Author: Anthony Flood

“Not to be confused with . . .”: AI notes that Flood is not Flew

Over six years ago, in “‘Life from non-life’? Without a prayer,” when I had reason to mention the late eminent British atheist-turned-deist philosopher Antony Flew, I couldn’t help adding “not to be confused with Anthony Flood.” Today, searching for my eBooklet Atheism Analysed: The Implosion of George Smith’s “Case against God,” I see that Google’s AI has this to say:

Anthony G. Flood is a contemporary philosopher who has written on atheism, analyzing arguments against it, such as his eBook Atheism Analyzed: The Implosion of George Smith’s “Case against God.” His work explores topics such as the nature of knowledge, the role of apologetics, and the limits of atheistic reasoning, often with a Christian philosophical perspective. He is not to be confused with the late philosopher Antony Flew, who converted from atheism to deism later in life.

AI thinks it no joke to note the distinction. I’m also not to be confused with the Catholic professor of philosophy Anthony T. Flood, which possible confusion I understand is for him a live issue.

Christian Individualism: A Substack for the book

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1902). 1921, the year he attended Moody Bible College (not Institute).

It’s a work in progress. It won’t replace this site but instead will anticipate next year’s publication (God willing) of Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers. The goal is to address questions that arose since I finished the 106,000+-word draft that finally found its way to the publisher. (It’s in the proofreading stage.)

I’ll discuss the book here on the way to its 2026 launch, but not in the detail you’ll find there; nor will I go into the finer points of Christian apologetics and “church history” as I might here.

So, please let me know what you think of that site’s very first “publication,” dated today: Christian Individualism: A way of life and, next year, a book and consider subscribing and spreading the word. Thank you!

Marking seven years, clarifying this site’s future course

This site was launched on October 3, 2018, seven years ago this month. In the future, I will focus on next year’s (God willing) publication of Christian Individualism and dedicate its posts to developing my understanding of Christian Individualism.

That understanding is not necessarily shared by anyone else, not even those who, like me, agree with the Biblical ecclesiology and eschatology of Otis Q. Sellers and the Word of Truth Ministry he founded in 1936. (Search his name on this site.)  Sellers didn’t found, lead, or belong to a “denomination,” and neither do I. I’m a sinner saved by grace. Period.

Overall, I’m pleased with this site’s more than 300 mini-essays, many being ancestors of book chapters. Now, however, in the time left to me, I will more sharply define the course of this site. It won’t be devoid of politics, history, and philosophy, but I will interpret all things, including those topics, through the lens of Scripture. I will ask those who disagree what their lenses are.

There will be more apologetics, that is, the defense of the Gospel. That will require making clear what I mean by that term as well as what it means to defend the hope that’s in me (1 Peter 3:15) and the peace that comes with being justified by faith and believing the Gospel (Romans 5:1). My intellectual world is centered on, revolves around, that.

I will give Christ the pre-eminence He’s always been due. Not C. L. R. James. Not Herbert Aptheker. Not Susanne Langer. Been there; done that. I will box up my books on, say, the history of communism and crack open more on the history of Christians living in the Dispensation of Grace, a.k.a. “church history.”

The logline of this site has been, “Helping you navigate this dispensation’s last days (2 Tim. 3; Eph. 3:2). I will do a better job of living up to that implicit promise.

Whose Land?

That is the title of James Parkes’s patient historical narrative. The subtitle is A History of the Peoples of Palestine. “Palestine,” we have collectively forgotten, names a remnant of the Roman Empire, a remnant that has been occupied by many peoples. He wrote it in the late ’40s, long before “the Palestinian people” was popularized by Yassir Arafat in the ’60s to refer exclusively to its Arab inhabitants, a ruse the world fell for and seems stuck with.

Whose Land? came from the pen of a theological liberal. By “liberal” I mean (in part) that he did not believe that the creation of the modern secular state of Israel in 1948 (hereafter simply “Israel” unless the context indicates the biblical House of Israel) fulfilled Old Testament prophecy of the ingathering to The Land of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—simply because he did not think that any event can do such a thing.

Unlike today’s “liberals,” however, he conditionally supported the Zionist response to European antisemitism, the ghoulish rise of which he witnessed in the ’20s and ’30s and which he made the focus of his professional life. In Whose Land?, Parkes affirms the historical and moral right of Jews to national restoration in their ancestral land, but insists that—I’m paraphrasing Parkes—justice and respect for the Arabs with whom the Jews had to deal must (ethically must) inform the Jew in his exercise of his right to, say, purchase a plot of land from a Palestinian Arab. He defends Israel’s legitimacy while warning that Jewish nationalism must never mirror the exclusivism or oppression that Jews themselves had suffered. He bases his non-Scriptural case on commonly shared assumptions—which, in my view, make no sense unless grounded in Scripture. I encourage you to find a copy of Whose Land? and take Parkes’s eloquent, empathetic, and learned historical tour.

I agree with Parkes that Israel fulfills no prophecy, but that’s because I follow the Scriptural exegesis of Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992). Sellers rarely commented on current events, so what his view on Israel was is a matter of speculation. (I invite his descendants to settle the matter, if they can.) He was neither pro-Zionist or anti-Zionist as we use those terms. Where Sellers and I differ from Parkes is that we accept the Bible’s self-attestation that its words are God-breathed, a proposition no self-respecting theological liberal takes seriously. (My Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers will, God-willing, be published in 2026.)

Sellers held that Israel must be judged by the same standards to which one would hold any other nation. In the present Dispensation of Grace, resurrected descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have not yet been ingathered to The Land, nor have Christ’s Apostles been resurrected to sit on twelve thrones judging the Israel’s twelve tribes (Matthew 19:28); Israel is not yet mediating between God’s throne and the nations in the eon of the manifest Kingdom of God. Israel is but one of the nations, on equal footing with them. The status of “most favored nation” is reserved for the time when God will govern all nations.

That is, because the Gospel is freely authorized to all nations (Acts 28:28), they are “joint bodies” (σύνσωμα, sussōma: plural; Ephesians 3:6). As we are living in the pre-Kingdom Dispensation of Grace (and the “Silence of God”), however, we who follow the course of history’s “secular surface” still need to know what trend to promote or impede. We’re left to our theoretical devices guided by biblical precepts, one of which, I’d argue, is the just acquisition of property. Continue reading “Whose Land?”

Wé Ani’s Uncanny Sonic Diversity Revisited

I can never confidently predict the vocal texture that Wé Ani, my favorite singer, will bring to a performance. Please indulge me as I take a break from politics, history, philosophy, and theology (all right, except for one footnote).

Over the past two years, I’ve audited all her music videos, almost a hundred of them, long and short. Some were made in her humble home studio, some professionally scripted and videographed, still others televised for competitions where the magic that only million-dollar budgets can buy enhances her image in a dozen different Wés, I mean, ways.

My oft-muttered rhetorical question is: what resemblance does the artist in Video A bear to the one in Video B (A and B standing for any randomly chosen two items in that collection)?

I documented this in detail over a year ago in “Wé Ani: a protean multiplex of vocal performance.” I won’t reproduce all the links, for only a few of you are motivated to verify my assertions. I conceded that this post’s appeal is probably not much more than that of a stranger’s diary entry.

Since posting that essay, there has been even more corroborating evidence.

My topic is her singing, but she also has a wide diversity of “looks,” each a function of her age, diet, wardrobe, hairstyling, lighting, and so forth.

The problem, as I see it, is one of aesthetic reconciliation: I find it hard to reconcile Wé’s many divergent (and, to me, deeply pleasing) vocal textures as embodiments of a single artist.

Continue reading “Wé Ani’s Uncanny Sonic Diversity Revisited”

“Prove me wrong.”

That was Charlie Kirk’s challenge on campuses across this country and abroad. Those words were emblazoned on the tents where he invited interlocutors, friendly and unfriendly, to approach the microphone to debate him on political, religious, and cultural topics. He would easily show that, and how, those three “fields” overlapped.

He was a political activist, but before that, by his account, he was a sinner saved by grace who would not shirk his responsibility to sanctify the Lord in his heart before, with gentleness and respect, giving a reason for the hope that was in him in the public square (1 Peter 3:15).

For over fifty years, I’ve weighed the pros and cons of philosophical and theological arguments, always eager (and often anxious) to learn what could be said against my position. But could I have done what Charlie did? At this stage, it is clear the answer is no. I write blog posts and books, but compared to Charlie, I’ve always “played it safe.”

I remember Charlie’s first appearance on Megyn Kelly’s The Kelly File on Fox News about a dozen years ago and then followed his career with some, but not great, interest. The recruitment of young people to the conservative cause, however important, was for me a side-show. Frankly, and this says more about him than me, if he hadn’t been murdered yesterday I wouldn’t be writing about him today.

But it was not until yesterday that I realized how important his mission of preparing tomorrow’s leaders is and how much he accomplished to that end, a legacy that millions will build on. I find it surreal that I’m following the aftermath of his assassination on the 24th anniversary of 9/11, when he was a lad of eight years.

I only voted for Trump; Kirk played an indispensable role in persuading millions of younger voters to do likewise. From that perspective, my differences with Charlie over, say, apologetical methodology are neither here nor there. He was a tremendous force for the good of order we call Western Civilization. Read William Kirkpatrick’s “The Civilizational Struggle That No One Talks About,” published a few weeks ago, and tell me America doesn’t need an army of Charlie Kirks. And then marvel at the how far he went in raising such an army.

He was as productive as he was creative and courageous; the more I learn about him, the more impressed I am. (Not that impressing me is a criterion of anything important.)

The Left doesn’t have a Donald Trump but, even worse for them, they don’t have a Charlie Kirk, whose legacy is deep bench of future leaders of a movement which does not depend upon the fortunes of one person. When a young person would ask him, “Who’s the next Charlie Kirk?,” his answer was always, “You are the next Charlie Kirk.”

I look forward to learning more about a man whom, I’m ashamed to admit, I underestimated. My poor words cannot compete with the encomia pouring in from those who knew this husband and father and autodidact who commanded every stage he strode upon and whose life’s work I’m sure I’m benefiting from in ways I cannot yet see. So I’ll stop. (Better late than never.)

Treat yourself to his encounters with the human refuse of our miseducational system on YouTube.com. Read his 2024 book, Right Wing Revolution: How to Beat the Woke and Save the West. You’ll be the better for it.

Prove me wrong.

“. . . for the young man shall die a hundred years old.”

Yes, but because of the eonian (“eternal”) life flowing from the King—from Him Who is Life itself—to His subjects . . . not by organ transplants!

No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. Isaiah 65:20 (ESV)

The fiend in the Kremlin—the KGB alum who, we’re told, was “caught” the other day in a “hot mic” moment—fantasized to his equally fiendish Beijing host that “human organs can be continuously transplanted” and “the longer you live, the younger you become, and [you can] even achieve immortality.”

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.” Genesis 3:4 (ESV)

In the future manifest Kingdom of God, the divine dispensation that will follow the present dispensation of grace (Ephesians 3:2; KJV), death will no longer be an enemy that eventually catches up with you, no matter what you eat, how much you exercise, or how many organs are transplanted from someone else’s body into yours. No infant will die prematurely, and centenarians will be considered boys and girls. If you die, it will be because something you do earns God’s wrath, as Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11), who lived in the “ear stage of the Kingdom” (Mark 4:26-29), earned that wrath by lying to the Holy Spirit. The present dispensation is a “parenthesis,” a regnum interruptum, if you will, between that stage and the “full grain in the ear stage,” the manifest Kingdom of God. Disease and death are outworkings of the curse of the Fall of man, not particular judgments. When God acts today, He acts only in grace.

Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers will, God willing, be published in 2026. In the meantime, searching <Otis Q. Sellers> on this site will provide answers to many of the questions that my dogmatic assertions above may have occasioned. But you can always ask one below.

If I Had a Hammer: Hayek on Tool Ownership

The history of the Industrial Revolution—how feudalism’s serfs became capitalism’s propertyless proletarians—does not make for pleasant reading. It was not, however, the unrelieved tragedy of Marxist propaganda. On the contrary. This Labor Day, I reproduce the 21st chapter of my Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic (2022), which, with the help of Nobel Laureate Friedrich von Hayek, highlights that story’s pro-life dimension. (“Mr. Ferrara” refers to Christopher Ferrara, the Catholic Distributist author of my book’s foil, The Church and the Libertarian.)

That chapter’s title came to me out of the blue when I wrote its ancestor post for my now-defunct blog, anarcho-capitalist.com, perhaps in 2011. Remembering as a kid enjoying Trini Lopez’s hit in 1963, I thought it an ironically fitting title: serfs did lose the economic utility of their hammers and other tools, and were left with only their labor to sell using machines they no more owned than they owned the commodities that issued from them. But, I argue, they gained so much more.

“I still call myself a communist,” Pete Seeger (1919-2014) proclaimed as late as 1995.

The opportunities now open to them, not the least of which was seeing more of their children grow up to give them grandkids, mean nothing to Communists, excuse me, Progressives who sang “If I Had a Hammer” around the campfire, at rallies, and on the concert stage. Like “Imagine,” John Lennon’s ode to godless communism, “If I Had a Hammer” was an innocent-sounding, mesmerizing, aspirational hymn to their collectivist designs, starting with its Red composer, Pete Seeger in 1949, and continuing with Peter, Paul and Mary in 1962. With Lopez, the ballad reached No. 3—and my ears. For the rest of the tune’s discography, see the Wikipedia entry.

If I Had a Hammer: Hayek on Tool Ownership

Now, about the “propertyless paupers” of Mr. Ferrara’s solicitude, Hayek wrote in his own contribution to the previously cited volume:

Discussions of the effects of the rise of modern industry on the working classes refer almost always to the conditions in England in the first half of the nineteenth century; yet the great change to which they refer had commenced much earlier and by then had quite a long history and had spread far beyond England. The freedom of economic activity which in England had provide so favorable to the rapid growth of wealth was probably in the first instance an almost accidental by-product of the limitations which the revolution of the seventeenth century had placed on the powers of government; and only after its beneficial effects had come to be widely noticed did the economists later undertake to explain the connection and to argue for the removal of the remaining barriers to commercial freedom.[1]

Self-interested lords may have intended only to assert their own interests against the monarch, but they unleashed a wave of “beneficial effects” that many beyond them enjoyed. The prescient among them, including some economists, thought it would be good to “roll out” the idea of limited government even further. But Mr. Ferrara’s emphasis on tool-ownership—“the few . . . in possession of the means of production”—is a Distributist “tell” that merits a comment.

Continue reading “If I Had a Hammer: Hayek on Tool Ownership”

Susanne K. Langer: The Flood-Van Den Heuvel Correspondence, 2009-2011, now online

Gary Van Den Heuvel, circa 1984. Photo courtesy of Kell Julliard
Tony Flood, circa 2004, Weill Cornell Medicine. A Three Musketeers bar rises from his shirt pocket.

In 2009, Gary Van Den Heuvel (1948-2012), the independent scholar who abridged Susanne K. Langer’s Mind trilogy in 1988, wrote me about the Langer materials I was curating on my old site, and we corresponded about her and Langer-adjacent topics during the last two years of his life. The Netherlands-based Langer Circle recently reproduced my “Langer Portal” on their site, and only this week uploaded our correspondence. Here is their notice of both events.

You might spot a typo or two, but overall, it’s in very good shape, considering we composed it without a thought of publicizing it. Its first two pages are representative; I hope you’ll look them over to see if they don’t whet your appetite for more.

I was pleased to re-read after so many years a paragraph in my first reply to Gary that asks why a Bible-believing Christian like me would be attracted to thought of an avowedly secular thinker like Langer, who grounded human symbol-making in biology. Here it is.

My interest in Langer arose from my study of [Catholic philosopher Bernard] Lonergan , who once raved about her aesthetic theory. When about five years ago [2004?] I finally got around to absorbing every page of my old Mentor paperback copy of Philosophy in a New Key, a world of meaning opened up. That she had been one of [Alfred North] Whitehead’s first American students and an early admirer (and interpreter and translator) of [Ernst] Cassirer (neither of them influenced Lonergan) fascinated me. For help I turned to the writings of Richard Liddy, SJ (several of which I’ve posted), who had studied under Lonergan and chose Langer’s aesthetics as his dissertation topic. I have not read his dissertation (I certainly won’t do that before reading Mind), but I was struck by his ultimate rejection of Langer as a materialist—not surprising, perhaps, given his vocation, but unfair, I think. The evaluation of the effort to root man’s artistic drive in biology depends on one’s view of biology! (March 9, 2009; my italics)

Mine is that it part of the created order (Genesis 1:20-28), not the by-product of a mindless explosion and equally undirected evolution, which backdrop would open a trapdoor under every line she ever wrote. See that Langer Portal for links to some of the writings of the thinkers named in passing above, and my post, Langer Speaks!, from last week.

Susanne Langer, 1895-1985. Harvard University, Radcliffe College Archives

Thank you, Langer Circle, for giving the results of my hod-carrying from decades ago a more permanent home. The Circle’s chairperson, Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, has written a masterly introduction of her life and thought that occupies much of my spare time these days, The Philosophy of Susanne Langer: Embodied Meaning in Logic, Art and Feeling. I wish I had this twenty years ago. (Dr. Chaplin tells me she feels the same way. (:^D).)

Happy Birthday to me!

Gary Van Den Heuvel, my friend and correspondent, circa 2011.

P.S.: Gary co-authored a scholarly yet accessible introduction to Langer’s thought with Kell Julliard, who provided both photos of Gary: Susanne K. Langer and the Foundations of Art Therapy. Art Therapy, 1999, 16(3), 112–120. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421656.1999.10129656. I’m grateful to Kell for the PDF and the pix.—Tony Flood