Anthony Flood

“Helping you navigate this dispensation’s last days”: What do I mean?

Before launching this site in October 2018, I put a tagline under my name in the masthead. At first, it referred rather boringly to the half-century of retrospective I wanted to set down here. I eventually changed it to “Navigating this dispensation’s last days” and cited a couple of Biblical verses to justify the reference to “dispensation.”

Still boring, perhaps, but at least it suggested the unity of my interests.

My understanding of the current historical phase—the dispensation of the grace of God (Ephesians 3:2)—informs how I evaluate events, arguments, apologetics, liberty and threats thereto, and everything else, and therefore what I write on this blog. Every visitor here should know that. We’re living in this dispensation’s last days with its syndrome of 21 wicked symptoms (2 Timothy 3).

That unity hasn’t always been clear. The hundred-plus posts published so far have struck even me as an aggregate, not an organic whole, a “many” without an obvious “one.” Mixed messaging may have resulted.

Brand Blanshard (1892-1989)

Greg L. Bahnsen (1948-1995)

For example, if an essay on Brand Blanshard or C. E. M. Joad drew you in, you may have been put off by posts on the metapologetics of Greg Bahnsen (which he learned from Cornelius Van Til).

Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987)

Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995)

Herbert Aptheker (1915-2003)

Or perhaps you appreciated reading about the libertarian Murray Rothbard, but couldn’t care less about Stalinist Herbert Aptheker or Trotskyist George Novack.

(Or vice versa.)

Then there’s my goal, puzzling to some who know me, of producing a life-and-thought study of Otis Q. Sellers, the independent dispensationalist you’ve probably never heard of.

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992)

The manuscript is growing, but as I’m challenged to summarize his thought (already clearly expressed, but spread out over many publications and recordings), I’ll be blogging much of the rest of the book into existence. Continue reading ““Helping you navigate this dispensation’s last days”: What do I mean?”

The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and its Kingdom implications), Part 3

Otis Q. Sellers, 1920. I’d be grateful to the reader who can identify the statue and park (Cincinnati?Chicago?).

Today we conclude our look at Otis Q. Sellers’s critique of the traditional translations of the Hebrew עוֹלָם‎ (olam) and the Greek αἰών (aion) as “eternal” or “timeless” and what it means for eschatology. (See Part 1 and Part 2) Sellers found the idea of “outflowing” to be the key to their meaning. Here is his etymological case for this:

As an example [Sellers wrote] of the thread of truth that runs through a family of words let us consider the word “purse,” indicating the bag which my lady carries. Does this have any relationship to the bursa in my shoulder that at one time flared up into bursitis? And is it also related to pursing the lips, or to the famous Bourse, the French stock exchange? At first glance one might say no, but the fact is that they are all closely related, and the thread that runs through all of them is the idea of hide, that is, a stripped-off skin.

It seems that it all started with the Greek word bursa, and the equivalent Latin word, both of which mean “leather.” [Sellers inadvertently conflated things here. The Latin bursa is the equivalent of the Greek Προύσα (prousa), which means “sack” and is the name of a city in northwestern Turkey.—A.F.] This filtered into the French as bourse, which means “purse,” a leather sack in which money is placed, and became the name of the French stock exchange. And since we have little sacks in our shoulders, these are called bursas. Furthermore, when we contract our lips into folds and wrinkles, it resembles a moneybag when the strings are pulled, and this is called “pursing the lips.” So, as different as some of these words seem to be from one another, there is an essential thread that runs through all of them. (“What Does Aion Mean?,” Seed & Bread 128; all quotations here are to this issue.)[1]

How does this insight illuminate our handling of olam, aion and their cognates?

Since aion was selected by divine inspiration to express the word olam in New Testament quotations of passages containing this word, it is then normal to expect that the same basic idea of “flowing” should be found in every occurrence. . . . I am not suggesting that aion be translated “flow,” “flower,” or “flowing” in any [given] occurrence. In translating I will always use the anglicized forms “eon” and “eonian” to render noun and adjective, but I will know from long and careful study what these words mean. In Ephesians 2:2 where the King James Version reads “the course of this world,” I will translate it “the eon of this world,” but will know that it means “the flow of this world.” Continue reading “The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and its Kingdom implications), Part 3”

The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and why it matters), Part 2

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), in his study, probably early 1980s.

The previous post ended with the question, “What is an eon?” Before answering it (by putting more of Sellers’s spadework in front of you), let me address a question you may be asking (if you’re a Bible-believing Christian, that is): who cares whether the meaning of olam should control that of aion?

You might not care if you belong to a church whose doctrines presuppose the veracity of traditional translations of key words. For upon that presupposed veracity hangs your confidence in the doctrines. Anything that undermines the former threatens the latter, which are nonnegotiable for you.

If your church membership is a dogmatic commitment—socially determined and psychologically reinforced in ways that have nothing to do with the meanings of Hebrew and Greek words—then those meanings don’t matter. You can skip these posts.

Still, however, I’d ask you to reflect on what you mean when you say the Bible is true in all that it affirms, teaches, or implies. (Of course, if you don’t say that, then we would need to have a different conversation before proceeding.)

But if you belong to a church that at least pays lip service to that principle—whether it’s a parish of the Roman Catholic Church or a Baptist storefront—then it does matter what olam and aion, nephesh and psyche, qahal and ekklesia mean. (There are many other examples.)

You may not say, however, at least not integrally, that you believe both in the inspiration of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures God and in doctrines that are rooted in mistranslations thereof. That unstable conjunction only reveals your fidelity, not to the Scriptures as the Word of God, but rather to the organization. In America, that choice may be constitutionally protected, but that won’t relieve the cognitive dissonance it expresses. Continue reading “The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and why it matters), Part 2”

The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion, Part 1

Otis Q. Sellers, Bible Teacher (1901-1992)

As some of you know, my current project is a study of the life and thought of independent Bible teacher Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992). Many times on this blog I’ve written about him and his eschatology (“end times” theology; see list of links at the end of this post), but there was much more to his thought. He brought to his study of “what comes next” insights not immediately related to how the present administration (or dispensation) of grace will end or the inauguration of the next one, the Premillennial Kingdom of God.

Sellers spent decades correcting popular misunderstandings of Biblical terms and phrases—e.g., “soul,” “hell,” “church,” “born again”—and these corrections informed his understanding of the Premillennial Kingdom (specifically the Day of Lord). This post is the first of a series on one of his principles of Bible interpretation, namely, that of Divine Interchange.

An 1875 study perpetuating the mistranslations.

When you read or hear the word “eternal,” what comes to mind? Timeless? What about everlasting? Something that never expires? These are common translations of the Hebrew word עוֹלָם‎ (olam) and the Greek αἰών (aion) in English Bibles.

But they are mistranslations.

It was Sellers’s considered opinion that αἰών (aion) is the divine equivalent of עוֹלָם‎ (olam). In “The Divine Interchange Principle,” Sellers began by critically examining a common practice of many Bible students.

Those who interpret the Bible without being guided by clearly defined principles usually end up by making God’s Word to mean what they want it to mean. It seems that many interpreters want it this way. They operate without any laws, principles, or rules of any kind. This allows them to force the Word to yield to them and frees them from any obligation to conform to the Word. There are those who will adopt principles of interpretation up to a certain point, but when they get into a bind and the Word does not say what they want it to say, they ignore the principle and interpret as they please. (“The Divine Interchange Principle,” Seed & Bread, 125; hereafter, SB125)[1]

And so he offered a principle that guided his work:

Many years ago, I came upon the . . . Principle of Divine Interchange. It was not new; many had seen it before me, but I found it for myself, gave it a name, and put it into use . . . :

Hebrew and Greek words that are used interchangeably by the Holy Spirit are identical in value and meaning.

The Hebrew word as used in the Old Testament is the primary word and the Greek word used in its place in New Testament quotations means exactly the same, no matter what nuances of meaning it may have had among the Greeks. The Greek word must conform to the Hebrew, and not the other way around. (SB125)

The principle follows from Sellers’s presupposition concerning the nature of the Bible. He believed that whoever affirms the divine inspiration of Scripture must accept hades as the equivalent of sheol in that New Testament verse. Therefore, he reasoned, what we understand about the latter holds for the former, for “if sheol and hades are not equivalent in meaning and value, then David did not say what he is said to have said in Acts 2:27.”

A theology of divine inspiration, not a secular theory of linguistics, determined Sellers’s thinking. Continue reading “The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion, Part 1”

Gordon H. Clark’s scripturalism: Shawn Lazar’s revision

Shortly after posting Gordon H. Clark’s problematic rationalism a couple of weeks ago, I discovered the best sympathetically critical study of Clark I’ve ever read in the last thirty-five years. From first page to last, it’s well-written. It’s Shawn Lazar‘s Scripturalism and the Senses: Reviving Gordon Clark’s Apologetic, available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon. You can also freely download it as a pdf. (Many of his other writings are also available on that site. You may be asked why you want to access it.)

While reading Lazar, it occurred to me that defending the Christian worldview as the only one that can support rational defense itself—my approach to apologetics (see this and this)—one must first grasp and interrelate that worldview’s elements and their interconnections by reading Scripture, trusting that whatever affirms, teaches, and implies, God affirms, teaches, and implies.

That thought kept me reading Scripturalism and the Senses, even though the author would disagree with my inference. For that, in a word, is what Lazar’s revision of the “master axiom” of Clark’s Scripturalism amounts to:

The Bible is the only source of truth.

Lazar shows that this formulation overstated the matter and led many of Clark’s admirers to say “No thanks.” For even from the Bible we learn that we know things before and apart from reading Scripture. Even to do that, we have to know that’s what we’re doing when we interpret the Bible’s (or any other writing’s) alphabetic symbols as meaningful expressions.

Lazar reformulates Scripturalism’s master axiom this way:

The Bible is the word of God without error, true in all it teaches, affirms, and implies.

Among the propositions that the Bible teaches, affirms, or implies is that we may rely on our sense organs, fallible though they are, in the acquisition of knowledge. There are other sources of truth, but since truth cannot contradict truth, no truth can contradict the Bible. When in doubt, refer to the master axiom.

Further, we don’t need an epistemology to justify belief in the reliability of our sensory apparatus. We believe in its cognitive reliability because Scripture reveals that about us. The Bible’s trustworthiness about the human condition, including its cognitive powers, is axiomatic. Continue reading “Gordon H. Clark’s scripturalism: Shawn Lazar’s revision”

Gordon H. Clark’s problematic rationalism

My Philosophy after Christ project continues with notes on the late Reformed philosopher Gordon Haddon Clark (1902-1985). Douglas Douma, the author of The Presbyterian Philosopher: The Authorized Biography of Gordon H. Clark, recently posted an essay about how one ought to go about defending the Christian faith (AKA, apologetics methodology). I commend Douma’s stimulating post to readers. It forms the background of this one, a (nonexhaustive) commentary upon most of it.

Cornelius Van Til, 1978, speaking on the steps of Federal Hall National Memorial, Wall Street.

We sometimes learn by drawing contrasts, and when it comes to defending the Christian faith, one of the most instructive is that between the apologetics method of Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) and Clark’s.

For Van Til and his expositor Greg L. Bahnsen (1948-1995), the first question is: what worldview are unbelievers presupposing when they raise their objections?

For Clark and the first proponent of his philosophy and theology, John W. Robbins (1948-2008), it is: how do you know? For Clark, that means: what axiom does your objection to Christianity presuppose and what follows from it?

For Clark and Clarkians, the only rationally defensible axiom is: the Bible is the Word of God and therefore every proposition affirmed or taught in it may be taken as true and upon it one may build a philosophy of life.

For a time in the late ‘80s, I was a Clarkian (see my exchange with Bahnsen here and here. I was also a correspondent of Robbins’s. I have copies of our letters; Robbins’s estate should as well.) I had been a recent graduate student in philosophy, and Gordon Clark (who chaired Butler University’s philosophy department for 28 years) epitomized for me the ideal of Christian intellectual. That he also admired aspects of the thought of one of my philosophical heroes, Brand Blanshard, was also a plus for me.

Continue reading “Gordon H. Clark’s problematic rationalism”

The history book the philosopher reviewed but the historian ignored

In a previous post I disclosed my interest in George Novack, the Trotskyist philosopher who, but for the accident of geography, might have taken the place of ideological influencer that Stalinist historian Herbert Aptheker held when I began to study philosophy. Today I republish Novack’s review of The Black Jacobins, a magisterial study of modern history’s only successful slave revolt.

That its author, C. L. R. James (1901-1989), was a Fourth International Trotskyist explains not only Novack’s appreciation of this work, but also Aptheker’s lack thereof—even though slave revolts formed his area of scholarly specialization. In my Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness, I explore in detail the scotosis suffered not only by Aptheker but also, apparently, by many of James and Aptheker’s academic fans.

In this review Novack also refers to A History of Negro Revolt, a booklet of James’s that Aptheker merely lists in the bibliography of American Negro Slave Revolts (his 1943 Columbia University dissertation) without mentioning Black Jacobins. As I showed in another post, the second page of that booklet sports a full page ad for Black Jacobins, virtually eliminating the possibility that Aptheker was unaware of the book.

I post this partly for its historical interest, partly as a personal reflection on my intellectual path. I trust no one thinks I do so to promote the “revolutionary internationalism” of Novack or James. Were they alive, I’m sure that Novack, James, and Aptheker, each in his own way (qualified, of course, by the strictures of “scientific socialism”), would side with the woke mob, which I abominate, and that the mobsters, at least the literate among them, are steeped in their writings. Novack, James, and Aptheker would, if they could, put down their pens and pick up a gun.—Anthony Flood

Revolution, Black and White

George E. Novack

***New International*, May 1939, Vol. 5, No. 5, p. 155**

The Black Jacobins, 316 pp. Illus. New York, Dial Press. [1938] $3.75

A History of Negro Revolt, Fact Monograph, No.18. [UK, [1938] ] 6s[hillings]

The Black Jacobins tells the story of one of the major episodes in the great French Revolution: the struggles in the West Indian island of San Domingo which culminated in the only successful slave uprising in history and the establishment of the free Negro republic of Haiti.

Historians have done little to remove prevailing ignorance concerning these significant events. Even such authorities on the French revolution as Mathiez systematically belittle the importance of the colonies and slight their influence upon revolutionary developments in France. Historians of Haiti commit the opposite error of treating its early history without proper regard for its profound connections with Europe.

One of the singular merits of James’ work is that he avoids both forms of narrow-mindedness. Throughout his book he views the class struggles in San Domingo and France as two sides of a unified historical process unfolding in indissoluble interaction with each other. With a wealth of precise and picturesque detail he traces the parallel and inter-penetrating phases of the revolution in the colony and mother country. Continue reading “The history book the philosopher reviewed but the historian ignored”

Worldviews, basic and theorized

For decades I asked, “What is the evidence or argument for this worldview?” (for example, Marxism, Existentialism, or Christianity). It was the wrong question. I had been assuming that “worldview” always means an explicitly held ideology, philosophy, or theology, a system of ideas one is obliged to justify (or counter) with evidence and argument.

One does not, however, argue for one’s worldview, at least not one’s basic worldview. Rather, one’s basic worldview—a network of nonnegotiable beliefs about one’s relationship to others, to the cosmos, and to God—is the foundation upon on which one argues or asks questions. One’s basic worldview is implicated in the effort to argue or justify. It gets expressed in socially and historically conditioned ideologies, philosophies, and theologies. They are many, but the worldview-forming capacity, like the language-forming capacity, is anthropologically one.

One may rationally vindicate one’s theorized worldview by showing its superiority to any other on offer, but the worldview will even supply the criteria of evaluation. As followers of this blog know, I’m developing a manuscript entitled Philosophy after Christ. Today I’m continuing the line of thought sketched in Worldviews, potent and impotent: Noam Chomsky’s “lucky accident.” I want to develop the idea of a pre-theoretical (yet theorizable) worldview which, without conscious effort, forms as we mature from infancy through childhood and adolescence to adulthood. It forms in tandem with our capacity for language (without which the theorization can’t be expressed).

I’ve come to distinguish between the worldview one spontaneously comes to have and any reflection upon it. I’m also aware of the temptation to conflate the two. That is, having reflected upon one’s basic beliefs, one identifies and labels the result of that reflection. Between the two, the human heart’s imperfect love of truth inserts a wedge. The possibility of faithless, rather than faithful, reflection emerges.

In other words, if worldview-reflection occurs, if we attend to our incorrigible beliefs and then say something about these “nonnegotiables,” we introduce the problem of truth, adherence thereto and suppression thereof.

Let’s consider the distinction between what I’ve called our “birthright” worldview (see, e.g., this and this) and our attempts to articulate and label it (our “ideologies” or “philosophies”). Our linguistic capability is also our birthright: there’s nothing we need to do attain it.

Those attempts, being partly products of our decisions in response to our social and physical environments, may capture the birthright worldview accurately and flesh it out fruitfully. Or, those attempts may distort it and weaken its logical “pull.” Some writers have helped me think this through this problem. One of them is David K. Naugle, Chair of Dallas Baptist University’s Philosophy Department. He bears no responsibility for my imperfect grasp of his work.

Continue reading “Worldviews, basic and theorized”

Worldviews, potent and impotent: Noam Chomsky’s “lucky accident”

My work on Philosophy after Christ proceeds; today’s post expresses part of what I mean by philosophy, not only chronologically after Christ’s earthly ministry, but also “according to Christ” (κατὰΧριστόν, kata Christon) (Colossians 2:8).

We all take many things for granted. If, however, we would honor our mental obligations, we ought not to take things for granted, but rather examine their grounds. That is, whoever aspires to pursue wisdom or “philosophize” (which pursuit the linguistic analysis called “philosophical” ought to subserve) should not take taking-for-granted for granted. We ought to ground that habit.

We can do that by examining our worldview to see whether it can bear the weight we put on it. The German for “worldview” is Weltanschauung, a calque of the Greek kosmotheoria. A worldview is a network of first truths that constitute our pretheoretical propensity to see (theoria) the world (kosmos), which includes God, mankind, and nature.[1]

Our worldview-forming capacity is innate. It is a heuristic for making sense of the world, including our sense-making. The Christian claims that the kosmotheoria on display in the Bible alone fills that schema concretely and successfully. It’s our birthright, which except by God’s grace we incline to trade for a pot of message. The history of philosophy is the story of the attempt to put something else in place of God’s Word, the chronicle of the many ways human beings can devalue their inheritance.

The renown linguist and cognitive scientist, Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) provides a glaring example of this devaluation. He matter-of-factly consigns science, his intellectual milieu for seven decades, to a meaningless void:

[A] partial congruence [Chomsky writes] between the truth about the world and what the human science-forming capacity produces at a given moment yields science. Notice that it is just blind luck if the human science-forming capacity, a particular component of the human biological endowment, happens to yield a result that conforms more or less to the truth about the world.[2]

Continue reading “Worldviews, potent and impotent: Noam Chomsky’s “lucky accident””

Reflections on Ernst Cassirer

Ernst Cassirer

Over the years I have collected several short essays on the great morphologist of the human spirit, Ernst Cassirer (July 28, 1874—April 13, 1945) by very different thinkers whom I also admire and posted them on my other site. Here I provide links to them and excerpts from them, in the hope that they will stimulate interest in Cassirer and the problems he wrestled with.[1]

In his review of Cassirer’s An Essay on Man, Brand Blanshard sounds a note of disappointment:

It is hard not to think, as one reads a book so wealthy as this in historic and scientific erudition, but at the same time so oddly inconclusive, that Cassirer was rather a distinguished reflective scholar than a great speculative philosopher. The learning is not mobilized in the interest of any theory; the book is not so much an “essay on man” as a series of essays, all suggestive and enlightening, which converge on—what? It is hard to say. Perhaps there is no end, or harmony of ends, toward which all these activities are moving. But then, on Cassirer’s own showing, no philosophy of man would seem to be practicable; there would only be a theory of art, a theory of religion, and so on. This is in fact what he gives us. And an admirable gift it is, for which I, at least, am thankful. Only it is not what he sets out to give, nor all that the reader hoped to gain.

William Schultz, in his Cassirer and Langer on Myth, commented directly on Blanshard’s assessment:

Here is the assumption of a continental philosopher that a system must ‘converge’ on something or lead to an overall unity of experience, an ideal unity. To some extent, the criticism is correct, for the main arguments are not in An Essay on Man, yet Cassirer’s claims about the need for unity should have alerted Blanshard that they were in his previous books, as Cassirer himself said in the Preface to that work written almost twenty years after the three-volume masterpiece [The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms]. Ironically, both Blanshard and Cassirer share some of the same assumptions about what philosophy should do, but Blanshard did not study Cassirer’s work enough to recognize the revolutionary way in which Cassirer satisfies traditional expectations about what a philosophy is and does.

The other subject of Schultz’s study, Susanne Langer (1895-1985), the German-American philosopher whose thought was shaped to a large degree by her early absorption of Cassirer’s writings in the original as they were published, contributed an essay his theory of language and myth to the Library of Living Philosophers volume dedicated to him.

Continue reading “Reflections on Ernst Cassirer”

The Bible is the only source of truth.

The Bible is the word of God without error, true in all it teaches, affirms, and implies.

Revolution, Black and White

George E. Novack

New International, May 1939, Vol. 5, No. 5, p. 155

***New International*, May 1939, Vol. 5, No. 5, p. 155**