A self-answering question

Thursday, November 12, 2009

In Gordon Clark's book "Three Types of Religious Philosophy," he deals in the first chapter, on Rationalism, with the ontological argument for the existence of God and its critics. I will not reproduce any quotations here, since they would go on too long, but I'd like to sum up Clark's own conclusion on the matter.

"Does God exist?" is a meaningless question. Clark points out that if existence can be a predicate, then it applies, in some sense or another, to every subject, and a predicate that can be applied to every subject truthfully is meaningless, since every predicate must make some difference between its subject and another. So if you even begin to talk about any subject, "God" included, you have spoken it into some sort of "existence," for nothing does not exist. Everything is something. Language itself necessitates the existence of whatever subject is expressed and excludes the possibility of the "non-existence" of anything, except as a colloquialism.

The argument, then, cannot be over the existence of God per se, for everything, whether a word or a dream or a rabbit or a triangle, exists. That tells us nothing. The argument must be over what God is, that is, what predicates can be truthfully applied to the subject "God."

To say with Anselm that superlative perfection, or greatness, is the predicate which defines the subject "God," may or may not prove his existence, but even if Anselm's argument does turn out to be valid, as far as I can tell, it tells us precisely nothing.

I commend to the reader Clark's own treatment of the subject.

If A, then B?

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

So the nation's in an uproar over its president's speech to the public schools. Apparently it's mandatory viewing for our kids. Seems a little dictatorial, don't you think? In a free country, people don't just have freedom of speech, they should have the freedom to choose what speech they listen to, right?

Well, but it occurs to me, these aren't private schools that are being subjected to the will of the government. At least, as far as I know, nobody's forcing privately or home schooled kids to listen to Mr. O.'s speech.

So look. If the United States government founded, funds, and controls *public* schools at an executive level, what's to stop it saying what's taught? You can still choose--thank God--whether you send your kids to public schools or not. If you make the choice to put them in a government-run education system, expect the government to run it. The president, believe it or not, is part of the government. So why shouldn't he have a hand in your public child's public education?

Now don't get me wrong. I think the whole thing is a fascist mess. No person, government official or not, has a right to mandate another person's attention to anything. But if you voluntarily subject yourself or your child so far to the state's control of your education, why not go the whole nine yards? If it's their school, it's their school. Let 'em teach.

The real tragedy

Saturday, August 29, 2009

America's getting pretty good at funerals. It should: it's had two of our greatest heroes to mourn in the span of two months.

Heroes? Well, if perverted lecherous drunk fraudulent demagogues should be considered heroes.

It's not the loss of such characters that we should mourn. It's their very existence, their rise to fame and power, the popular worship of them, the fact that, in an age so utterly devoid of true character, we must find our identity as a community in the collective idolatry of two icons of debauchery.

We're like a teenager addicted to cutting himself. There's a feeling of reality in pain, but when we're anesthetized to real pain, we invent it for ourselves, searching for heroism in groveling acts of self-pity. So we identify ourselves with the nearest messed up thing, just to have a reason for lament.

If we could have the good sense to look inside ourselves and admit the real tragedy of sin and separation from God, we could perhaps experience true catharsis apart from the world's puerile masquerade of make-believe sorrows, because we cannot, either individually or communally, get any sort of salvation from Michael Jackson or Ted Kennedy's sin and separation from God. Their deaths were not sacrificial or substitutionary, and our identification of ourselves with them is at best meaningless; at worst, moribund idolatry.

There is no redemption for made-up tragedies. Let the dead bury their dead.

Big difference

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Charity is no longer charity if the recipient has a right to it. Therefore welfare services are not charitable.

But does that mean they're just? That is, does every recipient of welfare have a right to that welfare?

Imagination alone

Thursday, May 21, 2009

The substance of all such paganism may be summarised thus. It is an attempt to reach the divine reality through the imagination alone; in its own field reason does not restrain it at all. It is vital to the view of all history that reason is something separate from religion even in the most rational of these civilisations. It is only as an afterthought, when such cults are decadent or on the defensive, that a few Neo-Platonists or a few Brahmins are found trying to rationalise them, and even then only by tring to allegorise them. But in reality the rivers of mythology and philosophy run parallel and do not mingle till they meet in the sea of Christendom. Simple secularists still talk as if the Church had introduced a sort of schism between reason and religion. The truth is that the Church was actually the first thing that ever tried to combine reason and religion. There had never before been any such union of the priests and the philosophers.

-G. K. Chesterton in The Everlasting Man

G. K. Chesterton on Christianity

Friday, May 15, 2009

Christianity does appeal to a solid truth outside itself; to something which is in that sense external as well as eternal. It does declare that things are really there; or in other words that things are really things. In this Christianity is at one with common sense; but all religious history shows that this common sense perishes except where there is Christianity to preserve it.

It cannot otherwise exist, or at least endure, because mere thought does not remain sane. In a sense it becomes too simple to be sane. The temptation of the philosophers is simplicity rather than subtlety. They are always attracted by insane simplifications, as men poised above abysses are fascinated by death and nothingness and the empty air. It needed another kind of philosopher to stand poised upon the pinnacle of the Temple and keep his balance without casting himself down.

-G. K. Chesterton in The Everlasting Man

All in a lather

Thursday, May 7, 2009

What is it about humans that we get so unnecessarily worked up over such completely inconsequential things as:

• Game shows
• Sports and steroids
• Celebrity "scandal"
• Animals
• Fashion

Really. Nothing profound here. I'm just curious as to what would cause any sane person to participate in a protest about the quality of a horse racing track, or what would incite any news channel ever to run a story on some sports player taking steroids (oh, the shock), or what might possibly drive the most helplessly bored human being to attend the broadcasting of any television show--in order to do what? Just be in the audience?

Of course, all this at the same time the entire media is heralding the collapse of the economy, the epidemic of the swine flu, the melting of the ice caps, the extinction of the polar bears, the coming of the four apocalyptic horsemen, and the end of the world. If all this is happening, why should we care who wore what on the red carpet? Which shall we be? Terrified or entertained?

Yet let no man dare demonstrate concern about such things as morality or freedom or religion lest he be branded a dangerous fanatic. Let no man raise a commotion about something that really matters, or... oh dear... we might have to think.

Abracadabra

Monday, May 4, 2009

If something is too complicated for me to understand, I often assume that it's not worth understanding. So I'm not claiming either to understand or fully appreciate insurance systems.

What I do understand is that Social Security is one of the most farcical tricks I've ever come across. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the basic idea is, the Government requires you to fork over X amount of the money you earn so that It can keep it for you until you retire, and then give it back to you in whatever amount It deems you actually need.

Now, if you're not responsible enough yourself to save up a few dollars against a rainy day, I can understand if you want to delegate that task to someone else. There are any number of options available for you, but nobody's actually requiring you to make use of them. But Social Security, which is not optional--I'm not exactly sure what's the point. It's mandatory insurance, working on the assumption that every American citizen will officially retire and be so naive as to think of his Social Security benefits as income. It's not. It's all that money that you were coerced never to use, but to deposit with the Government so that It might the better order your own life for you.

To make it more perverse, suppose you live longer and need more care in your old age than your own Social Security payments cover. What's to be done? Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but it is apparent to me that you are then eligible to receive a part of the Social Security payments of the rest of your fellow American citizens, because we're working on the assumption that enough of them will die before making use of that mandatorily squirreled-away money that there'll be enough to hand around to old geezers like you who plan to stick around for a while.

But what makes it right to steal from dead people? I thought there was such a thing as inheritance. What someone leaves behind, in whatever form, ought to go to whatever person he's willed it to or his next of kin. Certainly not folks he's never even heard of, much less owes anything.

So the Government, playing at economic alchemy, makes believe that by withholding from you part of your just deserts, It will make you and everyone else richer. When did we forget that true wealth is not stretched currency, but resources plus creativity?

Firstborn of all creation

Thursday, April 23, 2009

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, because by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Colossians 1:13-20

"Firstborn of all creation." It seems surprising to me that "Jehovah's Witnesses" want to refer to this passage to show that Jesus is not, in essence, God. If you pluck that one phrase, "firstborn of all creation" out of its context altogether, you might end up confused, but if you're at all familiar with the rest of the Bible, you won't allow that alone to convince you that the Son is created by, or even subordinate in any way to, the Father.

But to clear up any confusion, we should probably go right to the crux of the issue and deal with the words we find.

First of all, you could point out to a "Jehovah's Witness" that it does not say, "The first one God created," but "the firstborn of creation." To be born and to be created are two different things. The Bible speaks of the Son being begotten, and even being born, and in Hebrews, of being "brought into the world," but never once does it say that he was created. It never even hints it.

Second, if "firstborn of all creation" did mean that Christ was the first one created, there would be a logical contradiction in the verse, for it says that "all things" were created by him. That is an exclusive universal. How could "all things" have been created by a created thing? John claims, in John 1:3, that "without him nothing was made that was made." So if all things were made through Christ the Word, and nothing that now is exists apart from his creatorship, he clearly cannot have been made, otherwise he would have had to preexist himself, which is absurd.

Third, you should realize that in Greek there is no "of." The word is paseys ktiseows, which is the genitive for the phrase "all creation." Genitive is a pretty tricky case with many different aspects. It can be the genitive of possession, origin, status, and the list goes on. So we could get any number of translations of the Greek, "hos estin. . .prototokos paseys ktiseows." Firstborn over all creation would be one, and for the sake of English emphasis one could place a comma after "firstborn." Or it could be this translation: He is. . .the all-creating firstborn.

Consider the very next words: "Because by him were created all things in heaven and on earth..." Why would the "because" be there if "firstborn of all creation" meant "the first created being" as "JW"s insist? Actually, either of the two previously suggested translations would work beautifully with the continuing text, because the emphasis could be on the "all-creating" nature of the Firstborn, or it could be on the fact that he is the ruler, for it states that he created all rule and dominion, etc., and he is head, or the ultimate authority, over the church.

Perhaps Hebrews, however, may shed some light on Paul's choice of language. "To which of the angels did God ever say, 'You are my Son, today I have begotten you?'" says Hebrews 1:5, and then, "We see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers . . . Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil . . . Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest. . ." (Hebrews 2:9-11, 14, 17)

John, too, has something to say about Christ's nature: "The Word" (who was in the beginning with God and who was God) "became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . No one has seen God at any time; the only One, who is God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known." (John 1:14, 18) Jesus says to Philip, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9)

Let no one presume to try to decipher the mysteries of the inter-Trinitarian relationships, or explain what God has not chosen to explain in his Word. He has not told us why his Name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, aside from the fact that the Father is the Son's Father and the Son is the Father's Son, and the Holy Spirit is sent from them both to apply the redemption purchased by the Son to our hearts. I will only suggest, based on the Scriptures above, that no Person of the Godhead was better suited to become a man than the Son, for then his sonship may be more easily understood by us.

I believe that it is in the context of the Incarnation that many verses that seem to subordinate, or give a temporal origin to, Jesus Christ are best understood. His "being made" is certainly always a reference to his incarnation, for "made" is always followed by what he was made--"flesh" or "like his brothers," for instance.

Then there are all those passages, primarily in the introductions to Paul's letters, where "God" and "the Lord Jesus Christ" are mentioned side by side in the same verse. "The grace of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" is a good enough example. I don't believe "God" in these instances always refers to the Father in particular. In those cases, the Holy Spirit would have been left out. It would make better sense to see that as speaking of the Triune God and the Incarnate Christ. The point is that, as Christopher Wordsworth put it, "God with man is on the throne." Because the God the Son took on flesh, the Triune God is forever united with man in the Man Christ Jesus. There is now a God-given image of the invisible God. There is a real human, "with a true body and a reasonable soul," reigning omnipotent in heaven as Almighty God.

And apart from that truth, we have no hope. For in Isaiah 43, God says, "I, I am YHWH, and besides me there is no savior." If that is true, and if Jesus is not God, then he is not the Savior, and faith in him as such is worse than worthless, and the New Testament is just a bunch of lies.

A word to the wise

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—that, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the LORD."

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

We as Christians often feel the need to justify ourselves to the world, to appear wise in its eyes, to avoid being scoffed at. In all truth, we are--or at least should be--intellectually honest, and what we believe, if we believe the Bible, is most reasonable. But when atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens sit around laughing at religion, pointing out how idiotic "blind faith" is, and equating the claims of Christianity with the tactics of con-men, we instinctively want to set ourselves apart from those at whom they are laughing. "But my faith is built on solid evidence and valid argument! You can't just lump me in with all the other mystics!"

Sadly, this attitude has cost the Church a lot. Liberal theologians, in an effort to validate their ideas to their enemies, have compromised the entire Christian faith.

Due to the Scripture-twisting cowardice of such liberals, our atheist attackers have good reason to accuse us of doing everything in our power to avoid challenges to our faith, including turning the Bible into a nice collection of myths and instruction, obviously lacking in historical and scientific points, but in the hidden heart of its meaning, true for us. If we cannot answer the criticisms of Genesis, we decide that it is a fabulous text, surrendering to our critics exactly their contentions.

In trying to appease the atheists, we have given them our most important ground: the reliability of the Scripture. Once we throw away the axiom of our faith, we might as well throw away the rest of it.

This is not in any way to submit to the accusation of mysticism. Though we believe that the wisdom of God is foolishness to the world, we do not believe it is foolishness, per se. If on the one hand liberals have done harm to the Church by abandoning the Church's foundation, on the other hand fundamentalists have done as much harm by refusing to defend the Church's foundation. And so the characterization of the Christian Church as being made up of skeptical clergy and gullible laity is only too accurate. Both liberals and fundamentalists are too lazy to stand by their beliefs: liberals adapt them to the worldviews of Christianity's critics, and fundamentalists won't even recognize the critics.

Rather than fall into either of these errors, we should glory in the Lord. We cannot step out of our own system to defend it, or that would be to deny the internal validity of it. But we can force our opponents to attack specific points of alleged weakness in our system so that we may defend those points. It is very easy to throw around accusations about how misogynistic, sadomasochistic, racist, and self-centered the Biblical God is, but when particular examples are given where the Bible supposedly portrays God as such, it is even easier for a well-educated, thoughtful Christian to defend the Biblical God against such accusations and show that the accuser cannot consistently condemn any of God's actions from within his own system, and that within the Christian system, God's actions are self-validating.

We cannot apologize for the Bible, blindly assume its authority, or abandon it in order to work our way back to it. What we can say is this: if the Bible is the Word of God, two things hold: first, it must be internally coherent and free of all errors; second, it cannot be proved to be God's Word by any other source than itself.

After all, an axiom cannot be proven from any prior premises. An ultimate authority cannot appeal to any prior authority. A word from God cannot be validated by a word from man.

We can also force our opponents to see the inviability of their own worldviews and the fallacies of their attacks on ours. We can garner evidences to point back to (but again, not prove) the infallibility of the Bible. We can demonstrate the reasonableness of our faith and define faith as voluntary assent to understood propositions.

Keep in mind that Paul does not say that theism or creationism or even Christianity is foolishness to the world. There are many things, including, I believe, the existence of God, that are worth arguing about because they're logically demonstrable, some things that are historically plausible, some things that are scientifically provable. What Paul says is that the cross in particular is foolishness to the world, so while there are many aspects of our worldview that can be argued, if all of it hinges upon the Gospel of substitutionary atonement made by the Son of God incarnate on a Roman cross, we must not be surprised if, when our point has been irrefutably made, our antagonist still rejects the system as a whole, for he cannot accept its center, the cross.

There are some things that, though not irrational, are not demonstrable by science or logic (apart from the prior testimony of Scripture). There are some things that we believe because we believe the Bible and the Bible says them, and that is hardly mysticism, for as I said, we never believe irrational propositions.

One thing the Bible says is that the Holy Spirit is the one who gives us knowledge and saving faith, and that as long as he withholds that from any man, God's wisdom will seem foolish to him. We cannot convert anyone, we can only tell the truth, and through that truth, God will prove to be truly foolish the wisdom of this age.

So stand strong--don't compromise, like a liberal theologian, and end up sacrificing your entire system. But don't stand stupid, either. Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, taking every thought captive to Christ, and let him who glories glory in the Lord, by whom we are God's, who became wisdom for us--and righteousness and sanctification.

Presuppositionalism and arguments for the existence of God

Monday, March 30, 2009

Some presuppositionalists, in their desire to put a proper emphasis on the Word of God as sufficient for all things regarding life and faith, do away with any arguments for the existence of God and even insist that there is no place in apologetics for such arguments. The most they will allow as proof for God's existence is "the Bible tells me so."

While in fact God's own Word, if it is his Word, does certainly attest to God's existence, and ought to be expected to do so more persuasively, to any reasonable mind, than any arguments derived from other sources, I don't believe that presuppositionalism itself necessarily rules out both the need for and the validity of those other arguments.

Evidential and scientific arguments, though not conclusive, are at least helpful, and any good presuppositionalist ought to recognize that if what he believes about the Bible is true, there must be a host of evidences of that truth. If the world is in reality what the Bible says it is, we ought to be able to point that out easily.

In the same way, logical and philosophical arguments (some of which, in my opinion, are conclusive, but not cannot prove the existence of the biblical Triune God per se) ought not to be rejected, because if God is who he says he is in the Bible, we would expect it to be obvious in the rules of our thought as bearers of the image of God.

I do not believe it is impossible to prove the existence of some God, for I believe that every man knows that God exists and knows, better than any argument could prove, what kind of God he is. Therefore I don't believe it is necessary, in apologetics, always to presuppose the existence of God.

What we must presuppose, as our axiom of knowledge, is God's Word itself, not following from any proofs for God's existence, but precedent, and providing all such proofs and indeed, the very laws of thought by which we form and are persuaded by such proofs. For we do not arrive on our own at the conclusion that God exists, and then accept his Word--otherwise we could not call it his revelation of himself.

Every soul

Friday, March 27, 2009

In reviewing Romans 13 and its call to submission to authority, I noticed something I had not noticed before: Paul says, "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities..."

His mandate is universal, and must therefore be applied even to the said governing authorities. Even our rulers must themselves be subject to the ultimate governing authority, which is the Law of God. When he goes on to explain that "rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong," is it not evident that any entity which holds terror for those who do right and none for those who do wrong is not, indeed, a lawful authority established by God, but a tyrant at war with God and man? He himself is not subjected to the proper governing authority, but is a rebel, and "will bring judgement on [himself]."

Dishonest stealing

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

It's one thing to take away someone's money outright. It's another to take it away outright in the name of the Government. It's altogether another thing to take away someone's money simply by devaluing it--in the name of the Government, no less.

One of the most dreadfully perverse things about adding to the money supply, either through printing and minting new currency or lending money that's not physically there, is that such inflation is good for debtors and bad for creditors.

To make it simple, let's propose that we double the dollar supply by printing--we can cut through the complications to the fundamental principle behind all of it. If the dollar supply doubles, whereas the supply of real capital stays the same, that cuts the purchasing power of each dollar in half.

The figures are unchanging, though. So anyone who is two dollars in debt still has a $2 debt--but now that $2 is equal to the old $1. His debt has effectively decreased because the value of the money has decreased. He is now, effectively, richer. But anyone who has two dollars now only has the equivalent of the old $1, so his wealth has effectively decreased because every dollar he owned is now only half its value. He is now, effectively, poorer.

So inflation steals money from those who have it and give it to those who don't. Good old fashioned Robin Hood economics.