December 2023 – Anthony G. Flood

Retrospects and Prospects

This year will be better than next year. Yes, that may reflect more my mood than reality, but it’s a mood that reality reinforces daily.

I’m an eschatological optimist—Christ’s saving work has given me peace (true union) with God, which is all that really matters—but a secular pessimist. The intermittent news of resistance to the totalitarianism that’s coming like Christmas may be accurate, but “So, cheer up, old boy!” doesn’t make me feel better (and making me feel better is no one’s obligation). Things will change for the better, or they won’t; I’ll know which soon enough, should I live so long.

Those charged with preventing with catastrophes (e.g., my country’s invasion) are in fact facilitating them, thereby undermining the good of order that makes the regular enjoyment of other goods possible. I cannot train my attention on the facilitators, however, if the criminal invaders in my vicinity are concentrating my mind wonderfully. Like them, the criminal overlords can be dealt with only by violence; I see no timely way to exercise legitimate violence against either class of criminal. So, I pray each day for safety but, failing that, at least for the opportunity to take a few of the bastards with me.

I will write until I can no longer, content with the probability that what I write might be picked up, if it ever will be, by people who won’t be born until after I’m dead. Perhaps 2024 will see the publication of Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers (the latest draft of which I’m sharing with beta readers) and of the second, expanded edition of Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness. Maybe I’ll get around to mining the 25 diaries (1970-1994) that record my interactions with the remarkable people I’ve met (and the mistakes they couldn’t prevent me from making).

Ultradispensationalist that I am, even the great Reformed Baptist apologist James R. White (b. 1962), whom I’ve been reading and listening to for about ten years has not been able to make a Calvinist out of me (not that he’s tried), but he certainly has ruined any Roman Catholic apologist’s chance of winning me back. Auditing many of his over 180 moderated debates over the past ten years, White always strikes me as having the better of the argument. To the task he always brings not only great learning and preparation, but also grit and not a little humor. A student of history, he teaches biblical Hebrew and Greek, yet wears his learning lightly, if I’m any judge of such things.

A couple of diamonds in the cultural dung heap, however, postpone utter esthetic despair.

One is the Bebop guitar virtuoso Pasquale Grasso (b. 1988) who, after the passing of my teacher and friend Pat Martino (1944-2021), showed me I could get excited about a player again. Here’s a great example.

The other gem is Harlem-born performer Wé Ani (b. 1999), the most versatile, and powerful, pop singer I’ve ever heard, whose voice salves my charred soul and never fails to plaster a smile on my face. My wife and I had first seen her in 2016 on The Voice (when she went by “Wé McDonald”). A physically different (almost unrecognizably so) Wé competed in last season’s (2023) American Idol, making it into the top five. Research revealed she was indeed the same person. What she did this year, however, hooked me. She can belt like nobody’s business, folk her way through any ballad (guitar and all), or rock it out, or out-Broadway any veteran of The Great White Wé, I mean, Way.

There seem to be at least a half dozen Wé Anis: after watching any two videos, I sincerely wonder, “Is that the same singer?” Without, I stress, impersonating any of them, she can put you in mind of Nina Simone, or Mary J. Blige, or Idina Menzel, or Whitney Houston, or Aretha Franklin, or Barbra Streisand. (This list is not exhaustive, but it risked becoming exhausting).

And she gave off a different vibe when belting out a Stevie Wonder classic for Tony Bennett (who clearly inspired her final tonal choice), bringing the Kennedy Center audience to their feet.

And then there’s the uncanny sonic chasm between her childlike speaking pitch and her robust, gritty singing voice: she says she wants to be taken seriously, but “it’s not easy sounding like a 12-year-old at 23.” The simile that comes to my mind is fiction’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (minus the creepy associations): she makes a fool of anyone who prejudges her talent on that basis. (For instance.)

She’s also a modest and charming interviewee (sans tatoos, nose ring, acrylic claws and other accoutrements of female celebrityhood): consider one from 2018 and another from September. The Standard, her latest, will drop on January 12, 2024.

Such are my few oases of refreshment these days. I feel better having shared these sentiments. However quixotic it may sound, I wish all my subscribers and visitors a happy and safe 2024.

On the Centennial of James Sadowsky, SJ: Philosophical Theologian, Libertarian Ethicist, Dearly Missed Friend

My friend James A. Sadowsky, SJ (December 28, 1928-September 7, 2012) would have turned 100 today. I’ve appended the obituary by Mises Institute Senior Fellow David Gordon. My first of many lunches with Jim was at the Brasserie (1958-2015) in the Seagram’s Building in 1983 when he was a youthful 59 years old. Following Dr. Gordon’s tribute is a list of articles whose content you may access on my old website (which will reach its emerald anniversary on January 17, 2024).

James A. Sadowsky, SJ

No one who met Jim Sadowsky could ever forget him. I first saw him at a conference at Claremont University in California in August 1979; his great friend Bill Baumgarth, a political science professor at Fordham, was also there. His distinctive style of conversation at once attracted my attention. He spoke in a very terse way, and he had no patience with nonsense, a category that covered much of what he heard. If you gave him an argument and asked him whether he understood what you meant, he usually answered, “No, I don’t.” He once said to a fellow Jesuit, “that’s false, and you know it’s false.”

Behind that gruff exterior was a very kind and warm person, with a delight in humor. I knew I would get along with him at that conference when he said to a small group of people, “I may not look like a cup of coffee, but I certainly feel like one.” I was the only one who laughed, and he said to me, “You have a discerning sense of humor.” We were friends from then on.

He delighted in paradoxical remarks, such as “The word philosophy comes from the Greek word philosophia, which means philosophy.” “We wouldn’t have the concept of free will, unless we had it.” “A student of mine once objected to Ockham’s razor, on the grounds that it’s unnecessary.”

He told me that a student in one of his philosophy classes at Fordham wore a tee-shirt that said, “I don’t need your drugs.” He said that he asked him, “Does this mean you get enough of your own?” The student answered, “Drugs are a very serious subject; you shouldn’t tell jokes about them.” He said to me, “I don’t understand. If he didn’t think it was funny, how did he know it was a joke?” After he told me that he sometimes played contract bridge, I asked him whether he was a good player. “Yes,” he answered, “but I play with better players.” One of my favorites among his comments was, “I like to get to the desserts first, ahead of all the greedy and selfish people.”

Continue reading “On the Centennial of James Sadowsky, SJ: Philosophical Theologian, Libertarian Ethicist, Dearly Missed Friend”

Conceived on December 25th, born on September 29th

I’m reposting what first appeared here July 19, 2022 under the title, “Having become flesh on 25 December, 5 BC, He began tabernacling among us on 29 September, 4 BC” (and republished December 23, 2022). I excavate E. W. Bullinger’s argument, buried in the notes of his Companion Bible, published a century ago. Don’t miss this post’s notes. Merry Christmas! —A.G.F.

“And the Word became (ἐγένετο, egeneto) flesh (σάρξ, sarx) and dwelt (ἐσκήνωσεν, eskēnōsēn) among us . . . .” John 1:14

In “The Divine Purpose,” Otis Q. Sellers wrote:

In all the work that God has done for mankind, is now doing for mankind, and will yet do for mankind, there is a definite goal, a fixed purpose. To state it as simply as possible, His object in all His work is to produce a people who know Him, who understand Him, who love and appreciate Him, a people with whom He can joyfully dwell, and among whom He can center Himself in view of a greater program for the universe.

If the Bible is read carefully from Genesis to Revelation, it will be found that this end is reached and becomes a reality in Revelation 21. There under a new order of things described as “a New Heaven and New Earth,” the tabernacle of God is seen as being with men, He is dwelling (tabernacling) with them, they are His people, and He is their God. This is as far as Revelation takes us, yet we can rightfully go a step beyond this and envision a great divine program in which mankind will be vitally involved as those who are working and not those upon whom God is working. A tabernacle (skenos) in Scripture when used figuratively always denotes a center of activity, and it could not be that God would bring about such a center and then not use it.[1]

To “become flesh” is to be, not born, but rather “begotten,” that is, conceived. The root of ἐγένετο (egeneto) is γίνομαι (ginomai), to come into existence.

The one who is born, who exits the womb, is already flesh, which precedes “dwelling among us.”[2] (She who “can’t bring a baby into this world” and so procures an abortion only achieves the death of an already begotten and in-the-world baby.)

The English “to dwell” doesn’t capture the Greek ἐσκήνωσεν (eskēnōsēn), the form of σκηνόω (skēnoō) in John 1:14. The root is σκηνή (skēne), originally the hut or tent where players changed masks and costumes behind the stage; later, the stage itself. (Our “scene” descends from this.)

When Jerome translated into Latin the Hebrew הַסֻּכּ֛וֹת (hasukkoth) of, say, Deuteronomy 16:16, he used tabernaculum, the diminutive of taberna. (Our “tavern” echoes this.) He rendered that verse’s Hebrew as in solemnitate tabernaculorum, that is, “in the feast of the tabernacles.”

Tabernacles are booths. Annually, Jews today set up booths where they commemorate סֻכּוֹת‎, Sukkot, one of three Torah-commanded pilgrimages to the Temple which was destroyed in 70 A.D. (The other two are פסח, Pesach, “Passover” and שבועות, Shavous, “Pentecost.”)

In 5 BC, the angel Gabriel announced two conceptions, that of John (the “Forerunner”: Luke 1:13), and then of his cousin, Jesus (Luke 1:31). Gabriel addressed the first to John’s father, Zacharias; the second to Jesus’ mother, Mary. According to E. W. Bullinger: Continue reading “Conceived on December 25th, born on September 29th”

Criticism of Presuppositional (Worldview) Apologetics

I welcome it, and recently got some from William Vallicella, Ph.D., a rejoinder to my response to him. Unfortunately for me, however, it’s part of a long series that bears on what I tried to do in Philosophy after Christ, and I haven’t yet been able to give the series’ members the study they deserve.

What I’m focusing on is Bill’s helpful distinction between a rationally acceptable argument and a rationally compelling one. I think my Van Til-inspired transcendental argument can be formulated so that it’s not merely acceptable, but also one that “coerces” rational assent (at least by those who value rational standards). Bill charges me with conflating, if not confusing, epistemic and ontic possibility, a serious matter, one I will confess if I must. How one coordinates one’s metaphysics (which determines ontic possibility) with one’s epistemology has its own presuppositions.[1]

I can “live with” a “merely” rationally acceptable argument that can defeat any candidate, alternative to the Christian worldview, for the status of transcendental condition of intelligible predication, that my interlocutor might suggest. Of course, such serial refutation, however successful for however long, falls short of proof. To be able, however, to pre-emptively rule out the possibility of there being any successful candidate remains for me a desideratum. I’ll let others speculate about what psychological type that confession betrays.

Note

[1] See, e.g., Greg Bahnsen, “The Necessity of Coordinating Epistemology with Metaphysics,” Section 1 of Chapter 3, “Neutrality & Autonomy Relinquished,” Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended. Joel McDurmon, ed. American Vision Press, 2010. See also Bahnsen’s magisterial exposition of Cornelius Van Til:

Van Til did not address specific disputes between philosophers or contemporary debates regarding possibility, but he realized that Christians are committed to hold certain beliefs about possibility that unbelievers will reject. “It is today more evident than ever before that it is exactly on those most fundamental matters, such as possibility and probability, that there is the greatest difference of opinion between theists and antitheists.” To put it simply and memorably: “Non-believers have false assumptions about their musts.”

Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Reading and Analysis. Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1998, 281. The internal quotations are from Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology. Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1974, 36, 264. To the latter footnote Bahnsen appended:

That is, they [antitheists] utilize a false philosophical outlook regarding “necessity,” “possibility,” etc.

Philosophy after Christ: First US Amazon review

From a friend, John Lancaster

A Fascinating Read.

Let me first preface this review by mentioning the following:

I was initially introduced to the author via his blog AnthonyGFlood.com. Coming from an Austrian economics background, I gravitated towards the posts covering political economy, history, civics, and individualism. While I also enjoyed Flood’s work in philosophy and theology, I’m not as well versed in those fields. Even though the quality of his work is uniform across his different ventures, my connection to the formerly mentioned topics was far stronger than my connection to the latter.

That being said, as a Christian and eclectic thinker, I jumped at the chance to read Philosophy After Christ. Having already reviewed [Herbert] Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness, I was looking forward to another insightful, concise, and engaging read.

Insightfulness, conciseness, and engagement are in spades with this book. Don’t let the sub-200 page count fool you, this is not a light read.

Flood argues the Christian worldview as “the only worldview that makes possible what philosophers do . . . [and] that everyone, even those who claim to be anti-Christian, operates implicitly in terms of the Christian worldview.”

He supports this stance through rigorous logical deductions while constantly referencing Scripture. Flood’s ability to sequentially link his chains of logic is truly a masterful display.

Along with unraveling the philosophical components of his claim, Flood sharply addresses opposing arguments from distinguished intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell, Cornelius Van Til, and Gordon Clark.

For anyone looking to bolster their understanding of Christian philosophy, look into different theistic interpretations, or enjoy quality cerebral jousting, this is the perfect read for them.

Thanks, John. I hope it will have successors. That’s up to other readers.