing the love of Christ. For example, a young man may have difficulty giving up pornography because he has truly believed what all of American media tells him, that the highest pleasure in life is sex. He truly believes that he cannot survive without sex. He will not be able to recognize Christ as the highest pleasure and the most valuable treasure until he has consciously realized what he currently values most. Psychology can serve to point this out. I believe most cases are far more complicated than the aforementioned one, but the story remains the same in highly complicated cases with deeply hidden lies.

In the west we are literally brain washed, conditioned like Pavlov's dog by the media and the culture. Media pervades every aspect of western public life and most people unintentionally volunteer for brainwashing in their homes as well. We come home from a day of advertisements telling us how to be beautiful, successful, and happy and then we sit down in front of the TV and listen to the same things. Psychology as an academic disciple can serve a great purpose by rooting out worldliness in our deeply conditioned mind. Psychology can help to get ourselves out of our own way to let Jesus do His work.

God can and does, of course, slash down these jungles of lies in a single instant of revelation and love but I think the way our minds have been conditioned makes it incredibly difficult for many individuals. In order for God to change us we must throw ourselves on Him, but often the conditioning we subject ourselves to prevents us from even throwing ourselves on Him. Our worldly conditioning freezes us in our tracks and traps us in our pain.

The individual in the developing world who has no access to psychological help is at no disadvantage because they have not been brainwashed to nearly the same degree as a western person. They have not spent day in and day out staring at television screens. When a person who has not been brainwashed by the world and its media has deep psychological pain and they encounter the redeeming love of Christ there is much less to obscure their vision of Christ. They can more readily believe on the love that they experience because they have not already fully endorsed an elaborate system of lies.

On a related note, but speaking much more generally, someone might ask if it is possible to experience full psychological healing in this world. Much of our physical pains will not be healed until the resurrection and the Last Day so why should we expect to have full psychological healing here and now? I believe that the Bible gives us reason to believe that even though much physical healing is delayed psychological healing need not be delayed in any way. The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Triune God literally lives inside of those who believe. 1 Corinthians says that we have been made one with Christ in Spirit. In 2 Corinthians Paul acknowledges the difference between our inner self and our physical self and tells us how a life lived for Christ will result in the restoration of one and the destruction of the other. "Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day."

Inerrancy of Scripture

2011-07-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

When I claim scripture is "inerrant" I do not mean what Fundamentalists mean. When I claim the Bible is "inerrant" I mean that I believe all scripture is exactly as God intended it to be. God inspired the Bible and it is without error in regard to being exactly what God wanted the human authors to write. Additionally, God only speaks truth so what He says or inspires is "inerrant." My stance is given support by 2 Timothy 3:16. Of course my perspective on scripture can also, I believe, be expressed equally as effectively simply by saying all scripture is "inspired." "Inerrant" and "inspired" mean close to the same thing for me. To be "inspired" is to be "inerrant." For God to "inspire" an author is for that author to write precisely what God wills him to write and nothing else. My understanding of inerrancy does not go beyond the Biblical text itself.

The Fundamentalist perspective on inerrancy argues that all scripture is literally true or more precisely that it is meant to be taken literally and, in the most obvious sense, is true when taken completely literally. Justo Gonzaléz defines inerrancy as the claim that "the Bible is absolutely true, and contains no error, not only in matters of faith and doctrine, but also in matters of history or the physical sciences." I do not believe this stance to be well supported by scripture and in the discussion that follows I will suggest why I believe this stance does the very opposite of the thing it attempts to do. I do not think 2 Timothy 3:16 provides solid support for the Fundamentalist conception of inerrancy and this is the root of why I believe this perspective does the opposite of what it attempts to do. I believe the Fundamentalist conception of inerrancy is self-defeating.

I believe Fundamentalist inerrancy goes beyond the biblical text and is therefore much less supported by the Bible than my view which was articulated in the beginning. Additionally, I believe interpretation of scripture to be a much more subtle, complex, and yet simple endeavor than Fundamentalist inerrancy would imply. The perspective of inerrancy that I articulated in the beginning allows for the fact that the Bible's very structure is wrought with mystery which requires the believer to seek God in order to attain understanding.

Yet, my primary concern here is not to argue in support of my understanding of scripture but only to show that the Fundamentalist conception of inerrancy does not accomplish what it attempts to do. The Fundamentalist conception of inerrancy seeks to establish the Bible as the final and only rule on matters of faith and truth. Fundamentalists desire to give the Bible a place of prestige and respect (which is a right desire) but their attempt to do so is seen to be a failure. By insisting on Fundamentalist inerrancy the Bible is actually respected less because doctrine is established without solid basis in scripture. The Fundamentalists try to establish the Bible as the infallible only rule for faith without using the Bible. Scripture is added to in order to establish scripture thereby implicitly devaluing scripture. When the Fundamentalist conception of inerrancy is adopted we implicitly express the idea that the Bible alone is not enough. It seems that we can actually respect and cherish the Bible more by not insisting on Fundamentalist inerrancy.

I believe the Bible is the only book breathed out by God and that it is uniquely profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. I believe we can hold it in higher esteem by not adopting the Fundamentalist conception of inerrancy.

One may argue that the text, as God's word or as a history presents itself as something which is supposed to be taken literally. They may argue that the most simple and obvious frame of interpretation for the Bible is Fundamentalist inerrancy. I would simply respond that because the text presents itself as a story about the God of all the universe it is going to contain much mystery and metaphor. It is equally obvious or intuitive to interpret the Bible in a completely mystical or metaphorical way. Of course I do not promote or endorse a completely metaphorical interpretation of the Bible, I just use the example as a counter-argument. Yet I do believe that these two arguments working together in a dialectic can help generate a more accurate idea about scripture. The truth is that the Bible does present itself as a history but, at the same time, it is a story about the mysterious God of all the universe.

If the Bible is not necessarily always meant to be read literally then how are we to understand it? In most cases (but not all), I do not think our interpretation of the Bible will significantly change due to the abandoning of Fundamentalist inerrancy. Indeed, I believe the stories in the Bible can be regarded as more true than ever before when Fundamentalist inerrancy is abandoned. I leave you with what I find to be a very insightful quote from Jacques Ellul from The Meaning of the City (edited for relevancy):

"If the Bible is God's revelation, here is what God thinks of the affairs recounted in its pages. It is God giving us his appraisal of man's action and the profound meaning of those actions. And we must accept it all for history, for this is how God sees this story. And we must believe that God's appraisal is truer than the scientific knowledge we may obtain."

*Note: I am definitely open to debate regarding the above discussion. Additionally, nothing about what I have said implies that the Bible is never meant to be taken literally, only that I don't believe a literal account of history and science was God's primary goal in the inspiration of scripture. I believe God's primary goal in the inspiration of scripture is to tell us about Himself and how humans relate to Him.

**Note: There is a sense in which all scripture can be understood in a very literal way, that sense is well captured by Ellul. The only question is do we really believe God's appraisal to be TRUER than science's? I certainly do.

Dualistic Pragmatism: A Preliminary Study

2011-07-26T13:16:00.001-07:00

The following is my undergraduate philosophy thesis. For the record, I do not wholeheartedly subscribe to all arguments made in the paper. I began my study with an idea in mind and I rode that idea all the way to the end, even to some places I didn't expect.

Introduction

The overall project of this study consists in two movements. The two movements of this study involve a traditional comparison or juxtaposition of the physical world and the metaphysical world. Both movements of this study pivot on the epistemological system put forward by Stephen Hawking in his most recent book The Grand Design called “model-dependent realism.” Very briefly, model-dependent realism holds that we can only know reality through various models we construct and that those models are based on usefulness or utility. The rejection or acceptance of a model is not dependent on its truthfulness, but rather, its usefulness. The first movement of this study consists in building an evolutionary and sociological case for model-dependent realism as well as highlighting many of the short-comings which result from only using fundamental physical models to understand the world. The second movement of this study seeks to show that by Hawking’s own standards, a metaphysical model yielding metaphysical utility is necessary to provide all of the needed utility for human activity. I argue that Hawking’s brand of pragmatism must be dualistic (must take into consideration both the physical and the metaphysical) in order to provide the full scope of usefulness necessary for human activity.

In the first movement of this study, the short-comings of the fundamental physical models that will be highlighted include areas concerning ethical discourse as well as the reliability of human cognitive faculties. The second movement of this study seeks to show how certain metaphysical models, employing ideas about an absolute, make up for the short-comings of the fundamental physical model and provide, coupled with the fundamental physical models, all utility necessary for human activity. It will be shown that while fundamental physical models make things like ethical discourse and the reliability of human cognitive faculties nonsensical or at least highly improbable, the metaphysical model employing ideas about an absolute offers ontological concepts which make endeavors like productive ethical discourse and the reliability of human cognitive faculties coherent and intelligible realities.

In order to show the relevance and legitimacy of Hawking’s approach to epistemology I find it pertinent to ask several questions whose answers are often taken for granted. The examination of the following questions will provide a solid foundation for Hawking’s epistemological system as well as highlight many of the problems which emerge from said system (at least when only considering models that deal in the physical world). The questions that will be examined include: What is the nature of truth or true knowledge? How does one know when he can describe something as being “true?” What is the nature of utility and how should it be understood differently from a physical and metaphysical standpoint? Finally, how do what is true and what is useful relate, if at all? The first movement of this study will broadly examine the relationship between utility and truth.

Examining the Relationship between Truth, Utility, and the Mind from a the Perspective of a Physical/Evolutionary Model

Examining the relationship between truth and utility is an important undertaking because their necessary co-existence is almost always taken for granted. The average person’s epistemology is immensely shaped by the applications of science they view all around them. People take the truth of scientific theories for granted simply because scientific theories work in application. The most basic application of a scientific theory is in making a correct prediction. Yet, very simple enquiry will reveal that there need be no connection between a plane’s flight, a medicine’s effectiveness, or the prediction of the phases of Venus and truth. All that can definitely be said about any of these common applications is that they are useful, truth has no connection.

Scientific theories are regarded, at best, as being true to a high degree of probability. Yet, the degree to which a theory is regarded as being probably true is highly dependent on the ability of the theory to make successful and ideally unexpected without the aid the theory, predictions. The realities that the theories which propound to give us the most fundamental understanding of the universe refer to are entirely unobservable with the five senses. Therefore, one must rely on indirect confirmation by examining the observable world and the effect a proposed theory should have on it. Theories about the unobservable world, such as quantum mechanics, rely on the same type of evidence as theories about leverage or torque.

Whether one speaks about the mechanical advantage of a lever or about the behavior of a photon, the only kind of confirmation one may obtain for a theory is how useful it is in the observable world. Regarding specifically those theories which deal solely in unobservables, they are what Rudolf Carnap calls “theoretical laws.” Due to the fact that they can never be observed directly, our only confirmation of their claims is through useful applications.

In the case of the lever, one can obtain confirmation about ideas concerning leverage, but the substance of the confirmation exists solely in utility. In the case of the photon, one can make various successful predictions about its behavior, but truly we have only confirmed how useful a theory is in predicting a photon’s behavior. The veracity of a scientific theory can never be addressed, only its usefulness. At no point is an individual ever justified saying that a theory is true or even approximately true whether speaking about the observable world or the unobservable world. Scientific theories do not deal in truth, they deal in utility. All one might ever say about a theory is that it is particularly useful.

Karl Popper in Conjectures and Refutations affirms the notion that correct predictions and successful applications of a scientific theory do not indicate the truth of a theory. Popper insists that we can never know if a theory is true, “Only the falsity of the theory can be inferred from empirical evidence…” We can always improve on theories because we have no definitive indicators for the truth of a theory. All that can be derived from a theory are various predictions and applications at best, and it is always possible to make more exact or more significant predictions or applications.

Looking at the example of a plane’s flight, there are various theories about air pressure and how to generate lift in order to make a plane fly. A plane flies because the shape of the wing causes air pressure below the wing to be higher than air pressure above the wing. The area of higher air pressure moves toward the area of lower air pressure and generates lift. Nothing about this process indicates that any truth has been understood. Scientists and engineers have learned enough practical information about air pressure in order to make a plane fly, but nothing more. Nothing about the flight of the plane indicates that any truth about air pressure has been understood. It is always possible to understand air pressure in more complete or fundamental ways and in doing so create a flying machine that is even more efficient and useful. Never does applied science or correct prediction give us truth indicators; it only tells us that a particular theory works in a given situation. A theory describes and exploits a certain regularity or regularities in the physical world, and it does so with sub-optimum accuracy and is confirmed only indirectly by way of application or prediction. The nature of human rational faculties, which will later be discussed, reveals why science must be this way. Our evolutionary origins reveal, on a strictly naturalistic world-view, that truth is categorically excluded from the pursuits of the human mind.

A historical example by which the sub-optimum accuracy of scientific theories can be illustrated is Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics make statements about the unobservable physical laws which govern the world. These statements about the unobservable can only be verified by way of application in the observable world. As science has progressed it has been revealed that Newtonian physics is no more than a sub-optimum approximation. Newtonian physics is useful in application, but it doesn’t tell us any truth about the way the world is. Current theories about the laws and particles which govern the world are verified in methodologically the same way as Newtonian physics were, by way of application and observation in the observable world. Due to the fact that theories about the unobservable world can only be verified indirectly, by way of application, one has no reason to believe that they have achieved anything other than a sub-optimum, yet hopefully useful, description of the world.

The assumed connection between truth and utility is not only an assumption implicitly present in the average person’s epistemology, it can be seen explicitly in the well-known and oft-used quote from Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is Power.” The popular slogan asserts that knowledge, or that which is true, will necessarily yield power or utility. The slogan also provides a kind of proof for truth and knowledge; if something is true we can know that it is so because of the utility it brings him who knows it. More precisely, it can be said that a fact need only be useful in order for it to be called “true.” I quote Bacon simply to emphasize the fact that the link between truth and utility is a popular and pervasive assumption.

In order to understand the relationship between truth and utility it is important first to understand the relationship between the human mind and the two concepts independent of one another. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, one theory of truth, Correspondence Theory states that a proposition is “true if there exists an appropriate entity—a fact—to which it corresponds.” True propositions are regarded as true in virtue of some aspect of concrete, objective reality which makes them true. For an idea to be true is for it to correspond to some truth-maker in reality. The value of a true statement is in its ability to relay to the human mind about the way reality is.

The relationship of utility to the human mind is one which spans the entire history of biological life and all of human civilization. Evolutionary theory tells us that humans, the species Homo sapien, exist in their current form as the result of millions of years of natural selection and evolution. Beginning with single-cell organisms in the primordial soup of prehistoric earth and ascending all the way to conscious man, the one principle that dominated was survival of the fittest. Those species which possessed the greatest fitness, whose natural adaptations were most advantageous to their survival, were the species which lived on. Any species which possessed any biological or genetic variation which did not contribute to its ability to survive in its environment and compete against other species for resources sooner or later went extinct. Humans then, are wholly the product of natural selection and evolution. We are the fittest of the fit. We survived long enough to evolve into conscious beings. It is clear that biologically our ties to utility are absolutely fundamental and intrinsic to our being. To seek and favor utility is what we exist to do.

Through his studies of the history of human culture, Friedrich Nietzsche, found, not surprisingly, that our biological orientation toward utility had carried over into our social and intellectual pursuits. The mind, as much a part of our biology as the kidneys, is not immune to the endless tinkering of natural selection, indeed it is the product of it. Nietzsche identified the sole driving force in human culture as the “will to power” which furthers the “elevation of man.” Such an evaluation parallels the story of humans’ evolutionary history quite closely. The “will to power” can be seen as analogous to the tendency toward organisms’ fitness in nature. The “elevation of man” can be seen as analogous to and an extension of the evolution of man. He observed that the history of human culture is simply the continuous sufferings and strivings of the “type man” to increase his power. Power can be understood as simply a means to utility; utility which makes man survive, thrive, dominate, and elevate.

The power which Nietzsche speaks of, the will toward which is the purpose of man in Nietzsche’s philosophy, can be understood as nothing other than a will toward that which will yield utility. Humankind’s will to power is simply the continual pursuit of more and more utility. Utility can be understood broadly as anything which aids a particular person or group of people in surviving in the midst of scarce resources and competition with other people or groups for those resources. Utility can also be understood as anything which aids one in controlling the world around them. Scientific predictions aid in controlling one’s world as they allow one to prepare in advance for various phenomena. Applied sciences aid in controlling one’s world by manipulating it to one’s own designs, i.e. a plane manipulates the atmosphere around its body in such a way to make itself fly through the air at high speeds.

The existence of a relationship between the human mind and utility is obvious to say the least. Given the history of its existence, it would seem probable to assert that the human mind is nothing more than a complex and fabulously efficient utility-seeking tool. The assertion that the human mind is probably a utility-seeking tool can be very problematic with regard to the nature of rational inquiry, but that issue will be examined later.

It may be argued that pure contemplation, abstract thought, pure mathematics, or poetry cause problems for the assertion that the mind is probably nothing over and above a utility-seeking tool. Such a claim may be addressed in two ways. First, with only the evolutionary understanding of the human mind to work with, it seems that mental activity not oriented toward utility can be categorically excluded. We have strong evidence to suggest that the mind is only a tool for seeking utility. Evolutionary theory would suggest to us that if we had a purely objective perspective from which to critically analyze our own cogitations we would find they are no more than utility-seeking. Obviously it is very difficult for one to get out of their consciousnesses in order to analyze it, but evolutionary theory gives one a clear guiding principle for understanding the human mind. The second way in which the above objection can be answered is by appealing to a reality of the human mind which transcends evolutionary theory. Finding grounds for such an appeal is improbable within the ontology we are currently working, but an ontology in which such an appeal can be made with much higher probability will be introduced later with the metaphysical model that was mentioned above.

In light of the nature of humans and the human mind Francis Bacon’s assertion that “Knowledge is Power.” begins to look quite suspicious. Are we really to believe that knowledge is power, or knowledge yields power? It seems far more likely, given our nature, that the opposite is true, “Power is Knowledge.” Due to the fact that the human mind is wholly geared to seek utility (or power), it seems likely that humans have simply called that which brings them power “knowledge” or in the terminology of this study “truth.” The implications of this suggestion are once again problematic and far-reaching. For instance, the above assertion is self-defeating; if all knowledge is nothing more than utility that includes the idea that knowledge is nothing more than utility and therefore the idea itself does not stand. The problem which evolutionary theory poses to itself and knowledge in general was first suggested by C.S. Lewis in his work Miracles and more fully developed by Alvin Plantinga in his work Warrant and Proper Function. Lewis writes, “The type of mental behavior we now call rational thinking or inference must therefore have been ‘evolved’ by natural selection, by the gradual weeding out of types less fitted to survive.” Claiming that knowledge is nothing more than utility means that the above suggestion that knowledge can be reduced to simple utility is no more than an attempt at utility, and therefore cannot be regarded as a legitimate position. It cannot be regarded as “true.” The aforementioned problem will be examined in relation to Stephen Hawking’s epistemological system and the second movement of this study (the proposal of a metaphysical model.)

It has been shown, thus far, that a relationship is clearly present in the minds of humans between truth and utility. The common assumption about their connection has been challenged, and it has been clearly shown that due to the human mind’s utility seeking nature, utility may actually hinder the ability of the human mind to discern truth, rather than be an indicator of it. The human mind is likely predisposed to settle for those things which yield utility and count them as truth rather than investigating further.

Model-dependent Realism

In his book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking offers a new way of looking at truth and utility. The epistemology he proposes is called model-dependent realism. Model-dependent realism attempts to reduce and eliminate the complex relationship between truth and utility by reducing the importance of truth or eliminating it altogether. In Model-dependent realism a premium is placed on utility and practicality.

The basic principles of Kant’s synthetic epistemology have become the basis for the way modern science, Steven Hawking included, understand the way in which humans experience the world. Our sense organs receive raw data from the world around us, our minds apply certain organizing principles to the raw data, and the result is the world that we perceive. Humans cannot know what Kant called “noumena,” or the thing in itself; we can only know the way the thing appears to our minds, or “phenomena.” Phenomena, the way things appear, have no necessary connection to the truth about the way a thing really is. Evolutionary theory tells us why phenomena need have no relation to the world as it actually is; our minds organize data into a useful picture of the world rather than a true one.

Stephen Hawking uses the way the human mind perceives the world as the most basic justification for his epistemological view called model-dependent realism. Models are constructed by the mind both unconsciously (as in Kant’s epistemology) and consciously (as in model-dependent realism). An example of an unconscious model is simply the way the mind processes and organizes sensory information it receives from the external world. An example of a conscious model or a model which we construct and consciously apply to the world is Newtonian Physics. In the Newtonian physical model the motion of physical bodies is described in a way which allows us to expect certain regularities in the movement of the physical world.

In agreement with what was discussed earlier, Hawking tells us that when a conscious or unconscious model is successful, or yields utility, we tend to attribute the idea of truth to the model. Yet, as mentioned earlier, truth and utility likely do not have this connection. Hawking goes on to say that no model can be said to be more real than any other model. In other words, truth is not applicable to any model. The value of a model is found in its utility; we mistakenly assume a truth or reality with extremely useful models (like the one we perceive the world with from moment to moment).

Hawking speaks of the power of the mind in creating models, “…the raw data sent to the brain are like a badly pixilated picture with a hole in it. Fortunately, the human brain processes that data, combining the input from both eyes, filling in gaps on the assumption that the visual properties of neighboring locations are similar and interpolating. Moreover, it reads a two-dimensional array of data from the retina and creates from it the impression of a three-dimensional space. The brain, in other words, builds a mental picture or model.” Not only are humans inherently utility seeking, as mentioned earlier, but we are inherently model-building beings. The only way which we have of comprehending the world is to build some kind of a model based on very poor quality input. Hawking’s epistemological model therefore, seems to be an acceptable attempt at understanding how humans perceive the world.

Hawking provides further support for his epistemology by comparing the geocentric and heliocentric views of the solar system. He says that one model cannot be said to be more real than the other, but rather the heliocentric view is more useful because this perspective provides much simpler equations for describing the movement of the planets. One might argue that from a larger galactic perspective the heliocentric model is certainly more real than the geocentric; geocentrism is inconsistent with the grand scheme of the workings of our galaxy. Yet, such a response presupposes information provided by another set of models which themselves have been chosen based on utility, and have been built on the utility yielded by the heliocentric model. Hawking also talks about the fact that for a long time assigning reality to quarks, a particle which may be unobservable, was too much for many physicists. It was not until the quark model led to more and more correct predictions, or more and more utility, that physicists began to accept it as “real.” Hawking summarizes: “…according to model-dependent realism, quarks exist in a model that agrees with our observations of how subnuclear particles behave.” What we consider real then, is simply what we find of great utility.

In order to provide a very accessible example to support his assertion that truth is irrelevant in model building, Hawking cites the life of a goldfish in a curved glass bowl. Hawking cites an instance in which animal rights activists claimed that it was unethical to keep a goldfish in a curved bowl because the curvature of the glass distorts his view of reality and hinders his ability to see the world as it is. Hawking argues that the world the fish views is no less real than the world that you and I view. Indeed, it can be said that humans must look through their own version of a fish bowl, their cognitive and sensible faculties. If the fish were capable of developing equations to describe the motion of objects he sees moving outside of his bowl the fish would have just as real of a view of reality as humans. The only difference between the fish in the curved bowl and the human is that the fish’s equations to describe the world as he sees it would be that his equations are slightly more complex in order to account for the curvature of the bowl. Seeing has nothing to do with truth, nor do the length of equations. Utility is all that matters.

Within his epistemology of model-dependent realism, Hawking proposes that the best way in which we can understand the universe is with a series of theories which tell us about how it operates. The set of theories Hawking proposes for his model are the various ones which have been put forward by physicists doing work in the fields of relativity and quantum mechanics. The fundamental physical model which Hawking suggests may never have a final form, and in Hawking’s opinion will never achieve the status of “truth.” The fundamental physical model can be continuously tweaked and changed as adjustments yield more and more utility.
While Hawking’s fundamental physical model is clearly very useful, it is insufficient to provide all of the utility needed for human life. In order to provide a foundation for things like ethical discourse and even reason itself, a model is needed which yields a kind of metaphysical utility. The principle problem in only embracing a fundamental physical model as a means for understanding reality is the reductionist nature of modern science.

Problems arising from only utilizing Physical Models

The narrow scope of the reductionist models of modern physics with regard to their utility can be seen clearly in the field of ethics. The current fundamental physical model implies that everything is no more than the sum of subnuclear particles. Within this model, to speak of ethics is nonsensical because one cannot say what a quark “ought” to do. Are we to tell a table or a planet what it should or ought do? Of course not. Because tables and planets obey the laws of physics, “ought” and “should” have no application. Humans then, are nothing more than the subnuclear particles in a table arranged in a different way. Some attempt to apply the reductionist tactics of modern science to select areas of reality, but with only a fundamental physical model to understand reality with, this is extremely inconsistent. It is inconsistent and incoherent to speak of what one group of subnuclear particles should or should not do and then say it is impossible to speak of what another group of subnuclear particles should or should not do.

One may argue that the fundamental physical model does allow for ethical discourse if one appeals to concepts like emergent properties. One may say that a human being is clearly different from a table, but the differences cannot be seen at the fundamental physical level. At a more macro-level, the complexity of human beings and human consciousness allow for the possibility of ethical discourse. There are at least two problems with such an approach. First, it is unclear how emergent properties relate to the fundamental physical particles and so it is unclear how orders of complexity in the arrangement of said particles can give warrant to say that one group of particles (humans) has ethical obligations and another does not. Secondly, one of the tasks of science is to describe what things are at the most fundamental level. The fact that the human species is most fundamentally or most basically a collection of subnuclear particles takes precedence over any less fundamental designation. The fact that humans are a grouping of subnuclear particles is prior to any other fact about their existence; this most basic fact must dictate the way humans are understood.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was on to something when he said, “If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.” The concept of God has been abandoned by mainstream academia, and they have been unable to find another basis for objectivity, an escape from reductionism, a foundation for ethics. Popular culture reveals the logical end of reductionism. The recent movie Watchmen provides an insightful and very literal manifestation of the logical end of reductionism. The main character in the movie is Dr. Manhattan. He is a referred to by many in the movie as a “god.” Dr. Manhattan is a purely rational and super intelligent being who transcended the limits of the human body to achieve immortality and god-like abilities. In the movie, he is accused of having caused his former wife to develop fatal cancer. Dr. Manhattan’s response to the accusations is simply and coldly, “A deceased human body has the same number of particles as a live human body...” We shudder at such a moral evaluation, but no other response is logically possible when only considering fundamental physical models of reality.

Yet, nearly all human beings speak of themselves and other human beings with much different language than they speak of other groupings of subnuclear particles. The instant an ethicist opens his mouth he is assuming realities which fall outside of the scope of current physical models. It would seem then that a model other than fundamental physical one is required to account for much of human experience. A model which yields a kind of metaphysical utility is required. It is possible for a kind of monotheistic model, which employs God as an absolute, to meet all of the criteria that current physical models do. All scientific models possess utility in their ability to explain and especially in their ability to predict. A non-reductionist model or a model which contains an absolute like a monotheistic model is able to live up to all of the same standards which are demanded of scientific models. One need only consider metaphysical utility rather than physical utility.

One could respond from the position of the nihilist and say that everything is meaningless and the logical conclusion of the reductionist models reveals the true nature of human life. One could argue that love, ethics, free-will, and the self are figments of the human imagination and that a model which offers explanation for them would only have romantic utility and no true utility. One may respond to the reductionistic nihilist by showing that their beliefs give them reason to doubt the reliability of their cognitive faculties, and therefore give them reason to doubt their nihilist beliefs. Nihilism is self-defeating. C.S. Lewis quotes Professor Haldane, “If my mental processes are wholly determined by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true…and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms”. Alvin Plantinga makes a similar argument in Warranted Christian Belief. Plantinga argues that if our mental faculties are the result of randomness, something similar to the swerve of atoms in the Democritian void, then the likelihood of our cognitive faculties being reliable is low or inscrutable. If the probability of our cognitive faculties being reliable when they are the result of chance is low or inscrutable, then the probability of any beliefs produced by those cognitive faculties being true is also low or inscrutable. If the brain is the result of randomness, one has no reason to trust their beliefs.

The Metaphysical/Absolute Model

What is needed to provide utility for all areas of human life is a model or set of models which is dualistically pragmatic. By dualistic pragmatism I mean a system which includes models which address both the physical and metaphysical aspects of human experience and live up to the pragmatic or utility based epistemological system of Hawking. William James, in his lecture series Pragmatism emphasized the importance of the absolute, or a non-reductionist model of the universe, “The absolute has far-reaching practical consequences.”

The model which I propose to fill the void in utility left by the fundamental physical model is a basic monotheistic model, analogous to Platonic Realism, which utilizes some particular claims from the Christian Bible. Just as in Platonic Realism, the basic monotheistic model I propose appeals to absolutes, specifically one Absolute, an unchanging infinite reference point. C.S. Lewis in his book Miracles provides the fundamental tenant of the basic monotheistic model which says that there are two classes of things in existence. “In the first class we find either things (or more probably) One Thing which is basic and original, which exists on its own. In the second [class] we find things which are merely derivative from that One Thing. The one basic Thing has caused all the other things to be. It exists on its own; they exist because it exists. They will cease to exist if it ever ceases to maintain them in existence; they will be altered if it ever alters them.” In the basic monotheistic model we find the simplest escape possible from the philosophically debilitating effects of physicalism and reductionism.

As mentioned earlier, the basic monotheistic model can meet the standards of utility required by acceptable scientific models. Not only does the basic monotheistic model provide utility in the realm of ethical discourse, but it provides a basis for all rational discourse as well as makes new predictions within the human experience.

The discussion of the utility yielded by the basic monotheistic model can begin in an area which was specifically pinpointed as unaddressed by the fundamental physical models, ethics. A concern held by many throughout history, from as early as Plato, has been that if there exists no absolute then everything is relative, rendering, among other things, ethical discourse impossible. Plato was compelled to posit his forms in order to solve this problem. The fundamental physical models have nothing in their content to help resolve the relativistic results of having no absolute, as was discussed earlier. In fact, the fundamental physical models even render cultural relativism in ethics as nonsensical. The reductionist approach of the fundamental physical models is pervasive.

The basic monotheistic model on the other hand provides one infinite Absolute on the basis of which we can make ethical judgments. One need not subscribe to any particular religion’s understanding of ethics; the basic monotheistic model simply provides a metaphysical basis for making any kind of ethical claim. The reason the basic monotheistic model allows for ethical discourse is because in all understandings of God, God has some relation to humankind (e.g. humans are created in the image of God) thereby rendering them immune from the reductionism of the fundamental physical models. In this model humans are not just a collection of subnuclear particles, they are something over and above their constituent parts, they are intrinsically valuable. While claims about emergent properties in matter giving humans a basis for ethical discourse is murky at best, the basic monotheistic model gives humans an “infinite reference point” in which they can find value and thereby make value-judgments or ethical claims. Sartre was aware of this need for an infinite or an absolute, “No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.”

If one examines the specific nature of human existence and human’s relation to God as asserted by the Christian Bible one can find an even more substantive approach to ethics. The Christian Bible claims that all humans are “created in the image of God.” Francis Schaeffer comments on the importance of such a metaphysical claim to human experience, “That Man is made in the image of God gives many important answers intellectually...the vocation of honest merchant or house wife has a much dignity as King.” The Christian Bible not only provides an infinite or absolute reference point from which to make ethical claims, but has great utility in that it simplifies ethics in providing a reason why all humans can be regarded as equal. Without such a metaphysical claim yielding the idea of equality, one might never even begin to discuss ethics due to the fact that the value of individual people cannot be decided on because of different opinions on sex, race, class, intelligence, athletic ability, etc. Hawking asserts that the heliocentric view of the solar system was accepted because of the fact that it simplified the endeavor of describing the motion of the planets. Accepting the idea that humans are created in the image of God can be seen to be analogous.

It is from within the basic monotheistic model that one can address the tension which arose earlier between the human mind’s sole orientation toward utility and the pursuit of truth given the mind’s biological evolutionary and Nietzschean sociological origins. It is the human relation to the Absolute which allows the human mind to escape the confines of purely physical utility which the best theories of human’s origins place it in. The human mind, due to its origins, is clearly oriented toward physical utility, but the relation which humans have to the Absolute provides a way for the mind to escape from the confines of purely physical utility-seeking and partake in the endeavor toward truth. The discussion earlier then, on the orientation of the human mind toward utility, is not self-defeating. The human mind’s relation to the Absolute elevates the mind to a status above the wholly physical so that the mind can make statements about its limitations without defeating its own claims. It is of great metaphysical utility to be able to elevate the mind away from a sole pursuit of physical utility. The Absolute brings with it the metaphysical utility of escaping the confines of physical utility, but it also brings with it the possibility of knowing truth. Knowing truth can be seen as a by-product of humans’ relation with the Absolute, for the Absolute, like Platonic forms, is truth itself.

The way in which the Absolute enables the human mind to rise above its evolutionary origins can be understood from the perspective of the Greeks as participation in the Logos or divine reason. Participation in the Logos is compatible with the basic monotheistic model’s understanding that humans are “created in the image of God.” Logos even provides some substance as to what “created in the image of God” exactly means. The Absolute in the basic monotheistic model can then be said to yield great utility by providing a reason to actually trust the products of the human mind in the light of our utility-seeking origins. The mind, by virtue of Logos, is able to engage in activity not confined solely to the realm of utility. (How one might understand the claim that it is useful for the mind to be elevated above its utility-seeking origins will be discussed in the concluding remarks.)

Another related area to which the basic monotheistic model lends utility and the fundamental physical models neglect is the legitimacy of thought itself from a very basic physical standpoint. In other words, if thought is merely the product of blind physical forces, what case can be made for the “reasonableness” of reason? Thomas Hobbes classified all of reality as simply “matter in motion” and this summary is consistent with Hawking’s fundamental physical models. But, as C.S. Lewis points out, if the human mind is interlocked in this system of “matter in motion” or cause and effect reactions, what reason do we have to give it any level of authority? Lewis writes in his essay Evil and God, “If thought is the undesigned and irrelevant product of cerebral motions, what reason have we to trust it?” It seems impossible that reason could come from non-reason.

To provide an illustration, the fundamental physical model asserts that the human mind and a stone are at the most fundamental level completely identical. No difference exists between the quarks and gluons in a stone and the quarks and gluons which make up the human brain. The quarks and other particles in the rock do not produce any “reasonable” account of the world, so why would the quarks in the human mind do so? The processes in the human mind must be viewed as identical with the process of a falling stone. All of the events in the universe, i.e. the interactions of fundamental physical particles, are said to either be governed by the principle of determinism or indeterminism. Either all events are interlocked in fantastically complex series of cause and effect interactions or the universe is fundamentally random as quantum physics suggests and all we can know are the probabilities of certain events. Whether the universe is ruled by determinism or indeterminism is of no concern because on either account the operations of reason cannot be accounted for. In Lewis’ words, “To be caused is not to be proved” In the same way, to be to be the result of random chance or a cause and effect reaction is also not to be proved. Reason cannot come from non-reason or a-rational origins.

With specific regard to cause and effect interactions, David Hume was the first to point out that there is an incongruence between logic and causation. Hume pointed out that there is no logical reason why an eight ball moves after having been struck by a cue ball. He argued that it is rather an ingrained expectation we have after having seen many events of this type. Our conviction that the eight ball will move is a matter of custom and not of logical deduction. With Hume’s observation it can be seen that causation does not operate by the deductive laws of human reasoning and therefore causation cannot explain or account for human logical faculties. Causation cannot account for human reasoning because they clearly do not agree.

C.S. Lewis in his book Miracles makes an important observation about reason and the relation of nature to reason’s “reasonableness.” Lewis observes that the validity of a person’s reasoning is always undermined if a natural cause can be identified as a likely reason for them having reached their particular conclusion about a given topic. Lewis writes, “Wishful thinkings, prejudices, and the delusions of madness, are all caused, but they are ungrounded. Indeed to be caused is so different from being proved that we behave in disputation as if they were mutually exclusive. The mere existence of causes for a belief is popularly treated as raising a presumption that it is groundless, and the most popular way of discrediting a person’s opinions is to explain them causally – ‘You say that because (Cause and Effect) you are a capitalist, or a hypochondriac, or a mere man, or only a woman’. The implication is that if causes fully account for a belief, then, since causes work inevitably, the belief would have had to arise whether it had grounds or not.” Lewis clearly shows that cause and effect arguments are commonly used to undermine an individual’s reasoning. As such, cause and effect interactions must be entirely ruled out as an explanation for human reason.

Within the scope of the fundamental physical models of reality, nothing can provide a basis for human reasoning except ideas like determinism or indeterminism. Determinism and Indeterminism have both already been shown to actually defeat the validity of reasoning and therefore the fundamental physical models are self-defeating if they try to stand alone. The stand alone fundamental physical model undercuts the validity of the mental processes which produced the physical model in the first place. If the fundamental physical model described everything in the entire universe, but failed to give validity to human thinking, it would be utterly useless.
With the fundamental physical world ruled out as a way to account for our reasoning, we must take a step very similar to a step Plato took after grappling with the ideas of Heraclitus. Plato understood that if the world of constant change and flux as posited by Heraclitus was all that existed, rational discourse was impossible. It was this reality which led him to posit a world beyond the sensory, a world of perfect forms. Plato did not posit a realm beyond the physical simply because he enjoyed rational discourse and he wanted to uphold its validity, but instead he realized that Heraclitus’ world of flux could not be a true idea by itself because it was self-defeating. The truth of Heraclitus’ idea about this world depended on the existence of another world. Analogously, the basic monotheistic model becomes a necessity in our case to account for the validity of all thought.

The basic monotheistic model has utility where the fundamental physical model fails by giving humans a reason to believe that thought can actually yield truth. The basic monotheistic model gives us a reason to believe reason is “reasonable.” An explanation for how the basic monotheistic model gives us a reason to trust our reason can, once again, best be approached by the Greek concept of logos. If, by virtue of logos the human mind participates in the immutable, infinite divine reason, there is a very clear reason to trust it. It is logos which gives validity to all logic faculties. Without logos all human thought stands on nothing, it falls apart into an infinite abyss of ever-shifting matter.

The utility of the basic monotheistic model with respect to the mind’s participation in logos is pervasive. Without logos all philosophy, art, science, architecture, literature, music, and all human expression in general is thrown into the Sartre’s abyss. The infinite expanse of space, the infinite tides of time and the ever-changing quantum landscape render all human thought as nothing and all human attempts at knowledge as futile. Logos brings substance to all human discourse and an epistemological optimism to all methods of inquiry.

One final practical or utility-yielding aspect of the basic monotheistic model is highlighted by William James in his lecture series Pragmatism. He holds that one of the only substantive and practical differences between the atheistic and theistic models of the universe is their respective views on the destiny of the cosmos. The views of the atheist yield an overwhelming pessimism while the views of the theist yield a great optimism and hope for progress. For purposes of relating James’ discussion to this study, the atheistic model of the universe can be seen as identical with the fundamental physical model, while the theistic view can obviously be seen as identical with the basic monotheistic model.

James quotes a Mr. Balfour whom he says best expresses what he considers the chief problem with the atheistic understanding of the universe. Balfour asserts,
“The energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy, consciousness which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. ‘Imperishable monuments’ and ‘immortal deeds,’ death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is, be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect.”

The atheistic model or the fundamental physical model by itself creates a great pessimism and essentially destroys itself. The fundamental physical model by itself can be seen to be, in a sense, self-defeating as it predicts a time when it will no longer exist. A theory which entails its own annihilation and the annihilation of all beings capable of contemplating theories is certainly not very helpful or useful.

The basic monotheistic model clearly provides a more hopeful, and for all intents and purposes more useful, understanding of the cosmos. No matter which major understanding of monotheism one examines it is seen that each foretells a future ideal and eternal state. The labors of human kind are not wasted; the strivings and sufferings of human kind are not in vain. God gives meaning and purpose to all human activity. God motivates all human activity and injects them with hope for progress and for future fulfillment.

It has been shown that in several important metaphysical respects, the basic monotheistic model has great utility. The basic monotheistic model enables ethical discourse, allows the human mind to escape the confines of reason that its naturalistic beginnings would limit it to, and it gives legitimacy to all human thought and ideas which can otherwise not be legitimized in a purely physical account of the universe.

The only criterion for a model which remains to be examined is the ability of a model to make unexpected predictions. The basic monotheistic model does make unexpected predictions. The unexpected prediction that will be examined comes from the founder of one of the major monotheistic faiths, Jesus. In the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Luke Jesus says, counter intuitively, that the poor are blessed while the rich are cursed.

The words of Jesus are not only counter to our common sensibilities, but they are counter to our biological and sociological origins as were discussed earlier. It was mentioned toward the beginning of this study that ideally predictions should be unexpected without the enlightenment of a theory or model. It makes absolutely no sense to say that the poor are blessed while the rich are cursed; a quick survey of the developing world reveals populations that are riddled with starvation and disease. The rich western part of the world has far greater life expectancies than the poor developing parts and they are not subjected to hunger and poor medical care. Concerning our biological and sociological predisposition to utility and survival the rich are clearly blessed.

Yet, I find the examination of suicide rates and perceptions to be an insightful indictor into the state of spiritual “blessedness” or happiness of demographics. Suicide reveals a deep discontentment and is a clear indicator of mental health or happiness. Individuals who are poled about their happiness or general mental health can lie to those collecting data (or even lie to themselves) about their personal happiness but suicide rates tell a true story. According to the World Health Organization’s published statistics, several nations with the highest suicide rates are nations who display a considerable amount of material prosperity. Meanwhile, several of the nations with the lowest suicide rates are those which are extremely poor. For example, the WHO includes Japan, South Korea, and Lithuania among the top five nations with the highest suicide rates. By contrast, nations with the lowest suicide rates include Haiti, Honduras, and Jamaica. Haiti is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere and it ranks as the nation with the lowest overall suicide rate.

In a world full of humans which are purely the product of the fitness-seeking process of natural selection, one would expect to see a general trend of low suicide rates in materially prosperous countries and high suicide rates in poor countries. While other sociological factors undoubtedly play a role in suicide rates, no such general trend is visible among the nations of the world. In fact, one sees many instances of wealthy nations with drastically higher suicide rates than more impoverished nations.

In a study conducted in 2002, WVU Ph.D. Paul Dunham made interesting findings regarding suicide perceptions and technological development which complement the statistics from the WHO. Dunham conducted his study in the United States and in Papua New Guinea. The correlation he discovered was that the higher the level of technological development, the more common one’s experience with suicide. Experience with suicide includes any instance one knew, or knew of, individuals who attempted, successfully or not, to commit suicide. So, the more technological development occurs in a culture, the more likely one is to be acquainted directly or indirectly with suicide.

Dunham’s findings are once again very difficult to square with a population of humans who are solely the product of evolution by natural selection. Technology is applied science, the manifestation of utility-seeking at its fullest and most efficient form. It seems unlikely on the account of evolution by natural selection that such a trend would be seen. As the human race advances and develops technology to optimize and further their utility-seeking goals, surely suicide rates should decrease, especially in those cultures with the highest technological advancement.

If a human, who is solely the result of evolution by natural selection, is able to attain all of their physical needs there is no reason why this person would commit suicide. With merely the evolutionary understanding of the nature of humans, one would expect that the predominant factor playing into suicide rates would be material prosperity. A good indicator for material prosperity is wealth and technological development. No such correlation between material prosperity and low suicide rates can be drawn from the available data.

On the other hand, the basic monotheistic model makes the prediction that the poor are blessed. One can understand this claim to mean that there are other factors, such as spiritual or metaphysical realities, which affect the mental well-being of a person. Under the basic monotheistic model one would expect there to be no direct correlation between material prosperity and low suicide rates because there are other, equally important spiritual needs which affect happiness and mental health. At the same time, one would also not expect to see the opposite trend visible, material poverty coinciding with low suicide rates, because humans are not merely spiritual, they have physical needs as well. Jesus makes a prediction about certain spiritual realities which affect the well-being of individuals, but this does not change the fact that humans are also highly physical. The lack of material goods will undoubtedly cause hardships, but a spiritual blessedness exists for those who are poor. Material wealth with undoubtedly bring pleasures, but a spiritual blessedness is missed out on by those who have great wealth.

The basic monotheistic model makes a successful prediction about the mental health of human beings. “Blessed are the poor” can be understood simply to be the prediction that there are factors beyond the physical world which affect human happiness and mental health. The data seems to support this assertion. Humans are essentially physical and spiritual and on this basis Jesus makes the prediction that those people who are solely concerned with amassing material possessions will suffer the loss of a kind of ‘blessedness’. People who neglect their spiritual nature and focus only on wealth will not find mental health or happiness.

Conclusions

One concern that may arise about the structure of this project is that the basic monotheistic model, or any model employing the absolute, seems to be a class of models which hold a special status. Any fundamental physical models, as Hawking asserts, can only be assessed in terms of utility and can never be regarded as true. But, due to the nature of the basic monotheistic model and its ability to give the human mind the capability of knowing truth it would seem that the absolute which a metaphysical model refers to must be actually in existence and we must have a kind of true knowledge about it in order for it to actually enable us to know truth. The special status of the metaphysical class of models can be best understood by appealing to a principle mentioned by Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Wittgenstein writes, “My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through, them on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.” The evolutionary and Nietzschean sociological origins of the human mind give one a good place to begin for developing an epistemic system. One can clearly see that the ontology of the human mind is founded in utility. From the acknowledgement of the human mind’s orientation toward utility, model-dependent realism seems a very plausible epistemic system. Within model-dependent realism it can be seen that fundamental physical models do not provide all of the necessary utility for human life. At the point where one realizes the limitations of the usefulness of the fundamental physical models, one must appeal to a model employing an absolute, like the basic monotheistic model. In order for the basic monotheistic model to work one must actually accept it as true and not simply useful. It was usefulness which makes an individual turn to a metaphysical model employing the absolute, but in order for the metaphysical model to do its job Wittgenstein’s “ladder” must be thrown away. The metaphysical model must be accepted as true in order for the model to do the job it was intended for. Utility points to the need for a metaphysical model employing the absolute, but the “ladder” of usefulness by which one arrives at the metaphysical model must be thrown away once one has ascended to the level of truth.

This study has attempted to show, generally, the need for a dualistic approach to any kind of pragmatism. Dualistic pragmatism acknowledges the fact that neither physical nor metaphysical understandings of the world can, by themselves, provide all necessary utility for human life. Science, working with various physical models of the world, can provide great benefits and advantages to the human race. Meanwhile, Religion and/or Philosophy working with various metaphysical models of the world can provide great usefulness to humankind in areas which are inaccessible or ontologically excluded from the scope of physical models.

Scripture and the Limits of Logic

2011-07-26T12:59:00.000-07:00

With the Bible it is often not possible, as with other books, to draw logical conclusions from the text. The Bible often forces us to believe only the words that are written on its pages rather than the conclusions which can be logically deduced from those words. With a regular book logic may enrich and expand the intended meaning of the author. With the Bible logic can distort and hinder the intended meaning of the author.

For example, Romans 9 cites a passage from Exodus 33 which reads, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." Now one could easily deduce from this passage that those who will go to heaven is determined wholly by God and those who will go to hell is wholly determined by God and human effort makes no difference whatsoever. Indeed the passage seems to be stating this plainly. From such a conclusion one could draw a second conclusion that evangelism and mission work are pointless because they make absolutely no difference whatever. Fatalism can be a perspective very easily arrived at by only applying the laws of logic to Romans 9:14.

Yet, as the reader continues through Romans they will arrive at Romans 10:14-15. This passage states that no one can believe in Christ unless they have heard of Him, no one can hear of Him unless they are preached to, and no one can can preach unless they are sent. From this passage one can easily conclude that the salvation of souls is dependent on a concerted human effort. People will perish unless they are preached to and no one will preach unless they are sent. We need people to preach and people to send. Human effort is the only thing which can save souls. What an immense and heavy task! The weight of the world is on the shoulders of the Church! One can easily fall into desperation and hopelessness when they apply the laws of logic to Romans 10:14-15 and they realize the enormity of the task before them.

Now it is obvious that Roman 9 and 10 contradict one another. Sound logic reveals that Romans 9 and 10 entail conclusions which are incompatible with each other. Where do we go from here? Is the Bible contradictory and therefore nonsensical and false? I do not believe so. I believe that the fault lies not with the Bible but with presuppositions that we bring to the analysis of the text.

To insist that logical contradictions prove the Bible false is to place logic above scripture. We assume that logic holds the absolute standard for truth and anything which does not conform to its form cannot be true. I believe the opposite. I believe that the form of the Bible reveals the limitations of logic. I believe that the failure of anything, logic included, to conform to the form of the Bible is an indication of its falsehood.

To admit the fact that the Bible and not logic is the absolute standard for truth has pervasive implications. To admit the Bible supersedes logic means that we must largely (if not entirely) abandon strict linear logic when interpreting all aspects of the Bible. Logic pervades our thoughts as we read and interpret the text, we must therefore pray and seek and discern a true meaning of the Bible which transcends the limits of logic.

One conscious mental effort which can be made in avoiding misunderstandings of scripture brought about by emphasizing the primacy of linear logic is to favor paradox instead. The passages we examined above from Romans are clearly in direct contradiction, they form a paradox. They insist that the salvation of souls is wholly dependent on God and the salvation of souls is wholly dependent on human effort.

One could argue that there are ways of reconciling the above passages from Romans by way of certain interpretive maneuvers. For example, one could argue that God has mercy on whom He has mercy and this act of mercy is made manifest through the sending of evangelists and missionaries. I find this to be a fine interpretation, but it is still fundamentally lacking. No matter how one spins a passage like Romans 9:14 it is still impossible to avoid falling to fatalism. The aforementioned attempt at reconciling Romans 9 and 10 only shifts the issue from fatalism concerning individual salvation to fatalism concerning the sending of missionaries and evangelists. Why make any effort to mobilize missionaries and evangelists when God will sovereignly mobilize them Himself? I find that the only way in which we can fully embrace the message of both Romans 9 and 10 is through paradox.

I believe we favor linear logic because it proves very useful in science. Fortunately, God is not a science project. We must abandon our emphasis on linear logic when it comes to interpretation of scripture simply because it does not easily find a home alongside the truths of the Bible. The truths in the Bible transcend basic logic and require concepts like paradox for us to even begin to understand them. And yet we are not able to understand paradox because of its very nature... another paradox.

Paradox gives us both less and more understanding of God.

American Eternal Life

2011-07-25T12:01:00.005-07:00

Eternal life is a beautiful truth if it is understood in its proper Biblical context. But, I personally find eternal life to be a very cheap concept when it is understood in an American context.

In the Bible eternal life is a rich and deeply meaningful reality. Eternal life is the restoration of all that is wrong with an individual. Eternal life is the ending of suffering and the wiping away of all tears. Eternal life is beholding the face of our one true Love, Jesus Christ. John 17:3 says that knowing God is eternal life. Eternal life is far more than a life of unlimited duration or quantity, it is a life of limitless glory and quality.

The reason why eternal life seems quite cheap in America is because, in many respects, it does not stand out as a unique reality and consequently it is not the full and true object of our hope. Comfort and security are the key components which cheapen eternal life in America. In America, eternal life seems to be almost nothing more than an extended retirement plan or really good health insurance. Who needs eternal life to wipe away your tears when pharmaceuticals can do the job just fine? We spend our whole lives trying to make ourselves as comfortable as possible and we believe in Jesus so that we will also be comfortable after we die. Eternal life is reduced to a drug, an insurance policy, pettiness, there is nothing beautiful about it!

Eternal life is meant to be the only hope of the Christian. The life of the Christian is meant to be marked by voluntary self-sacrificial love. We are called to forfeit any advantage that we have in this world because we have been given eternal life! The fact that we have eternal life is our true security and the reason why we can give all, even to our discomfort and suffering.

I believe that if we really want to know and experience the beauty of eternal life we must suffer, we must die to ourselves. Jesus said "he who loses his life for my sake and for the gospel will find it." In losing our lives we truly find eternal life, we find it here and we find it forever.

On Knowledge, Faith, and Certainty

2011-07-24T20:44:00.004-07:00

A friend recently asked me if I thought a person could say with equal confidence "I know that the ground will hold me up." and "I know Christianity is true." I find this to be a philosophically loaded question and I believe there are several ways to begin to address this question. In the following discussion I hope to address this question by one or more lines of reasoning, but I in no way think that I will exhaust the ways in which this question can be answered. I pray that my approach is edifying to the reader.

First, it may be pertinent to ask, "With what kind of certainty can I assert that I know the ground will hold me up and on what evidence (and what type of evidence) do I base this claim?" I don't believe anyone would assert that they know with 100% certainty that the ground will continue to hold them up. There always exists the possibility of a sinkhole, quicksand, covered well opening, or any other type of unusual circumstance. There is always the chance, no matter how small, that the ground will fail to hold you up. We would then be most wise to claim a high degree of probability for the truth of our belief that the ground will hold. In other words, one could say "I know that the ground will hold me up." with 99.9% certainty at best. Due to the possibility of anomalous circumstances we revert to the modern scientific perspective on knowledge. Nothing is certain, things can only be known, at best, with high degrees of probability.

Given that the possibility of anomalies regarding the reliability of the ground has forced us into a modern scientific perspective on knowledge it is now pertinent to examine the nature of the evidence which gives our belief in the reliability of the ground a high degree of probability of being true. If our perspective on the very truth of the belief must be understood scientifically then it is likely that the evidence in support of this high degree of probability is also best understood scientifically.

We must now address the second part of our question, "What evidence do we have in support of our belief in the reliability of the ground and what is the nature of this evidence?" The evidence that we have is simply repeated experience under a predictable or controlled environment. We assert our belief in the reliability of the ground after spending many years walking on large amounts of familiar ground. We have not spent time walking in jungles rife with quicksand or in lava fields. Due to the fact that our experience is not in lava fields or jungles rife with quicksand we would not make strong assertions about the reliability of the ground in those areas. Our assertion about the ground is local, particular, and depends on a controlled environment. So, our environment has been largely controlled and we have enormous amounts of data through experience.

Modern science insists that legitimate scientific knowledge be produced through a very standardized procedure. Some of the key components in the scientific method are a controlled environment and the ability of the experiment to be repeated at will. Our data supporting our claim in the reliability of the ground appears to be of a scientific nature. We have collected data in a controlled environment (at least in all ways relevant to that data) and we have collected our data repeatedly and in such a way that the data can be verified by continued repetition.

The claim that we "know" things in everyday life is seen to be a very scientific claim. We can only give credibility to our claims of knowledge by employing the scientific method. It seems then that we may not need to make a distinction between knowledge and faith but a distinction between scientific knowledge and faith knowledge.

Speaking strictly philosophically, if the God of Christianity exists then our knowledge of Him cannot be scientific knowledge. The God of Christianity is an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent person. He is Creator and Controller of all things. He will not be known by way of human scientific method because human scientific method requires immense degrees of experimental control. God will not be controlled and dissected by human instruments in order for us to get a good read on who He is. God will not jump through hoops over and over in order to satisfy our scientific requirement of repeatability. God controls us, we do not control Him. Our attempts to understand Him scientifically are attempts to assert ourselves as the true god.

Additionally, the God of Christianity is a subject not an object and He desires a relationship, not a cult of people who know a bunch of facts. The scientific method is useless for knowing a subject, a person. Go ahead and try to build a relationship with a woman using the scientific method. You will fail catastrophically. A man must come to know a woman on her terms, and we must come to know God on His.

Not only is the scientific method useless in gaining knowledge of a person, but any knowledge it might gain is the most superficial and meaningless knowledge possible. But that is another discussion.

So then I believe there are several ways to go about answering our initial question. One could respond that the two types of knowledge involved in knowing the ground will hold you up and knowing that Christianity is true are not able to be compared due to their different natures. One could argue that we can know that the ground will hold us up with a high degree of probability but that given the nature of knowledge of God probability simply does not and cannot apply. Still, one could assert that our knowledge of God transcends probability and enters the realm of intuition or of immediate and direct knowledge. Our knowledge of God is as clear as the noon day sun and as near as our bones. The truth of our knowledge of God is so plainly given by the world and by our experience that it simply is and to even assign a probability of 100% is an insult as it implicitly groups our knowledge of God in with scientific knowledge.

No man would ever say about his wife that he knows she loves him with a high degree of probability. No, love transcends probability. The man KNOWS his wife loves him. He has felt it, his soul has drank it.

As a final note, it is also important to remember what faith is. Faith is not belief in the existence of God. Faith is the substance of a life lived out in intimate connection with God. Faith knowledge goes much farther than scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge only seeks to control things for its benefit while faith knowledge seeks to shape a life in order to better glorify the One True God. So the question about the certainty of our claims about God is itself implicitly a misunderstanding of faith.

Existential Suicide

2011-07-22T13:18:00.001-07:00

I cannot get past Paul's command to "not be conformed to the pattern of this world." I believe that avoiding this kind of conformation is central to glorifying God, to experiencing the greatest joy, to knowing the highest truth, to being the greatest witness. The present age is evil. The city is evil, the crowd is evil, the course of this world, the culture is evil. If we let ourselves be conformed to the pattern of this world we will miss out on so so much that is Christianity. We will miss out on so much intimacy with Christ and so much of life to the full.

The Bible calls for drastic measures in avoiding conformation to the pattern of the world. Christians are called to kill their "self." Christians are called to put to death what is in them. In Colossians 3 Paul commands us to put to death all evil that is in ourselves. Among the evils he lists is "impurity." God wants us to be pure and unstained by the world. Christians are not called to obey a set of rules but to seek existential purity. The old self is nothing but corruption while the new self is of a pure heart with pure faith. God wants everything of the old self to go. Everything must die.

I think what is crucial to understanding Paul in Colossians 3 is that while he does provide a list of evils his focus is on "self" or identity. Paul is not calling us to check off a list of evils as we eliminate them from our lives, he is calling us to kill our very identity. Before coming to Christ we build our identity on anything and everything the world thinks is good. Our identity gets built on clothes, cars, money, good looks, sex, intelligence, etc. The self as a whole which is built on these delusions is a wrong "self". Our very "self" is wrong. We cannot correct our "self" because nothing about it has anything to do with God or His righteousness or holiness. God's plan for fixing us is not medicine and a bandage, but "self" suicide and resurrection.

It is when we have allowed God to kill the whole of our former "self" that we can be transformed. As our earthly bodies will not be transformed until they die and are resurrected, so our "self" or our identity will not be transformed until it has died.

We don't want to let go of our "self." To let go of our old "self" is humiliating and humbling. Letting go of our old "self" is admitting that our very being, our existential existence was nothing but wrong. I think we often limp around in our old "self." We begin to put to death our former ways but continue to live in that thing which is the old "self." We deal mortal wounds to the old "self" and yet refuse to let it die. We want to hold on to what is familiar, to what has been for so long the "I" in us.

Yet, even as we deal blow after blow to the old "self" if we do not kill it there is always the chance of its recovery. Letting the bleeding old "self" hang on is a great threat to our ability to know Christ. So Jesus has called us to death. He has called us to the cross that He bore. He has called us to entrust our "self" to God. Jesus calls us to existential suicide, He calls us to death that we might live.

If we would live we must die.

The Face of Jesus

2011-07-18T12:16:00.001-07:00

There is more to the world than the way things appear. I am an enthusiastic proponent of using paradox to describe the world, I believe there are many benefits to this approach. For example, I believe paradox implicitly communicates both transcendence and immanence simultaneously. Probably more than any other topic, I love using paradox to talk about Jesus. Jesus is fully God and fully Man. He totally exhausts and confounds all categories of knowledge that exist in the human mind. Yet, I've lately been thinking about the insufficiency of paradox as a concept to describe Jesus.

When it comes to language I firmly believe that nothing can more fully capture the nature of Jesus than paradox, but paradox is still a form of human knowledge (or at least has a relation to human knowledge because we know at least what a paradox is) and Jesus surpasses all human knowledge. It is not the nature of Jesus which must conform to our categories of knowledge but our ability to know which must conform to Him. Paradox is a sufficient way of describing Jesus if we think of Jesus as only a philosophical or theological concept i.e. the incarnation, but the problem is He isn't just a concept.

Rather than understanding Jesus as a theological concept we need to try to imagine what it would be like to see the face of Jesus. We need to pray that God would give us knowledge of His face. What would it be like to look on Jesus' face? To stare into His eyes? What would we see? How would we describe it? We might say, "Surely this is no man, this is the Creator of the universe, the eternal God." Yet, after a few moments we would be forced to confess that this is indeed a man. He is flesh and blood.

Imagine His eyes. In our friends' and loved one's eyes we catch the closest thing we can to a glimpse of their soul. We see who they are in their eyes. What would see in Jesus' eyes? What would we see in those depths and how would they stare back into our own? In the eyes of our loved one's we catch a glimpse of their soul, in the eyes of Jesus we would expect the same. In Jesus' eyes we get a small sight of His inner self yet more. A human soul stares through Jesus eyes and yet so does the I AM, the Eternally Existent ONE, Reality Himself, The Foundation of the Universe, YHWH, The Holy of Holies, the Fire blazing from 10 trillion suns. What stares back at us from the eyes of Jesus? We cannot speak of it, paradox cannot even begin to suggest what.

Our only response can be fear, wonder, trembling, and worship. Thank God that He gave us the Bible that we might know Him, and thank God that He is inexhaustibly mysterious and wonderful beyond any imagination or category of human knowledge.

The Meaning of Suffering

2011-07-16T09:21:00.003-07:00

Suffering for Christ is the highest and purest form of knowing God. Rather than theology teaching us what the significance of suffering is, I believe it is suffering which teaches us what the significance of theology is. The way we can know most about God is not the abstract and intellectual musings of theological books, but it is in living a life like Christ that we most directly and fully experience the knowledge of God.

Due to our tendency to over spiritualize things many people tend to reduce the significance of knowing God through life and favor high minded philosophizing of the Bible. But truly it is life which teaches us the most profound philosophical and theological truths. God made Adam to work the Garden, God made Adam intimately involved with the earth because the earth is good and everything in it. Often we want to know the meaning of things in life and we settle for a cheap and shallow interpretation of those things. I believe often the truth is that the things themselves are the meaning. God created the world with inherent meaning. God created us to see the meaning in things. The meaning of things is simply how they appear to us. I think we would do well to appreciate the world for how it is given to our immediate senses rather than trying to apply some kind of third party interpretation.

More than any other experience in the world, suffering for Christ is inherently meaningful. John 17:3 says that knowing the One true God and Jesus Christ is eternal life. Knowing God is eternal life. Jesus tells those who would learn from him and those who would come after him to take up his yoke and take up their cross. To take up Jesus' yoke and bear one's cross is to learn of Jesus, to know Jesus. The mark of Christianity is the cross. Jesus' life is marked by a death which he died for people who hated him in order to save them. It is through suffering and self-sacrifice, even unto death, that we can know Christ in the most intimate way. Knowing Jesus Christ is eternal life, so then it is in death that we find life.

The meaning of suffering is Jesus Christ and it is not through reading or writing or pondering that we can understand this meaning. Only in immediately experiencing suffering, only in immediately experiencing the knowledge and truth that come in suffering can we most deeply know Christ. The meaning of suffering is given in the immediacy of the suffering. In suffering for Christ we begin to learn of that unfathomable love which was displayed on the cross.

Paul was aware of how the meaning of suffering is given. Paul said, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death..." Knowing Christ, becoming like Christ is only given by suffering. Paul wanted to know, to truly know Christ's resurrection and His sufferings. Paul did not merely want to know Christ's resurrection! Paul did not just want to experience the power of Christ resurrection, he did not desire an easy way to salvation because he wanted to experience the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. Paul wanted to know Christ MOST intimately and so he greatly desired to suffer for Christ. Paul knew that if he only experienced the power of Christ's resurrection he would not fully know Christ. Paul's first desire was not for resurrection but for intimacy with Christ. Yet intimacy with Christ is resurrection, intimacy with Christ is eternal life.

So then, let us not discount the meaning of truth immediately given. Let us give proper emphasis to those things in life which can most truly teach us about Christ. Let us remember that it is the martyrs who have the most profound and rich knowledge of Christ, not the theologians. The meaning of suffering is Jesus Christ.

Reject the World and its Course!

2011-07-12T08:59:00.007-07:00

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying our the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3)

What a rich passage about the wicked nature of the world we live in. Thanks be to God for making us alive in Christ when we were dead, for seating us in the heavenly places with Christ! He has seated us in the heavenly places so that we are no longer a part of this world, we have been separated, made holy. We are wholly untouchable by the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air.

Yet, we must beware corruption from the path we once walked. We were dead men walking. We were alive, or at least we thought we were alive, we felt alive in certain ways and yet we were dead. We must beware this path of living death. This living death is the course of the world. This course of the world is the course of death, the course of the children of wrath, the course of the sons of disobedience. God's wrath is against the course of the world and everything about it.

We walked in this course our entire lives until we were saved. How much have we altered our course since receiving salvation? Pre and Post salvation, how different does our life look? If the course of the world is the course of disobedience and we want to obey Christ (and if we love Him we will obey Him) then we must completely change and let God change the course of our lives.

How do we know in what direction to go? We can begin by looking at the sons of disobedience and setting our minds on living a life that looks nothing like theirs. Yet, this is not nearly enough. To simply not do what the sons of disobedience do or even do the opposite of the sons of disobedience is not sufficient. First, if we simply do not do what the sons of disobedience do, or we do the opposite, our actions are still being determined by the sons of disobedience. This is not acceptable. Second, God has called us to action and the first step alone may result in inaction. Third, if we only perform this step of rejection we are likely to flee one kind of disobedience only to fall into another variety of equally wicked disobedience.

Instead of merely rejecting the course of the world we must, in addition, look to Jesus to determine what we must do, what path we should take. It is important that we first perform the step of rejecting the course of the world because if we look to Jesus for guidance, for a model of positive action, before having wholly rejected the course of the world as a course of complete disobedience we will be lead to compromise, to evade, to justify those parts of our life which still remain in the course that is of this world. In first rejecting this world as wholly wicked (by the power of Christ and His wisdom) we will be free to follow Him wholly.

There is a spirit which is at work in the sons of disobedience, and there is the Spirit of Christ which is at work in those who believe. The Spirit in the one who believes is at work to produce righteousness, holiness, obedience. The spirit which is at work in the sons of disobedience is at work to produce every kind of wickedness and hatred of God. The course of this world, the values of this world, the things of this world are nothing other than the course
which is laid down by the hands of the sons of disobedience. The course of the world, the everything that the world is from fashion and femininity to economics and politics is the product of that wicked spirit at work in the sons of disobedience.

If we follow any part of the course of this world we are waging war against ourselves, we wage war against our lives, we wage war against the very Spirit of Christ that is in us. The Spirit of Christ that is in us tells us to go right, but on the course of this world the path only bends left. If we remain on the course of this world we will be wholly unable to obey that Holy Spirit inside of us.

What the Holy Spirit says to do is not an option in this world. The Spirit of Christ says jump, but on the course of this world there is an incredibly low ceiling the very moment the Holy Spirit prompts us to jump. The course of the world, the path of disobedience will render obedience an impossibility. We must totally abandon the course of this world, we must wholly leave the path of the sons of disobedience and enter onto the narrow path.

The path is narrow because it is a path of obedience, a path of destiny, a path of joy and righteousness which God prepared just for us to walk in. The path is narrow because it is specific, the path is narrow because it was made only for you. God has a unique purpose for you. God wants to make you into a new and unique reflection of His Son. The narrow path that is only yours is designed as an exact match for your destiny and for your joy.

On the narrow path when the Spirit says jump an infinite sky will have opened up over your head. When God's Spirit says jump there will be a vast expanse of adventure and newness just overhead and just in the moment you jump the narrow path will shrink away beneath your feet. The narrow path is designed to loose you from the constraints of worldly impossibility.

When the Spirit of God inside of you says says to turn right the path ahead will only bend right. You can leave the path if you choose, but as long as you are on the path you can only veer right. If the Spirit says left the path will veer left. If the Spirit says 'choose' the path will split into a vast multitude each leading to the next segment of your narrow path.

We must pray and discern, we must seek God in rooting out those parts of our lives which still adhere to the course of this world. This world is deeply ingrained in our minds and in our souls and God wants to destroy the world's imprint and replace it with His own. We must take nothing for granted about the way we see the world and the way we act in the world. When we walked in the path of disobedience it was ALL wretched and God wants to change ALL of it.

Mixed Metaphors and Mysticism

2011-07-09T09:48:00.002-07:00

As far as words go, I think nothing carries me closer to the knowledge of God than a writer mixing metaphors. In our everyday lives we are limited to our five senses. I believe what the mixing of metaphors does is use language to synthesize new senses, new ways to know or think about knowing God. A "synthetic" sense is something like seeing sound or feeling color, eyes that hear and a nose that feels.

We all have a mystical side, an ability to experience the divine which goes beyond our basic five senses and I think the mixing of metaphors helps to make that sixth sense intelligible to the logical part of our mind by making those things which are inexpressible somewhat expressible. Yet, this relationship is not a perfect one in either direction.

I also feel that the mixing of metaphors, in some cases, gives access to knowledge and content which the mystical part of human experience is unable to experience. Additionally, mixed metaphors cannot always shed light on mystical experiences nor can they ever fully capture their essence. Mixed metaphors and mysticism are complimentary but they do not fit together perfectly.

When metaphors are mixed they lead the mind down a particular path, say one which emphasizes sight by depicting the beauty of the fields turning gold as the seasons turn and then suddenly swerves by speaking of visible beauty in terms of an audible quality. Something like, "The grasses of the field sung gold as combed by the wind." Hopefully that example was somewhat illustrative. I love reading mixed metaphors and I think I can appreciate some of their value, but I am still unsure how to effectively use their intricacies as a tool for my own expression.

Virtuoso of Grace

2011-07-09T09:17:00.003-07:00

First of all, I apologize to anyone who is well versed in music because the musical metaphors in this post are probably lacking in accordance with my lack of musical knowledge.

Last night I had a dream of a song which included the idea of God being a virtuoso of grace. I don't think there is any song I've ever heard that has a line like that so I don't think it's a real song. Either way, I found it to be a beautiful expression of the work of God.

According to the dictionary "virtuoso" simply refers to a person who is an expert in any field. I have only heard the word used in reference to musical genius so I personally reserve the word to compliment a person's musical ability. Because my mind associates "virtuoso" with music the idea of God being a "virtuoso of grace" immediately evokes musical overtones in my thoughts. For me, the fact that God is a virtuoso implies that his work is with music, his genius is applied to sound. And yet, His music is His grace in the lives of those who are and are being redeemed.

Grace and redemption is music. As each note falls in such a way that the next note is heard as beautiful and as each falls in such a way that the previous note is heard as beautiful so it is with God's symphony of grace. One note does not necessitate the next, any particular note could follow any other particular note but all of the notes work together as an incomprehensible and beautiful whole. The structure of the song is random and purposeful. It is planned and yet free. It remains on the fixed path and yet roams.

God is a genius, a virtuoso, He uses the rising and the falling, the breaking and the crashing, the shaking and sweeping together to make a beautiful noise. His symphony is a rushing sound, it is roaring thunder, it is gentle rain. It is deafening and knee-weakening and it refreshes the soul and speaks sweet love to the heart. His song, when listened for, will consume your entire being. His song is not audible with the ear but instead with the mind, heart, soul and body. His song is an experience which is soaked in by your entire being. His song is being sung now even as it is being written. The song of the Christ will be heard throughout eternity. As we now cannot grasp the full beauty of a symphony neither will we be able understand the intricacies and mysteries of this Song of Songs.

A single note from His song will bring a son or a daughter to salvation and the salvation of a lost child is a single note. When the song is heard the hearer worships the work and the genius of the virtuoso. God is conducting an orchestra full of people with broken instruments. God is playing a violin with strings that are constantly snapping. Out of nothing and out of brokeness He is making his masterpiece. Listen.

Human Knowledge and Infinite Love

2011-07-05T10:50:00.004-07:00

In Ephesians 3:19 Paul prays for the impossible to be accomplished in the believers at Ephesus. He asks that the Ephesians would be able to know the unknowable. Paul asks that they would be able to "know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge." Paul desires that the believers at Ephesus would know a truth which is too great to be known.

Paul does not desire that the Ephesians know the love of Christ to the degree to which their knowledge can comprehend. He is not asking that they would know an aspect of the love of Christ but rather, he wants them to know the fullness of the love of Christ. He prays that the finite believers at Ephesus would be able to know an infinite love. How is this possible?

First of all, I think the tension that is apparent in this verse is a tension which really exists in the whole Bible. The Bible is the revelation of God, it is the way we know God, so the entire Bible is a book which seeks to reveal an infinite God to finite people. It is essential to maintain the aforementioned tension because we can love, worship, and wonder at God for what we know about Him and we can always long for Him and long for more of Him knowing there is always more to Him which we have never experienced. Every aspect of God's character is both knowable and unknowable. He has made Himself both lucid and mysterious to those whom He loves.

But back to the primary question, How is it possible to know something which surpasses knowledge? Was Paul's prayer futile? I do not believe so. Earlier in the chapter Paul prays that the believers would be strengthened by God in order to comprehend this knowledge-surpassing love. Can God then make it possible for a finite being to know something which is infinite? Can God do the impossible, the paradoxical? I do think so, but I also think there is more that can be said about how God does this paradoxical action.

1 Corinthians 6:17 says that those who believe in Christ are made to be one spirit with Him. The infinite Spirit of Christ joins with and becomes one with the finite spirit in humans. I believe that it is because of this oneness with Christ Himself that we are able to know an infinite love. We know His love by way of experience, we know an infinite love by literally becoming one with it. We are absorbed into it. So then, the way God strengthens us to know His love is by making us one with Himself.

Now, of course, it is still a mystery how an finite spirit existing within an infinite one can know that infinite spirit exhaustively, indeed we seem to have arrived at the very problem which we began with. Yet, I think from the position we have arrived at, we have come to understand that the type of knowing which must take place for us to know the full love of Christ is much different than any type of knowing which we have ever experienced. We are used to knowledge which occupies a small part of our brain, this knowing consumes and flows through our entire being. I also don't want to give the impression that I consider the above discussion as a definitive way to understand knowing the infinite. I think that the above imagery might possibly be helpful, but that fundamentally we must accept that this knowledge of infinite love is a paradox which we cannot comprehend. In fact, it is a double paradox because we cannot comprehend how it is one might comprehend infinite love.

As a side note, I am also not entirely comfortable with talk of being absorbed into and engulfed by the love of Christ because this type of talk is reminiscent of Eastern thought which holds that we are absorbed into an infinite and lose any sense of self-hood or personal identity. The Bible is clear that we are made one with Christ, yet we maintain our personal identity. We will be eternally our own individual, so much so that we will have an eternal tangible resurrection body. We will always be One with Christ but we will always be distinctly ourselves. Indeed we could not be loved at all if we did not remain distinct individuals. Love requires more than one. Love requires a lover and a beloved.

Why Philosophy?

2011-07-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything. ~ Hegel

I'm not sure what the general opinion is toward philosophy among those few who frequent this blog, but I thought the above quote served well to explain why I enjoy reading and discussing philosophy. I do not consider myself a "scholar" by any stretch of the imagination but I do agree with the notion that there is much to be gained in being able to see the positive merit in all ideas. I find that simply the exposure to different strains of thinking and different ways of looking at the world gives me fresh perspective and new insight into scripture and life in general. Much of the time I disagree with the central tenants of the philosophy I read, but I still find that they have a lot of interesting and productive things to say.

Identity: You Shall Become Who You Are

2011-07-04T12:39:00.007-07:00

"You shall become who you are." is a central idea in Nietzsche's existential philosophy. The quote is taken from his work The Gay Science. What is implied by the aforementioned idea is that right now you are not who you are. Who you are, what your identity is, is currently undetermined. Who you are is what you will become. Who you are is still to be determined by the choices and actions in your life.

I believe Nietzsche is on to a real and important truth regarding personal identity which can also be found in the Bible. There are, of course, differences in the way Nietzsche understood this aspect of personal identity which are not compatible with the Bible. For example, Nietzsche held that an individual is nothing more than the sum of their thoughts, decisions, and actions. He believed that the human is totally free to determine what kind of person they are going to be, what their identity will be, and nothing else has ultimate authority over one's identity besides one's self. The Bible, on the other hand, clearly emphasizes that we have personal responsibility and therefore are responsible for who we become and yet, at the same time, God remains sovereign over who we are and it is He who pays our sin, buys us back from slavery, and makes us sons and daughters. In Christianity it is both ourselves and God who fully and paradoxically have the final say over who we become.

A really illuminating example from scripture concerning this discussion is found in Judges 6:12. In Judges 6 an angel of the LORD appears to Gideon to call him to service for the glory of God and the liberation of Israel. The angel of the LORD finds Gideon threshing wheat in a wine press in order to hide from the Midianites who were oppressing Israel at the time. When the angel of the LORD addresses Gideon he says, "The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor." The angel, observing Gideon hiding from his foes, refers to him as a "mighty man of valor." Now, either the angel doesn't know what he is talking about or there is something more to Gideon and more to the identity of a human than what they are at a given moment.

The angel must have understood Gideon's identity in the way Nietzsche understood identity. The angel must have looked at Gideon and thought "You shall become who you are." Or, more precisely, "I will make you who you are." Who Gideon was at the moment the angel spoke to him was more than what Gideon was at that moment. Gideon's identity was more than who he was. Gideon had not yet become who he was. Gideon was not Gideon. Gideon was becoming Gideon. Gideon was being made by the LORD into himself. God was turning Gideon into Gideon.

God has predestined all Christians to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus. We shall become who we are. We are like Jesus. Jesus is our identity. Who you are right now is not who you are, yet you are who you are becoming. Who you are right now is determined by who you shall become and we can rest in the fact that we have been predestined to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus. Our becoming like Jesus, our becoming who we are does not depend on our strength, but on He who provides strength.

You are who God is making you into. You are who God says you are. We shall all become like Him. We are like Him, Jesus is who we are.

The Unfading Beauty

2011-06-26T22:06:00.000-07:00

He that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires:
As old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.

But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires,
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires.
Where these are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.

-Thomas Carew

The Resurrection and an Upside-Down World

2011-06-23T21:28:00.007-07:00

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is essential to every aspect of Christianity. Here I want to talk about how it is essential to establishing the upside-down order of the Kingdom of God. It is in the Resurrection that we find the basis for all of the backward-sounding paradoxical things Jesus said like, "The first will be last and the last will be first."

Without the Resurrection all of the paradoxical things Jesus said are just total nonsense. If Christ is not resurrected then the servants are not the leaders, the servants are the servants! The Resurrection is the principle on which all of Jesus' upside-down teachings are based. Not only that, the resurrection is the metaphysical or mystical source of truth for all of Jesus' paradoxical teachings. In the Resurrection death was turned to life. Death became life. Jesus allowed Himself to be killed in order to conquer death. He made his death into life for the world. He made life, or trying to preserve one's life, into death. In trying to preserve one's life one rejects the only path that Jesus made to eternal life and therefore finds death. Self sacrifice and self death is the only way to know, love, and experience Jesus. To follow Christ is to share in His sufferings.

If death itself is now life then all of life is changed. It is now in death that one finds life. It is in losing one's life that one finds it. It is in trying to preserve one's life that one loses it. Because death is now life and life is now death, everything about the human experience is changed. All of life down to the smallest detail is changed because the nature of life as a whole is changed.

Defeat is now victory (Colossians 2:15). Shame is now glory. Servants are now the greatest. The first are last and the last are first. Now. Not in some future place, but now. When Jesus was resurrected all of these principles were turned upside-down.

The Christian cannot miss out on this aspect of the Kingdom. We must reconsider everything, EVERYTHING that we have been taught by the world. The world is opposed to the Kingdom of God. The world is literally the opposite of the Kingdom of God. The world looks right-side-up and the Kingdom of God looks upside-down. They are opposed. They are opposite.

If we believe anything about Jesus we must believe this, that the resurrection changes everything. It changes more than we have yet thought or imagined. The resurrection changes (or wants to change) parts of our understanding that have, over time, become so intrinsic to our way of looking at the world that it will take a lot of pain and struggle to allow God to reorient us.

The Spirit of Christ dwells in us and He wants more of us. Christ's Spirit is not at home with most of our spirits because His Spirit dwells upside-down while many of ours still dwell right-side-up. Only Christ can fix us, we have to wholly surrender to Him.

"These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also..." -Acts 17

The Voice of Desire

2011-06-20T20:39:00.003-07:00

No one comes unless they're drawn by the voice of desire that leads em' along. -Josh Garrels

The above lyric from Josh Garrels' song Beyond the Blue really made me think about John 6:44 in a whole new way. For some reason, I have always understood the concept of the Father "drawing" people to Jesus in very physical terms. The image I've always maintained in my head is one of literal magnetism or even a person being pulled along by an invisible rope. While I don't think these images are wrong I do think they're really incomplete. Josh Garrels really put the verse in terms for me that give it a whole new meaning. I think Garrels got it just right, at least it seems to be the case in my experience with God.

I think it is OK and even illuminating to understand John 6:44 in terms of physical imagery or in terms of theological ideas like predestination or irresistible grace, but I think Garrels' words add much to this scripture. Yet, I may even dare to say that Garrels gets it the most correct.

I believe each of us desires God because we were made for Him, but I believe that sin can and does kill this desire. Sin messes us up that bad. God has to recreate in us the desire for Him. Once God has created in us the desire for Himself we really can do nothing but pursue the fulfillment of that desire and it never finds fulfillment except in Him (this is where ideas like irresistible grace can come in).

What I believe holds the most truth in Garrels' lyric is that the work of the drawing is done by a voice. It is a voice that draws us, not a rope or magnet, not a theological notion. It is important to emphasize the fact that we are drawn by a voice and not any of these other things. If we understand our being drawn to Jesus in term of ropes or magnets we make God out to be very thing-like. God is not a thing, He is not an object, He is a person. If we understand our being drawn to Jesus in high theological terms we make God out to be a dry and predictable thing, almost like a machine which behaves according to set patterns. Obviously both of these ways are inadequate, inappropriate, and impious ways of understanding God or how He draws people.

If we understand God's drawing as the Voice of Desire we recognize that God is a person, that He is a mysterious and lovely person, and that He fulfills the deeps of our soul. Every Christian knows the Voice of Desire. I think non-Christians can also much more readily identify with the Voice of Desire than they can an idea like irresistible grace. The Voice of Desire is like life, irresistible grace can sound like a stuffy classroom.

It is the Voice of Desire that leads us along and this Voice is dynamic and elusive. It whispers in the quiet of a summer night and it sings to you in the raptures of a first love. The Voice of Desire may seem less secure than a rope, but it's not. The Voice is the surest and most solid thing there is. It is our insecurities and the whispers of a liar which try to convince us that the Voice is not enough.

Two States

2011-06-20T11:24:00.003-07:00

There are two and only two possible states for all love relationships. A relationship can either be in a state of increasing intimacy or a state of decreasing intimacy. It is not possible to be in a state of steady, constant, or unchanging intimacy in a love relationship. The two possible states of a relationship apply both to love relationships between people as well as an individual's relationship with God.

Intimacy is the result of communication, unity, and connectedness. To constantly pursue communication, unity, and connectedness is to grow in intimacy. To neglect these three is to decrease in intimacy, to grow apart. Intimacy results from great amounts of time spent pursuing communication, unity, and connectedness. Meanwhile, time spent without communication etc. is time which pulls two people apart.

When two people in a love relationship do not choose to communicate etc. their life goes on, they do not have to choose to keep living life, life happens whether they want it to or not. As life happens people change, grow, and learn. We are made into a slightly different person everyday. If communication etc. does not keep up with the changes of life intimacy is destroyed. Intimacy is about mutual self-disclosure, it's about knowing and being known. If a person is going through experiences and is being changed in life and fails to make these things known to their partner in a love relationship their partner knows less and less about them and intimacy decreases.

One can easily see from the nature of intimacy and of life why it is not possible to be in a steady state of intimacy. If a two people in a love relationship fail to communicate etc. they will decrease in intimacy as they gradually know less and less about their partner. Meanwhile, if two people in a love relationship maintain constant communication etc. they will constantly grow in intimacy, always knowing their love at a deeper and deeper level as they grow and change right along with their love. Not only does the constant communication allow each person in a love relationship to keep up with the changes in their partner, it allows them to always go deeper and deeper into the soul of their love because they do not have to spend time just trying to catch up on superficial details.

The love relationship which is characterized by constant communication etc. is one which brings about the deepest satisfaction as a result of the deepest intimacy. Each person in a constantly communicative relationship knows all of the superficial details of their partners life, they are always knowing more about the deeps of their partner, and they understand the very ebb and flow of their partners life, the rhythm of their life. Deep knowledge of another person requires a lot of time and effort, but it is the most satisfying experience on earth.

One can easily see how the above discussion applies to an individual's relationship with God. If one fails to pursue God on a daily basis, if one fails to seek Him in prayer and scripture and life one will not maintain a constant level of intimacy with God. A person who does not seek God everyday will grow apart from Him, they will not stand in a constant relationship to Him.

I believe another important factor to consider in this discussion is the aspect of presence. I believe the stakes are higher for changes in intimacy levels when a bodily presence is constant. When two people are far away from each other and communicate less because they are unable, I think this is less detrimental to intimacy than a lack of communication when two people live in the same house. A lack of communication etc. in the midst of a constant bodily presence is of greater detriment to intimacy because of the ease with which one can maintain good communication and yet still neglects to do so. Lack of good communication during a state of constant bodily presence ends up communicating many things which are highly detrimental to intimacy such as negligence, apathy, and carelessness toward a loved one.

Of course, the way presence influences factors contributing to changing levels of intimacy is even greater when it comes to God. God is omnipresent. He is everywhere all the time. Not only that, but for those who believe in Jesus God lives inside of you. He makes Himself one with you in spirit. There can be no greater sense of presence than the reality of a person who lives inside of you. Our failure to maintain communication with God then is obviously highly detrimental to our intimacy with Him. He is always with us and He is always a prayer, a word away from us. We must always be seeking to know Him more, to grow in Him and with Him more.

So in all of our relationships let us maintain a state of increasing intimacy by maintaining good communication with those we love.

Missionary Story

2011-06-19T14:49:00.001-07:00

I recently read an article about a missionary family living in Nepal that has been sent by my new church in Portland. Reading the article created a great longing in me because they are living the life that Christ has called me to. I am anxious to fulfill my calling in the way that this couple has. The article is linked below.

Missionary Story

Letter to my Dad on Father's Day: Lion and the Lamb

2011-06-19T00:00:00.010-07:00

Dear Dad,
I want to take this Father's Day as an opportunity to thank you for all that you are, all that you've done, all that you do, and all that you've taught me. There are so many people in this world who have no dad at all and yet I've not only been blessed with a dad but a dad who models Christ in so many ways.

It has only been recently that I've come to appreciate something that you've taught me by the example of your life. I believe it has taken a lot of God's work in my heart and a lot of growing up for me to appreciate the way you model the precious balance of Lion and Lamb. All men are called to be both Lion and Lamb, just like Jesus, but I don't know many who actually do it. I don't know how you do it, but you do it beautifully and I am so grateful for it. I do pray that God would bless me with this essential and wonderful fatherly characteristic of Lion and Lamb.

Being both Lion and Lamb is essential to real manhood and real fatherhood. The man who is only a Lion is unfeeling and can be a bully or a tyrant to his family. The man who is only a Lamb is a coward and a pushover who may fail at both providing for and protecting his family. The man who is both Lion and Lamb knows how to love, he knows gentleness and kindness, but he is also strong, tough and unafraid of confrontation for the sake of defending or disciplining his family. The family of the man who is both Lion and Lamb can appreciate his gentleness all the more because of his strength and they can appreciate his discipline all the more because of his kindness. Once again, I cannot thank you enough for modeling this for me.

Thank you for teaching me to love, for teaching me to fight, for teaching me to be gentle, and for teaching me to handle rough situations. I am proud that my dad was always the strongest guy I knew and that he wrote poetry. I am grateful that my dad always pushed me to be better and always made it clear that he loved me no matter what I achieved.

I am indebted to your love and sternness in ways that will be reveal for the rest of my life. I may never fully come to understand in this life all of the ways my character has been built by you. I am, in the most important ways, the result of your good fathering and I am so proud to call myself your son.

I love you always dad,
Addison

Philosophy as a Wrecking Ball

2011-06-16T11:00:00.003-07:00

Recently I was thinking on why it is that I enjoy Philosophy so much. I came to the conclusion that the reason why I enjoy it is that it acts as a kind of wrecking ball to destroy my preconceived notions about the way the world works. Philosophy takes no thought, no object, no thing for granted. Philosophy seeks truth by scrutinizing and criticizing the tiniest aspects of the way we understand our reality. Philosophy seeks truth by attempting to root out falsehood.

The one who enjoys Philosophy must hold onto its ideas loosely or risk losing its "wrecking ball" effects. For, if one simply takes their preexisting prejudices and replaces them with other prejudices from different sources besides himself he has moved no closer to the truth.

Of course, I do not believe Philosophy can achieve truth by itself. I believe Philosophy is a useful tool that can abolish one's preconceived notions about the world, but it is God who then must replace former false notions with true ones. I believe Philosophy can, to an extent, be an aid in understanding truth as revealed by God because it forces us, by way of logic, to give up false opinions. The result of having one's views destroyed by Philosophy and not having God there to replace them is Post-Modernism. Post-Modernism holds that there is no truth, and one who studies Philosophy can see the pull of this viewpoint. Post-Modernism is a testament to the destructive force which Philosophy can have on our ideas.

I think Philosophy is useful for not allowing out minds to be "conformed to the pattern of this world," but obviously it is God who must "transform you by the renewing of your mind."

For added clarification, what I am not saying is that Philosophy helps you to understand Theology better. Theology is nothing more than Philosophy about God. I believe Philosophy CAN help clear your mind so that the spirit can teach you all things.

"The power of talk to perplex can have a genuine philosophical function: by confounding preconceptions, it is capable of opening up a view of the true relationships of things."
-Gadamer

The Wild Knight

2011-06-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

The following is a poem that I love by G.K. Chesterton.

The Wild Knight

The wasting thistle whitens on my crest,
The barren grasses blow upon my spear,
A green, pale pennon: blazon of wild faith
And love of fruitless things: yea, of my love,
Among the golden loves of all the knights,
Alone: most hopeless, sweet, and blasphemous,
The love of God:
I hear the crumbling creeds
Like cliffs washed down by water, change, and pass;
I hear a noise of words, age after age,
A new cold wind that blows across the plains,
And all the shrines stand empty; and to me
All these are nothing: priests and schools may doubt
Who never have believed; but I have loved.
Ah friends, I know it passing well, the love
Wherewith I love; it shall not bring to me
Return or hire or any pleasant thing--
Ay, I have tried it: Ay, I know its roots.
Earthquake and plague have burst on it in vain
And rolled back shattered--
Babbling neophytes!
Blind, startled fools--think you I know it not?
Think you to teach me? Know I not His ways?
Strange-visaged blunders, mystic cruelties.
All! all! I know Him, for I love Him. Go!

So, with the wan waste grasses on my spear,
I ride for ever, seeking after God.
My hair grows whiter than my thistle plume,
And all my limbs are loose; but in my eyes
The star of an unconquerable praise:
For in my soul one hope for ever sings,
That at the next white corner of a road
My eyes may look on Him....
Hush--I shall know
The place when it is found: a twisted path
Under a twisted pear-tree--this I saw
In the first dream I had ere I was born,
Wherein He spoke....
But the grey clouds come down
In hail upon the icy plains: I ride,
Burning for ever in consuming fire.

Feeling Toward God

2011-06-13T19:28:00.003-07:00

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. -Acts 17:27

I read this passage a few months ago and fell in love with it. I've read Acts before, but I do not ever remember reading this passage until my most recent reading of Acts. It is a beautiful expression of the most profound dimension of human life. Every human has in them an innate desire for God. Everyone longs for His presence and for His love.

God designed that our deep longing for Him would cause every person to "feel their way toward him and find him." What Acts is talking about I consider to be the deepest reality I have ever experienced, it is the first guide of life. It is this longing which dictates everything that humans do. Those who reject Jesus fill this longing with other things. Those who have never heard of Jesus have no choice but to continue in their longing or find some kind of a substitute.

I think this passage is one of the most subtle and poetic yet forceful calls to missions. Part of God's design in people finding Him is that they have a way to find Him. We know that there is only one way to find Him, Jesus Christ. The call to missions is a call to provide the way for the nations, to provide that which will save their feeling toward God from futility.

God's design for all of human kind is set up in the way that Acts speaks about. This means that the Gospel reaching all people in all nations, no matter their time period or dwelling place, is part of God's plan. People are designed to feel toward God, they are designed to feel toward Jesus, toward the Gospel. We have to take them what they are feeling toward.

I think Lewis best captured the essence of what all people feel as they feel toward God, "The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing - to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from - my country, the place where I ought to have been born."

Augustine provides a description of what it is like to reach the God toward which we all feel, "Sometimes you cause me to enter into an extraordinary depth of feeling marked by a strange sweetness."

Heidegger Paper

2011-06-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

Without reading Being and Time this paper is probably difficult to understand, but I really enjoyed writing it so I thought I'd post it anyway.

**"Dasein" basically means pure human existence.

“Dasein’s resoluteness towards itself is what first makes it possible to let the Others who are with it ‘be’ in their ownmost potentiality-for-being, and to co-disclose this potentiality in the solicitude which leaps forth and liberates.”

From my first reading of Being and Time the above selection stood out to me as expressing the most profound dimension of Heidegger’s overall project. Earlier in the work, Heidegger states “…Dasein’s being is being-with, its understanding of being already implies the understanding of Others” (pg. 233). Human existence or Dasein is inherently relational. I am reminded of a quote from Hegel, “Existence as determinate being is in essence being for another.” Dasein is not Dasein at all without being-with or having an understanding of Others. Intuitively and from everyday experience Heidegger seems to be correct. Not only does it seem when one looks around them that being-with is an essential dimension of Dasein, but it is also expressed explicitly in the actions and words of Dasein. Most people will affirm that their relation to some Other is what they value most in their life.

It is clear that the other-directed dimension of Dasein is extremely important both prior to and after achieving a state of authenticity. Because Dasein’s being is being-with it is impossible for Dasein to have being at all if it does not maintain a state of being-with. Achieving authenticity, as Heidegger makes clear, can therefore not involve a total separation or detachment from Others. If Dasein sought total detachment from Others it would no longer be in a state of being-with and would therefore no longer be Dasein at all. Rather than achieving authenticity or overcoming the “they” involving separation from Others, it both requires and enables a corrected, elevated, or “authentic” state of being-with.

The corrected or authentic state of being-with that Dasein can achieve by overcoming the “they” opens up a new and authentic way to “be with one another” (pg. 252). I understand Heidegger to be saying that it is not possible to “be with one another” unless Dasein itself is a “one.” A “one” (Dasein) cannot be with another “one” (Dasein) or the “they” (which is a one) unless that Dasein is itself a “one.” If a Dasein is not an individual, a “one,” then it is part of the “they.” The “they” cannot stand in relation to itself because in order for a relation to exist more than one thing must exist. The “they” is one and only one and can therefore not have a true relation. Dasein also, if part of the “they”, is not a one, but is absorbed in the “one” of the “they” and can therefore not stand in relation to anything. Dasein then, in its authenticity, achieves for itself the new possibility of genuinely or authentically “being-with” by becoming a “one.” Becoming a “one” is achieved by separating from the “they.” “Being-with” which is an essential dimension of Dasein’s existence is itself not fully possible without Dasein achieving a state of authenticity. As was mentioned before, authenticity in “being-with” is both a dimension of authenticity as a whole as well as a part of the process of becoming genuinely authentic, for Dasein’s existence is being-with and it can therefore not have authentic existence without authentically being-with.

Overcoming the “they” and authentically “being-their-selves” is a process by which Dasein rejects both the values and ideas of the “they” and the things the “they” “want to undertake.” In overcoming the “they” and achieving for itself authenticity Dasein gains a better, indeed a truer understanding of its being. Dasein does not take for granted those concepts and values that have been passed over and labeled as understood, Heidegger writes, “Overnight, everything that is primordial gets glossed over as something that has long been well known.” Dasein seeks to find the primordial or original nature of its being. In rejecting or overcoming the “they” or what is held up as true by the “they” Dasein achieves resoluteness or authenticity about or toward itself; Dasein becomes a “one.”

Not only is Heidegger’s emphasis on achieving authenticity inherently other-directed, but it is benevolent in its other-directedness. The resolute or authentic Dasein becomes what Heidegger calls the “conscience” of Others. I take Heidegger to mean a couple different things with the idea of the resolute or authentic Dasein being the “conscience” of Others. Most obviously, the authentic Dasein stands as a contrast to the “they.” The authentic Dasein acts as a kind of moral compass which is a contrast against the inauthenticity of the “they,” for if the inauthenticity of the “they” is all that a Dasein is familiar with then they have nowhere else to turn or look. The authentic Dasein then, is a kind of golden-example of being which can be looked to. At the same time, and I believe in a more effectual manner, the authentic Dasein is the “conscience” of Others in a kind of experiential sense. In its authenticity and its authentic being-with, the authentic Dasein stands in relation to the “they” and in some sense in relation to Others. Dasein cannot authentically be-with another Dasein which is part of the “they” because the Dasein which is still part of the “they” is itself not a “one” and can therefore not stand in relation to nor be stood in relation to. Yet, in some sense, Dasein maintains an authentic being-with other Dasein who are still part of the “they” and in doing so it enables those Dasein to have a degree, type, or foretaste of authenticity.

It seems that the Dasein (which is part of the “they,” and a part of the Other) which the authentic Dasein stands in relation to is both authentic and inauthentic at the same time. The inauthentic Dasein achieves a kind of authentic being-with when the authentic Dasein is with Others. I say the Others, or the Dasein which is part of the Others is both authentic and inauthentic at the same time because Heidegger, in the same breath, states that the authentic Dasein makes it possible for the Others to ‘be’ authentic and discloses “this potentiality in the solicitude.” The Dasein as part of the Others is both informed about and able to experience the nature of authentic being in authentic being-with as the authentic Dasein enables.

Heidegger states that the “solicitude,” authenticity, or resoluteness of the authentic Dasein “leaps forth and liberates.” The authentic state which the resolute Dasein has achieved by overcoming the “they” has the ability, according to Heidegger, to actually “liberate.” The authentic Dasein exists in a kind of freedom which the Others know nothing about. Dasein’s authentic being-with is clearly portrayed by Heidegger as a benevolent other-directed dimension as it has the potential to release or liberate the Others from a kind of captivity. The Others are held captive by the “they.”

Not only does the authentic Dasein’s authentic being-with have benevolent implications for the Others who are with it, but it has great benefit for the personal and intimate relationships of the authentic Dasein. Heidegger writes, “Only by authentically being-their-selves in resoluteness can people authentically be with one another.” While a single authentic Dasein can to an extent experience authentic being-with by being with Others who are part of the “they,” it seems the fullness of being-with requires two authentic Dasein. Two authentic Dasein both in a mutual state of being-with in relation to one another would seem to be the most authentic state a Dasein can be in. Dasein’s being is being-with, so for two Dasein to authentically be-with one another is the only way for Dasein to truly and mutually be with another. When two Dasein are each individually a “one,” only then can they authentically stand in relation to one another. Both Dasein in an authentic pair are a “one” individually and are therefore both capable of standing in relation to another “one;” in such a situation is mutual authentic being-with. It would seem that such a state of mutual authentic being-with would enable a kind of deeper relation or intimacy between Dasein which is not achievable by any Dasein which remains part of the “they.”

Because the nature of Dasein and by extension the nature of authentic Dasein is being-with and is therefore other-directed no one could legitimately level the claim at Heidegger that his Existentialist Philosophy (even though he rejected the title) is ultimately a philosophy of selfishness or self-involvement. Heidegger’s philosophy is inherently other-directed and would therefore not even warrant this criticism, but if one were to criticize him in this way he could respond in a couple of different manners. First, because Dasein’s being is being-with the project of achieving authenticity must involve a continuous being-with. Dasein can never realize its ownmost potentiality-for-being without being-with. If anything, Heidegger is emphasizing the absolutely essential other-directedness of Dasein’s being, this is in no way a philosophy of selfishness.

The benevolent aspect of Dasein’s pursuit of authenticity can also be cited as a response to criticisms concerning excessive self-involvement. Heidegger’s quest for authenticity and authentic Dasein is a very close parallel to the pursuits of the Abrahamic faiths, none of which is accused of excessive self-involvement. As Islam sees ignorance as the fundamental problem with humanity and Christianity sees sin (or rebellion against the will of God) as the fundamental problem with humanity, Heidegger sees Dasein’s misunderstanding of its being as the most fundamental problem. Heidegger’s philosophy attempts to show the way to a kind of salvation, a salvation found in authentic being which, of course, includes and requires authentic being-with. The authentic Dasein has the ability to bring this existential salvation to Others by both informing and giving a foretaste of authenticity through authentic being-with. Interestingly, Jesus’ ministry, as attested to in the Bible, had a very similar nature. Jesus came both to teach and to give a foretaste of the Kingdom of God.

Fornication, Adultery, and Homosexuality

2011-06-13T11:59:00.000-07:00

I have a great interest in thinking on the existential implications of both marital intimacy and promiscuity. I find it productive to think on such things as it gives me ever more reason and motivation to strive for greater purity as well as increases my appreciation for marriage and what it will be to me, if God so blesses me.

An idea which I have recently considered is the physical/mystical connection between fornication, adultery, and homosexuality. Central to the biblical understanding of sex is the idea of two flesh becoming one flesh. I believe this union of flesh is complete during sexual intercourse, but I also believe that one can have varying degrees of oneness of flesh through lesser sexual acts (even possibly lustful thoughts).

Due to the oneness that results from any kind of sexual intimacy between two people it seems to me that any kind of promiscuity, whether fornication or adultery is, in a sense, homosexuality. If a woman is united to a man they experience a oneness of flesh that cannot be undone without an act of God. If that same woman is then united to another man the second man is then united both to the woman and the other man. The man experiences oneness with another man because the woman he experiences oneness with has a oneness with another man.

There are endless existential implications to the fact that any kind of promiscuity is, in a sense, an act of homosexuality. Promiscuity is soul-destroying to an extent which few, if any, have fully considered. God wants what is best for us. He wants us to be fully and only one and fully and only in oneness with one other individual. In this pure and holy oneness of marriage deep satisfaction is found. To taint this purity is to bring misery on one's very soul.

Thoughts on Theology, Religious Experience, and Superficiality

2011-06-13T11:39:00.001-07:00

"But just as there is an empty breadth, so too is there an empty depth; and just as there is an extension of substance that pours forth as a finite multiplicity without the force to hold the multiplicity together, so there is an intensity without content, one that holds itself as a sheer force without spread, and this is in no way distinguishable from superficiality." - Hegel

The above quote is taken from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. The quote refers to the difference between a kind of Religious Experience or Religious Mysticism and Science. I am here using it as a reference to compare Religious Experience and Theology, which maintain a tension similar to the one between Religion and Science.

I believe those who give primacy to Religious Experience and those who give primacy to Theology in Christian spiritual formation are both guilty of superficiality. Those who give primacy to Religious Experience have an "intensity without content" and those who give primacy to Theology have a "finite multiplicity without the force to hold the multiplicity together." The staunch theologians have no depth to their understanding of God while the mystics have no breadth.

Ephesians 3:18 is a call to comprehend the breadth and length, height and depth of the love of Christ. To comprehend something is to have full grasp of it. We would be wise then to not neglect any aspect of the love of God or the knowledge of God. We must pursue knowledge of God with both our hearts and minds. We cannot afford to be heartless theologians or mindless mystics. We are called to be mystic theologians and theological mystics.

God Works All Things for Good pt. 2

2011-06-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

As a logical extension of my last post and as attested to by scripture it is safe to say that the contrast resulting from the Fall which will enable humanity as a whole to enjoy God to a greater extent also functions on the individual level. There is no doubt that people on earth suffer to different degrees. The man who lives in a mansion in San Diego is not experiencing as great of suffering or pain as the single mother in Kenya who must choose which of her children get to eat on an everyday basis. As a result, the man in the mansion misses out on understanding what pain and suffering are and as a result he misses out on a fuller understanding of what pleasure and happiness are.

Jesus will reward each one according to his works and I believe this will be largely produced out of the suffering which an individual endures for Jesus' sake. This means that Jesus' command to bear our cross daily is a command to trust in Him, obey Him, and, in a sense, enable ourselves to enjoy Him more in eternity. There will be no pain and suffering in eternity because Jesus will wipe away every tear, so this life is the only chance one has to endure suffering for Jesus' sake and increase one's pleasure in knowing Him forever.

Jonathan Edwards conceived of the varying rewards in heaven as being like cups given to each one who is saved. The cup represents the extent to which one can enjoy God. Those who suffered more and worked more for the kingdom of God will be rewarded with a larger cup. Everyone will be fully satisfied, but those with the larger cups have a greater capacity to enjoy God. My understanding of the contrast created by suffering is very similar to Edwards' except that it focuses more on the way the sufferings achieve the reward.

I believe this dynamic plays a large part in the call to missions. The call to missions is a call to a hard life. A hard life results in suffering and the need to depend on Christ more in everyday situations, to depend on Christ for everything. A hard life lived purposefully for Christ's kingdom will produce the greatest joy both here and now and in the hereafter. As one must depend on Christ for more and more in their everyday lives they will come to know Him more intimately and as a result, they will develop a greater capacity to enjoy Him now. Also, in the midst of their sufferings in which they must depend on Christ they are achieving for themselves an eternal glory. The light and momentary sufferings of the Christian or of the Christian missionary are day by day increasing their capacity to enjoy God for eternity as they learn more and more about what it is like to be away from God and thereby find more and more pleasure in being in God's presence.

God Works All Things for Good

2011-06-12T18:08:00.001-07:00

Where sin abounds grace abounds all the more. The greater the pain or destruction that takes place the greater the work God does to redeem it. The grace that God works in redeeming broken situations is not just greater in cases of greater brokenness because there is more to fix, but the greater the brokenness, it seems, the greater the amount of good God produces. What I mean is that God does not just break even with all wrongs and therefore the worst of the wrongs requires more grace to fix, but God rights wrongs and glorifies the righted state of every wrong. I believe that the greater the wrong that has been righted, the more that righted wrong is glorified.

What wrong is more severe than the Fall of Man? The Fall of Man resulted in the cursing of human kind and the cursing of the earth. All suffering and pain are as a result of the Fall. On the principle discussed above, then, there is no righted wrong which will receive more glory than the redemption of mankind. The Fall must be the ultimate case of grace abounding all the more where sin abounds all the more.

Today while I was reading I was thinking about the nature of knowledge and how it is we come to know something. The book I am reading emphasizes the importance of the negative, the importance of knowing what something is NOT as well as knowing what something IS. For example, we would really have no idea at all what wet is if we did not have experience of dry. If wet was all anyone ever experienced wetness would be an incoherent, unthinkable concept. We need contrast in order to understand anything. There may very well be "characteristics" in our world which we do not recognize and have no way of ever knowing simply because there is nothing to contrast those imaginary "characteristics" with. Maybe such "characteristics" are not even potentially characteristics, but it is really impossible to hypothesize about.

I believe one of the greatest, if not THE greatest glory which God is producing as a result and component of the redemption of the Fall of Man is our ability to know Him more. The Fall separated us from God so God is able to use this contrast to teach us what it is like to be with Him. We could never truly appreciate the joy of His presence without experiencing the misery of His absence. We could never appreciate the beauty of His face without experiencing much ugliness in this fallen world. It is in the justice of the punishment we brought upon ourselves that we are able to appreciate the love and the mercy of God. What we intended for evil God is using for good. He is using the disobedience and rebellion of man to increase the joy and the love of those who have been and are being redeemed. God is using the Fall of Man to glorify Himself by using it to enable the redeemed to savor Him more.

1 Peter 1:12 says that angels long to look into the glory of the gospel, but cannot. I believe there is a glory and an experience of God which redeemed mankind will be blessed with which angels cannot understand. Angels have never been subjected to separation from God, they have never suffered pain or loss, they have never gone hungry or felt the sting of loneliness.

God has magnificent plans to glorify Himself in the redemption of mankind. The fallen ones who have been redeemed will be able to worship God with an immense and unprecedented appreciation and satisfaction having known all the things which God is not.

Face to Face

2011-06-08T21:20:00.000-07:00

I think when most of us think of the revelation of truth or knowledge we think of an ascent to a certain concept or the revealing of a particular fact. To gain knowledge or enlightenment on a certain subject is to comprehend or understand a substantive fact about the way reality is. The Bible has a different perspective on revelation of truth or knowledge.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12 that now we know in part. Our ability to know anything and everything is hindered, undoubtedly this is the result of sin. He also talks of a future time when we shall know fully. There will come a time when all will be revealed to us, we will no longer be hindered in our ability to know.

The most interesting thing Paul says in this verse with regard to how we will know is that he says we shall not see a poor reflection in a mirror but we shall see face to face. Taking those two ideas together I'm lead to believe that Paul is saying that what we see most clearly of God right now is in ourselves. What does what look at in a mirror besides one's self? We are created in the image of God and we know ourselves better than we know any other human being, so by extension our own inner self is, in a sense, one of the best sources for knowledge of God. Of course, as Paul makes clear, this is not only a reflection (which is necessarily a shadow of the real thing) but it's also a poor reflection. We are corrupted and sinful, we are in complete rebellion against God so all we can know about God by looking at ourselves in a mirror is a poor reflection.

What then is the nature of complete revelation of truth and knowledge? It will be standing face to face. Truth is not a fact or a set of propositions, it is a person, Jesus Christ. The one who spends his life seeking after truth will find his journey at an end (and a new beginning) when he stands face to face with Jesus Christ. He will have moved from a poor reflection, from a shattered mirror reflecting back his own image, to the liquid eyes of the One who was dead but is alive forevermore. In these magnificent eyes every question he ever posed will be answered. He will perceive in those eyes the 'I am.' He will perceive in those eyes the unconditional self-sacrificial love of a man. The Eyes will look back and they will understand everything. He will be satisfied not with knowing all but knowing surely that he is fully known.

The Necessity of Paradox

2011-06-08T11:28:00.005-07:00

Kierkegaard held that at the heart of the Christian faith is the paradox. I fully agree with him.

The paradox is the epitome of the incomprehensible, yet it is composed of wholly comprehensible parts. Indeed, the parts must be comprehensible in order for a paradox to be paradoxical. If the parts which compose a paradox are incomprehensible there is no paradox at all because it would not be clear that the two parts of the "paradox" were actually paradoxical.

Take, for example, the Incarnation. Jesus is fully God and fully man. One thing cannot be both fully one thing and fully another thing if those two attributes overlap one another in defining parameters of a thing. If what one statement says about a particular parameter of a thing disagrees with what another statement says about that same parameter a contradiction exists. A case in which something can be both fully one thing and fully another is water. Water can be both fully liquid and fully translucent because those parameters do not necessarily overlap. No contradiction exists.

To be more explicit then about exactly how Jesus is a contradiction and a paradox we must understand the components of the paradox. One must understand all of what one is claiming about Jesus. Both claims about Jesus are fully comprehensible. We have a substantive idea about what it means to be a man. All men are finite, mortal, morally involved beings. We also have a substantive idea about what it means to be God. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent.

From the three traditional attributes of God and the few listed attributes of Man one can easily see that a contradiction arises by calling one person both fully God and fully Man. Some of the implicit contradictions are that Jesus must be both finite and infinite and both mortal and immortal.

So Kierkegaard is right. Jesus is the heart, the center, the Everything of the Christian faith and He is a paradox.

What, then, are the implications of this fact? For me, two implications come immediately to mind. The first is a hunger for knowledge of God, a hunger to comprehend both components of the paradox that is the Christian faith. If we only seek to learn about one component of the paradox we have completely misunderstood God. For example, what if we only learned that Jesus was a man and about the human things that He did? Without a doubt He would have been a great man, but with only one component of the paradox that is Jesus there is no Christian faith at all.

The second implication is humility. No matter how much one knows and understands about the components of a paradox one can never understand a paradox. If the Christian faith is founded on and pervaded by paradox one must always remember that they do not fully understand. One must always be willing to listen to the perspective of another who may see the paradox of Christianity differently from oneself but whose perspective may be very encouraging or beneficial.

Wittgenstein and the Incarnation

2011-06-04T15:30:00.003-07:00

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. ~ Wittgenstein

The human body is the best picture of the human soul. ~ Wittgenstein

I have read very little of Wittgenstein but there are a few things about his work that I think I understand, some of which are highlighted in the quotations above. The first proposition in his Tractatus says "The world is all that is the case." Wittgenstein believed that the only things which we can speak about are the things which we experience in the world. We must remain silent on all matters which pertain to things that are not found in the world.

In other words, on all matters like value, meaning, truth, love, and eternity we must remain silent. Wittgenstein himself was a mystic, but he did not believe us to be able to speak about any kind of spiritual reality. Speech about spiritual realties is excluded because we cannot directly observe these realities. Our language only has the capacity to represent concepts which our brains draw from experience.

You may be able to see how the second quotation above plays into Wittgenstein's understanding of truth and language. The human body is the best picture of the human soul because the human body is all that is the case in the world. One cannot get any nearer to truth about the soul than to speak about the body. We are only acquainted with the human body, we are not acquainted with the soul.

I am certain that I am representing Wittgenstein here in a very incomplete way, but I think from my very rudimentary understanding of him that he has a lot of really right ideas. I find the above discussion to compliment Christian theology very well. The world really is all that is the case. We cannot speak about anything beyond the world. This is one major reason that Jesus had to come. Because the world is all that is the case for us God came down to the world.

Just as the human body is the best picture of the human soul so too Jesus Christ is the best picture of God. Until Jesus came all religious talk was meaningless babble. Even after Jesus has come we still must remain cautious about our speech about things which we have never actually known. If we deviate from Jesus and from the Bible we will be forced to remain silent. Jesus and the Bible are the only ways we can know and speak about anything beyond the world.

But since Jesus has come we can rejoice! Once we were far from God, indeed we could not even speak of Him. Once we were totally ignorant of Love, Truth, Light, Purpose. Now we may speak about Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God, the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, the one who gives breath to our lungs.

Science, Religion, and Jesus

2011-05-21T06:27:00.002-07:00

The two most wide spread ways of attempting to understand the world are Science and Religion. Each views the world in a fundamentally different way and, by extension, prescribes different courses of action toward the world.

Science believes the world can be understood in wholly physical terms and the means of understanding the physical world we live in is calculation. Science observes nature, calculates, and tries to arrive at a final set of numbers or equations to help understand and deal with the world.

Religion, on the other hand, believes the world to be fundamentally spiritual. The way in which Religion attempts to understand and deal with the world is through ritual. Whether burning incense or sacrificing animals, Religion holds that one can find salvation and/or please God by participating in various sacred activities.

The problem with both Science and Religion is that they don't match up with life, they both seem to be disconnected from what it means to be human. The experience of the sun shining on your face cannot be calculated. The beauty of a symphony cannot be computed. The brokenness of my neighbor can't be healed by burning incense. The thousands of starving children can't be fed by sacrificing an animal. Science and Religion both just seem to misunderstand the world.

Jesus offers a different principle for life. He does not recommend calculation or ritual. Jesus sums up his teaching with, "Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus tells us that it is with love that we are best able to understand and deal with the world.

Love is not disconnected from human life like the methods of Science and Religion. Most people will readily admit that love is the greatest thing a human can experience. Love is the substance of the sun warming your face and it is the essence of a beautiful symphony. Love will heal the brokenness of my neighbor and it will fuel and army of lovers to feed starving children. Love is not one answer among many, it is not even the best answer, it is simply the only answer. It is the only answer that actually deals with human life on life's terms and the only answer that offers any solutions to the problems the world faces.

Words, Concepts, Experience, and Wisdom

2011-05-20T09:36:00.005-07:00

I find that there is a danger in excessive book learning. Words convey nothing more to us than concepts and concept are abstract, they are not seated in the real world. Abstract concepts exist in a world of ideals. When a person pursues excessive book learning they are often lead to believe that they understand something which they truly do not.

There is more to wisdom than words. Wisdom is more than a concept. Wisdom requires experience. It is unwise for one to believe that they have understood something simply because they have read a book about it.

For this reason the missionary in the field has a kind of wisdom that the scholar can never achieve. For this reason the one who is advanced in years often has greater wisdom than youth. Experience brings wisdom. The Kingdom of God does not consist in writing and reading but in loving, serving, and general living-with people.

The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences. -Augustine

A large acquaintance with particulars makes us wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, however deep... -William James

No Truth in Philosophy

2011-05-18T14:14:00.005-07:00

There is a sense in which there is absolutely no truth in Philosophy. Historically, Christianity has seen a lot of truth in Philosophy, especially Platonic Philosophy, but this acceptance of philosophy has often skewed interpretation of the Bible and caused many problems in the Church. For example, Augustine was heavily influenced by a philosophical-religious sect called Manicheanism which led him to believe that all sexual acts are sinful.

Not only has accepting philosophy as true (or even partially true) had historically negative impacts, I also believe the acceptance of parts of philosophy is categorically incompatible with truth as understood in the Bible. Accepting pieces of philosophy as true assumes that truth is a propositional thing, it assumes that truth can be stated in a concise, explicit form. Truth, as it seems to be depicted most fundamentally in the Bible, is far too immense to be stated in simple propositions. It is also doubtful that Biblical truth can be dismantled and parts of it understood in isolation.

Truth in the Bible is personal, not propositional. In Exodus God says "I AM who I AM." In John Jesus says, "Before Abraham was, I AM." The fundamental nature of the universe is not an equation, proposition, or maxim it is a person. Jesus says "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Because truth is a person and not a fact it is difficult to see how truth can be expressed in propositions.

If truth is to be communicated through propositions it must be through a large body of work with extensive context i.e. the Bible. Truth cannot be communicated through isolated propositions or ideas that are derived from a variety of philosophical systems. For this reason God did not leave us to philosophical speculation as a means of knowing Him. God gave us a concrete and complete revelation of Himself, it is Jesus Christ as depicted in the Bible.

Theology as a Function of Not Trusting God

2011-05-18T07:49:00.002-07:00

Lately I've been thinking about the nature of theology, devotionals, and highly disciplined daily routines of prayer and Bible study. It seems to me that in a certain sense all of these good things can, at some point, be an expression of our lack of trust in God. I certainly know that I am guilty of making these types of resources a spiritual crutch rather than depending on God.

I hope no one takes what I am saying too far. John Wesley talked about the fact that all of the aforementioned avenues of spiritual discipline act as "means of grace" or ways in which God uses our actions in order to pour more grace into our lives. I wholly agree with Wesley. All of the aforementioned "means of grace" are good and beneficial to the Christian's walk.

Yet, I believe all (or at least most) good things can be perverted and made into bad things. An individual can begin to depend on the "means of grace" themselves and begin to see them as an end instead of looking at them as merely "means." The "means of grace" are meant to be a means to depending on God, not an avenue of spiritual nourishment which allows us to be filled by our own discipline or understanding.

Trusting in the "means of grace" is not at all the same as trusting in God. In fact, trusting in the means of grace is NOT trusting in God. Means of grace are easier to trust in because they are tangible, predictable, controllable. We can administer "means of grace" like we can administer a Tylenol. On the other hand, trusting in God requires us to trust in a living, moving, unpredictable Being who has mercy on whom He has mercy and gives grace in His own time.

It does not then depend on our diligence, discipline, or methodology. We must remember that we worship a living God and His grace is what carries us to the end. We can add nothing to our salvation or sanctification. Let us not depend on "means of grace" but on the God who is full of grace.