Philosophical Theology – Anthony G. Flood

Christianity and intelligibility: Part II

When we ask a question—historical, cultural, scientific, ethical, political, whatever—we tactily imply that a prior question has been “settled”: on what ground is our asking “standing,” figuratively speaking? That is, what do we presuppose about reality, knowledge, and goodness? In Philosophy after Christ I essay a biblical answer; the need to elaborate upon it motivates this initial response to William F. (“Bill”) Vallicella, Ph.D., a long-time correspondent and friend, who occasionally critiques my efforts on Maverick Philosopher.[1] Some of what follows might prove too “in the weeds” for some visitors, but I’m writing for the record, which transcends our sublunary sojourns. Bill knows what I mean.

Also, since I neither write nor receive anything in the spirit of “So there!,” I’m under no illusion that this post or any of its sequels has a prayer of “concluding the matter.” And that’s all right: not only la lucha but also la dialéctica continúa. I may post a thousand words only to learn that in response to some of them, Bill has rather quickly generated several thousand of his own. Further installments will appear while I, who did not earn the leisure that Bill deservedly enjoys, am still working on my rebuttal. So, a thought occurs: “Whom am I kidding?” As I will catch up in time, there’s no reason to postpone publishing something today on the status questionis. But any rebuttal that Bill may publish may have to go without a surrebuttal for a while. Continue reading “Christianity and intelligibility: Part II”

Do atheists have an excuse?

An edited version of this post, first published here five years ago today, forms the first half of Chapter 5 of Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him. The post linked in the first paragraph appeared on Bill Vallicella’s blog in 2018 (therefore, more than “a few months ago”).—A.G.F.

In a short post few months ago, Bill Vallicella argued that “If God exists, and one is an atheist, then one is ignorant of God, but it does not follow that one is culpably ignorant.” (Italics added.)

Bill takes his definition of “culpable ignorance” from a Catholic dictionary: ignorance is blameworthy if the ignorant one could have “cleared up” his ignorance, but chose not to. “One is said to be simply (but culpably) ignorant,” the dictionary says, “if one fails to make enough effort to learn what should be known.”

Bill applies this to the atheist this way:

I hold that there is vincible ignorance on various matters. But I deny that atheists are vincibly ignorant. Some might be, but not qua atheists. Whether or not God exists, one is not morally culpable for denying the existence of God. Nor do I think one is morally culpable if one doubts the existence of God.

Bill acknowledges that his exculpation of the professing atheist “puts me at odds with St. Paul, at least on one interpretation of what he is saying at Romans 1: 18-20.”

I’ll say! As Bill wrote in the post he linked to: “There are sincere and decent atheists, and they have plenty of excuse for their unbelief. The best of them, if wrong in the end, are excusably wrong.”

That position reveals a great deal about Bill’s idea of God. It’s not the idea one gets from the Bible, arguably the source of what Bill calls “the Judeo-Christian tradition.” I bring this up because Bill stipulates (in the post under discussion) that for “present purposes, it suffices to say that ‘God’ refers to the supreme being of the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

For Bill’s argument to work, that interpretation of Romans 1:18-20—God infallibly communicates His existence, power, and divinity to all people and they are all responsible for having received that communication—would have to fall outside that “tradition.”

God’s Word is the light that enlightens everyone who comes into the world (John 1:9). There are no exceptions for professing atheists.

Continue reading “Do atheists have an excuse?”

AnthonyFlood.com: An Emerald Anniversary Retrospective

December 2004, Executive Assistant to William J. Ledger, M.D., Chairman Emeritus, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Weill Cornell Medical College. Note the Three Musketeers bar in the shirt pocket.

Twenty years ago today I launched this site’s ancestor: AnthonyFlood.com. (No middle initial.) Building it with Microsoft’s (no-longer-supported) FrontPage, made to order for this low-tech bookworm, I had swiped the look and feel of a color specialist’s site (how could I go wrong?), chose a font that conveys text to the brain with the least eyestrain (Verdana 10-pt Bold), slapped an image of the Owl of Athena in the upper left corner, and experimented with log lines. (An early mouthful was “Where Panentheism, Revisionism, and Anarchocapitalism Coalesce,” developed here; later, the terser “Philosophy against Misosophy.”)

A lifetime ago, I had it “all figured out”: Whitehead in philosophy, political economy via Rothbard, historical revisionism (e.g., Acton, Barnes). I scanned, in some cases typed from scratch, articles from my paper archives and formatted them for the site. Many global visitors (sometimes descendants of the authors) sent encouraging notes of appreciation for bringing the text of not easily accessible essays to their attention. The articles are worthless for citation purposes, of course, but readers hungry for their contents can consume them.

The site’s live, but dormant; I can no longer update it; it’s all I can do to maintain this one. Take a gander at the index. Behold its holdings for Blanshard, Langer, Lonergan, Hartshorne, Rothbard, Whitehead. My dear friend (and fellow Aptheker research assistant) Hugh Murray (an anthology of whose historical essays I’m editing) has his portal.

And, last but not least, this writer, roadkill in the fight to publish or perish outside of academia, at least had a platform for stuff he wrote that others might consider as he eked out a living in the “corporate world.”

Maverick Philosopher William F. Vallicella, Ph.D., in the hills of Gold Canyon, AZ

One of those others is Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, an analyst’s analyst and early (and continuing) source of encouragement and criticism. (An earlier version of his site is approaching its 2oth.) He thought enough of an essay of John Deck’s (posted because, I say, it “broke Thomism’s hold on me”—I was well on my way to that waste of time called panentheism) to critique my appreciation of Deck. This sparked a decades-long correspondence and a friendship that transcends our differences.

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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”

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.

“Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?” A Systematically Misleading Expression.

This was first published in 2002 on Pathways in Philosophy (link now dead) and then on my old site probably in 2005. One “answers” the question by dissolving it.* I republish my dissolution without prejudice to the view that doing so has little (if anything) to do with philosophizing after Christ, apart from Whom it makes no sense to essay an answer to this question or any other. For those in a hurry: “something” stands in for “everything.” The answer to “Why?,” the explanans, must lie outside everything, the explanandum. But there is nothing apart from everything. The universe could be otherwise than the way it is and therefore need not be at all: one may sensibly ask why it exists one way rather than another. Pre-creation, however, God eternally is all there eternally is. Nothing answers to the question, “Why is God the way He is?” There being nothing contingent about Him, one could never sensibly ask “Why does God exist?”

The word “something” needs clarification. We ordinarily use “something” to refer to an unidentified particular in a general way (e.g., “I just heard something; what was that?”). The question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?,” however, seems to ask in a general way about the totality of things.

The grammatical form of a question can be misleading. “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is grammatically similar to “Why is there salt in the soup rather than pepper?” or “Why are there swallows in Capistrano rather than bald eagles?,” but they are logically quite different from our question. The other questions can be answered by investigating other parts of the world (culinary practice and the nature of certain birds, respectively). The explanation in each case lies outside the thing to be explained. But the question, “Why is there everything [‘something’] rather than nothing at all?,” logically does not permit any such investigation. There is nothing “outside” everything that could yield an explanation.

In The Mystery of Existence, Milton K. Munitz argues that, unlike “Why is there something rather than nothing?,” the question “Why does the observed world exist?” is well-framed, but unanswerable. (A genuine mystery, according to Munitz, is a question that can be neither dismissed nor answered.) He rejects the theistic answer, i.e., the observed world exists because God created it, but that rejection does not affect what we have said above. The mystery of existence is neutral with respect to theism. Whether or not God exists, there is nothing outside the totality of existing things (including or excluding a God) and therefore nothing that can yield an explanation for its existence. That is, whether the totality equals “just the observed world” or “God plus the observed world,” there is—there can be—nothing outside that totality which explains it. Even when, according to theism, God was all that existed, there was no explanation for that fact, for there were no other facts than his existence to which possible explanatory appeal could be made.

As Paul Edwards put it in his (also highly recommended) essay, “Why?,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

. . . the word ‘why’ loses its meaning when it becomes logically impossible to go beyond what one is trying to explain. This is a matter on which there need not be any disagreement between atheists and theists or between rationalists and empiricists.

* Partly in response, William F. Vallicella blogged “Two Forms of the Ultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question”

The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God Revisited: Toward a Response to Bill Vallicella

The length of this post might suggest otherwise, but I’m not going to reproduce my book, Philosophy after Christ, here but Maverick Philosopher and friend William “Bill” Vallicella (the subject of several posts, e.g., here, here, and here) recently posted essays on theistic argumentation, and I thought it deserved a response.

Preamble: if the God of the Bible, who created human beings in his image to know and love him and to know, value, and rule the rest of creation under him (hereafter, “God”), exists, then we know one way that the conditions of intelligible predication (IP) can be met. The preceding sentence includes key aspects of the Christian worldview (CW)—the Theos-anthropos-kosmos relationship—expressed on the pages of the Bible.

If no alternative explanation for IP is possible, then Biblical theism is necessarily true (which is what the CW predicts).

Knowing whether IP has conditions and that they’re met is a “big deal.” It underlies everything one does, not something one can take for granted. And yet virtually every thinker, yea, every philosopher, takes the satisfaction of those conditions, which must obtain, for granted. This taking is arbitrary, and being arbitrary does not comport with philosophizing.

If no worldview other than the Christian (CW) can account for IP, if (as I now hold) an alternative to the CW when it comes to accounting for IP cannot even be conceived, then to hold out for an alternative, as though doing so were an expression of rational exigency (“demandingness”)—that to reserve judgment somehow accords with epistemic duty—models only dogmatic stubbornness, not tolerant liberality.

Referring to the transcendental argument (TA) laid out in Chapter 13 of my book, I will call Bill’s bluff. After reading it, he may still say, “Well, Tony, I remain unconvinced”; if my argument goes through, however, then I will interpret such a response as an expression of his commitment to what he calls his “characteristic thesis” (CT). To paraphrase Brand Blanshard, it wrong to leap to a conclusion that argument’s premises don’t entail, but it is no less wrong to fail to draw an inference that they do entail.

Continue reading “The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God Revisited: Toward a Response to Bill Vallicella”

“Philosophy after Christ”: James N. Anderson’s review

This morning James N. Anderson, Carl W. McMurray Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte and author of What’s Your Worldview?: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions—see a list of his other publications—alerted me to his review, published today, of my Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Th0ughts after Him. It appears on his blog Analogical Thoughts (a.k.a., προγινώσκω, proginōskō, “to foreknow”; see Romans 8:29). For his praise of the book I am grateful, but for his criticisms, I am indebted to him. Please take this link.

Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him

Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him, foreword by David Gordon, Ph.D., went live on Amazon today in hard cover, paperback, and Kindle editions. It will be a day or so before the editions interlink on their respective product pages and the “Look inside!” feature is available on all three. Here’s what you’ll find on them:

“Two things especially struck me . . . . One is the sincerity and passion of [Flood’s] efforts over fifty years to explore various ways of understanding Christian faith. He has at various times looked to Bernard Lonergan and Gordon Clark for guidance, but he has now found a resting place in the presuppositionalism of Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnsen. . . . The other . . . is the exceptional learning displayed in it. Tony knows the Bible very well, and he discourses learnedly on the meaning of various Hebrew and Greek words in it. He brings to bear in his discussion a great many of the major Western philosophers, showing a detailed knowledge of their thought. If I am not convinced by Tony’s main thesis . . . I nevertheless commend this acute and erudite book highly.” From the Foreword by David Gordon, PhD, Senior Fellow, Ludwig von Mises Institute

When Christ said we’re to live, not by bread alone, by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4), He didn’t make an exception for philosophers. In Scripture, the philosopher has a cornucopia of divine words to feast upon as eagerly as one who hungers physically devours bread.

To pursue philosophy after Christ the way an artist seeks to emulate the style of a master is to reflect that dependence. The price of denying it is to fall prey to one or another species of foolishness.

In Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him, Anthony Flood (Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic) explores how “vain deceit after the tradition of men” (Colossians 2:8) has taken captive many philosophers, Christian as well as non-Christian.

To philosophize after Christ is to pursue Christ as the Wisdom of God. This requires learning what He has revealed about Himself, the cosmos, and mankind in Holy Scripture and then regimenting one’s thinking and living accordingly.

It also means internalizing the Bible’s Weltanschauung, our “birthright worldview” as created image-bearers, as the presupposition of intelligible predication, that is, of making sense of things, even our sense-making.

The effort to conform one’s mind to Christ’s can generate a “philosophy of philosophy,” or metaphilosophy, indispensable to the “metapologetics” that undergirds sound Christian apologetics.

In Part 1, Basics, Flood describes philosophizing as the unfolding of implications of the worldview which, with our linguistic capability, we inherit at birth.

Part 2, Dialectics, he explores the oppositions that worldviews generate and shows how non-Christian worldviews can infiltrate even the thinking of Christians, including the Catholic Bernard Lonergan and the Calvinist Gordon Clark.

Part 3, Polemics, discusses several expressions of dialectics:

- John Frame’s Square of Religious Opposition, on which Flood then locates
- David Ramsay Steele’s atheism;
- Flood’s defense of the transcendental argument for God’s existence;
- William Vallicella’s critique of Flood’s metaphilosophy; and
- Two books, one by Evangelicals that’s silent about the worldview approach to defending the Christian faith, the other by Roman Catholics who embrace that approach, but fail to identify its non-Catholic origins.

If one loves the wisdom of God (the only wisdom worth seeking), then Jesus’ words must constitute one’s philosophical “global positioning system.” Philosophy after Christ shows you what that involves.

* * *

Your reaction to this book, critical as well as appreciative, will be welcome.

No Mere Assertion: The Transcendental Argument for the Christian Worldview (and, Therefore, for the Existence of God)

Have I merely been asserting, gratuitously, the Christian worldview, thereby inviting equally gratuitous denial? When I asked a friend for his opinion of the previous post, “Explanation Unexplained,” he replied:

If there is a weakness in your argument, I’d say that it doesn’t distinguish between ontology and epistemology. That is, suppose the Christian worldview, as you expound it, is correct. Suppose someone fails to accept this worldview. Why should this person accept the view that his refusal is a suppression of a view he really knows to be true, even if in fact this is the case? If the reply is that competing worldviews do not explain how truth and knowledge are possible, then perhaps a counter would be that the Christian worldview does not explain this either, but rather asserts its own exclusive rationality.

I will try to remedy this appearance of weakness by asking about the origin of the rational exigency (demand for reasons) behind the criticism. Where does that come from?

The Diagnosis

The answer to my friend’s question is that although the unbeliever may be psychologically unlikely to admits that he’s suppressing the truth, he must live with the logical consequences of the suppression I diagnose on the warrant of Romans 1:18-20 (ESV).

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress (κατεχόντων, katechonton, “hold down”) the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

The one who fails to accept this diagnosis is, according to the Apostle Paul, self-deceived. Despite that condition, however, the rejecter relies on principles of intelligible predication that he cannot account for (again, the laws of logic, the regularity of nature, and moral absolutes).

Unless something explains their mutual comportment, however, every utterance floats in a void, a cosmic theater of the absurd, rendering all predications (including “Christian theism is false” and “The Bible is not the word of God”) meaningless.

Continue reading “No Mere Assertion: The Transcendental Argument for the Christian Worldview (and, Therefore, for the Existence of God)”