Philosophical Theology – Page 3

Norman Leo Geisler, 1932-2019: indefatigable and prolific Christian apologist

In July of this year I wrote that in 1978:

At Gabe [Monheim]’s suggestion, I bought Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance for ten dollars at (a now long-gone) Christian Publications bookstore on 8th Avenue between 42nd and 43rd, smack-dab in then-den of iniquity called Times Square. . . . I also picked up Norman Geisler’s Christian Apologetics , Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict, and creationist critiques of evolution. This was my introduction to the intellectual side of Christian faith.

Despite the “connectivity” we enjoy these days, I didn’t know until the other day that Norman Geisler, the great classical Christian apologist—his CV is here—had passed away only a week before my July post.

A reflection of both his intellect and humor may be found in the title of one of his many books: Should Old Aquinas Be Forgotten? Why Many Evangelicals Say No: The Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas Considered. This conservative Protestant critic of Roman Catholic theology not only grew up among Catholics, but earned his doctorate in philosophy from Loyola University, a Jesuit institution. He coined “Triple-A Theism” to encapsulate his philosophical alignment with Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas.

On April 4, 1980, after reading Christian Apologetics cover to cover, I wrote to Geisler, then a Professor of Systematic Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary:

Dear Dr. Geisler,

Since your Christian Apologetics was decisive in establishing the intellectual side of my spiritual commitment, I write to you now believing you will once again be able to help me overcome certain difficulties in defending and developing a theistic philosophy. The difficulties, which I will state shortly, were occasioned by my reading of George Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God (Kensington, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1979). I believe Smith’s case as a whole is well-stated . . . but can be answered only by challenging the positivistic rationalism which informs nearly all his arguments. While I am trying to do this now for my concerned Christian friends and my own philosophic development, I believe I will need the assistance of seasoned thinkers such as yourself in doing so.

The difficulties center on the notion of God. . . . First, if God is unlimited, but we know only of the limited and definite, then if we ascribe meaningful attributes to Him, we diminish Him, for He is unlimited and infinite. If we ascribe “unlimited” traits to Him—omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc.—make Him unknowable, and our talk of Him is literally nonsense.

In short, we can have no notion of an infinite being, supreme in every way; what we have a genuine notion of cannot be God. The second difficulty . . . concerns one famous way out of the foregoing dilemma . . . : what we cannot know literally, we cannot know analogically. If the supreme being evades characterization by knowable terms, we cannot have a knowable “analogical” notion of Him. Legitimate analogy presupposes a prior successful effort at definition and cannot constitute the heart of that effort. I do not believe you addressed this aspect of the problem of analogy in your Philosophy of Religion. Can you give me a non-theistic example of analogical predication (not analogical articulation of what we already have a notion of)?

Any response to this letter will be most appreciated. While awaiting it, I will peruse pertinent sections of your writings again to see if by carelessness I have missed the essentials of your forthcoming reply. [I did. See below] Also, if you are familiar with the Smith book, and know of any critical reviews of it (maybe even – dare I hope? – one by yourself), would you please let me know? Thank you so much.

Yours in the Lord,

Ten days later Norman Geisler penned this response: Continue reading “Norman Leo Geisler, 1932-2019: indefatigable and prolific Christian apologist”

When George Novack was an “entranced disciple” of Whitehead

George Novack, 1905-1992. Circa early 1930s.

On his way to becoming a Marxist-Leninist philosopher before the stock market crash of 1929, George Novack (1905-1992) was a student of Alfred North Whitehead, to whose writings I once paid a great deal of attention. After noting that the “disconnected writings of C. S. Peirce were then being collected and edited by one of my teachers [at Harvard], Charles Hartshorne” (another erstwhile hero of mine), Novack wrote:

However, the attention of the more serious students was drawn toward Bertrand Russell’s collaborator, A. N. Whitehead, the erudite modernizer of Platonism with scientific-mathematical trimmings. He read several chapters of his major treatise Process and Reality to our class. Obscure and enigmatic as much of its metaphysics was, it appealed to my need for a comprehensive, rational interpretation of the universe. For a while I became an entranced disciple of Whitehead, although as an atheist I was disconcerted to hear that my guru occasionally sermonized at King’s Chapel in Boston. This immersion in Whitehead’s system, with its infusion of scientific, mathematical, and philosophical concepts, immensely widened my intellectual horizon. I also learned from his Science and the Modern World that the clash of doctrines speeds progress. (“My Philosophical Itinerary,” Polemics in Marxist Philosophy, Pathfinder Press, 1978, 15-16.)

Philip Johnson in 1933, six years after leaving Harvard.

Philip Johnson (1906-2005), the notable architect whose mailroom I managed in the early ’80s, told me that Whitehead had convinced him that the future builder was not cut out for philosophy. (I had asked him about Whitehead at a firm outing held on the grounds of his Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut in July 1982, the last such party he hosted.) Since Johnson had finished his Harvard studies in 1927, he likely crossed Novack’s path in Whitehead’s classes.

Novack mentions having been acquainted with Sidney Hook (forty-five years later my professor) who had studied under Morris Cohen at The City University of New York. I’m interested in whether and how Novack and Hook worked together in the late ’30s with John Dewey’s Commission of Inquiry into the Moscow trials of Leon Trotsky and others.

I was once attracted to Whitehead because of his nontraditional theism, not, as in Novack’s case, in spite of it, especially the promise it held out to me of meeting the challenge that the occurrence of evil poses for theism. The promise, however, was predicated on a compromise: define “god” down to a universal “lure” of lesser “occasions of experience,” deny this “god” the power to exnihilate, and the result is a superhuman but intra-cosmic agency that, however powerful, cannot act locally within creation to prevent evil. Whitehead’s god is always working to overcome evil, but will never have the victory. Continue reading “When George Novack was an “entranced disciple” of Whitehead”

Philosophy after Christ. (No, not chronologically after.)

We deny the non-Christian the standing of “objective, disinterested observer,” which standing is generally assumed as in effect in academia.

“We will hear again of this matter” (Acts 17:32) was the nonresponsive utterance of the Areopagite misosopher, one of Paul’s interlocuters. It lamely expresses the stance that the misosopher believes he may integrally assume.

Christian philosophy, however, claims that the attitude of neutrality and autonomy is not licit and is, in fact, impossible. If the denial of neutrality is ruled out, then Christianity is ruled out, and the misosopher who summarily rules a challenger out of court without a hearing only fails one of his own professed tests of rationality.

The mask of neutrality is ripped away as soon as the Christian is denied the right to argue as a Christian. Non-Christians may claim to be neutral as they consider the claim of Christ, and they may think that they make good on that claim if they merely refrain from ridicule. The Christian, however, may not take this self-representation as the last word. The non-Christian is not hostile to Christ only when he or she claims to be hostile, and should not charitably be presumed to be neutral if he or she does not make such a claim.

What God says is what matters, and He denies the possibility of neutrality. “He who is not with Me is against Me” (Luke 11:23). Proverbs 8 signifies that Wisdom is a person who was with God at Creation, an outline that John 1 fills in. The Wisdom of God is the Word of God. It ends on a promise with both positive and negative charges:

For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. He who hates me loves death. (Proverbs 8:35-36)

It’s safe to assume that if one loves death, one does not love wisdom, which is ordered toward the right conduct of life. God says that such a person hates wisdom. The Greek for that would be misosopher.

Christian philosophers may challenge traditional nomenclature. They challenge the use of “philosophy” to describe discourse that is ordered to the production of foolishness. He doesn’t expect common usage to reflect his insight, but he does expect to affect Christian discourse about “philosophy.”

Christians, including Christian philosophers, are as resistant as anyone else to linguistic change. Discounting the threat of violence or other nonrational pressure, only strong reasons can overcome the conservatism of established usage. The value of conformism, however, is not unlimited. That value that our proposed revision honors may justify the breaking of linguistic habit.

While Christian philosophers and non-Christian misosophers may be doing the same thing formally, they are not doing the same thing materially. Misosophers produce something analogous to what Marxists call “ideology,” which is to be taken critically, not at face value. In this sense, of course, Marxism is as ideological as any of its rivals.

Our point of departure is the distinction the Apostle Paul made between two types of philosophy. On the one hand, according to Paul, there is “philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after rudiments of this world” against whose seduction he warns his audience; on the other, “philosophy after Christ.” (I assume Paul didn’t think there was such a thing as “vain deceit after Christ.”)

Continue reading “Philosophy after Christ. (No, not chronologically after.)”

Discovering Otis Q. Sellers: an autobiographical vignette

March 22, 1978. A crisp 50-degree Wednesday in the Big Apple. Jimmy Carter was President. Saturday Night Fever was in the movie houses.

A New York University grad, I was studying for a doctorate in philosophy at the City University of New York’s graduate school. Still living at home in Bronx, I earned my keep by sorting and internally delivering mail at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson—“Sargent Shriver’s law firm,” I’d tell friends and family. (Never saw him: he was based in the Washington, DC offices.) Fried, Frank was then leasing several floors of the Equitable Building, 120 Broadway. In chapter 8 of Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution Antony Sutton devoted a chapter to the conspiracies that transpired in that storied edifice. I remember reading that book during my tenure in the law firm’s mail room. (See my post on this.)

During one lunch break I encountered Gabe Monheim, a semi-retired engineer from Red Hook, Brooklyn, then in his early 40s. The temperamental and cultural opposite of Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), an elderly Los Angelino formerly of Wellston and Cincinnati, Ohio.

It was where Wall and Broad Streets intersect, a crossroads for me between philosophy and the Bible, a dividing line I’d crisscross many times. But for Gabe, I may never have heard of Sellers. And you wouldn’t be reading this. (I mention Gabe in a post that complements this one.)

I had been working in the financial district for three years, and Gabe had been preaching there (and further south at the Battery) for even longer (having once worked at the engineering firm Ford, Bacon & Davis), but I never noticed him. We pay attention to what we’re looking for, and I wasn’t yet looking for what he was offering. I wasn’t attuned to his message. At a distance, all street-corner preachers looked and sounded alike.

Until that day.

Continue reading “Discovering Otis Q. Sellers: an autobiographical vignette”

Did the Apostle Paul argue for God’s existence?

Theistic philosopher Bill Vallicella recently posted again on Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans (1:18-20). Here are the concluding sentences:

It ought to be obvious that one cannot straightaway infer from the intelligibility, order, beauty, and existence of nature that ‘behind’ nature there is a supernatural personal being that is supremely intelligent, the source of all beauty, and the first cause of all existing things apart from itself. One cannot ‘read off’ the being instantiated of the divine attributes from contemplation of nature.

Suppose I see a woman. I am certain that if she is a wife, then there is a person who is her husband. Can I correctly infer from those two propositions that the woman I see is a wife? Can I ‘read off’ from my perception of the woman that she is a wife?”

No, we can’t read off “wife” (a relationship) from her body, but the prior question should be: can we can “read off” her being a woman from . . . what exactly? From nothing: we don’t infer “woman” (female person) from a congeries of sensory phenomena, but rather intuit “woman” immediately.

And we’re responsible for treating her with the respect due every person, and not treat her as though she were an insentient android (on the off chance that the “inference” to personhood is an inductive leap to a falsehood).

We don’t infer God from the world’s existence, organization and beauty, but that’s irrelevant to Paul’s claim. That is, Bill’s report of what’s obvious to him is not germane to Paul’s claim to have revealed something about our epistemological situation.

What is known (gnoston) of God (Roman 1:19) is understood (noumena) by the things that are made (Romans 1:20). It is not that the latter provide materials for an inference to God, but rather that they occasion the occurrence of insight (as Augustus Strong put it).

Continue reading “Did the Apostle Paul argue for God’s existence?”

“Life from non-life”? Without a prayer.

Abiogenesis, a Greek mouthful for “the origin of life,” is according to Wikipedia, “the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter.”

The lack of critical qualification at the outset is startling: non-living matter’s alleged once-upon-a-time issuance in life is asserted as a fact, not a hypothesis. That is, the bald assertion comes first, followed by the admission of the hypothetical nature of the whole business:

While the details of this process are still unknown, the prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but a gradual process of increasing complexity that involved molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Although the occurrence of abiogenesis is uncontroversial among scientists, there is no single, generally accepted model for the origin of life, and this article presents several principles and hypotheses for how abiogenesis could have occurred.

So the devilish details are unknown and there’s no single, generally accepted model for abiogenesis, yet some version of it must be true. That’s the “prevailing hypothesis.” Belief in its having occurred is “uncontroversial among scientists.”

That is to say, abiogenesis is a dogma, not an empirically verified fact. It is a sad commentary on the state of science that a theory with nothing going for it except the culturally regnant naturalistic prejudice is “uncontroversial.”

And by nothing, I mean . . . nothing. For an entertaining retailing of the dues the dogmatists pay for their dogmatism, I cannot recommend too enthusiastically Rice University Professor of Chemistry James Tour‘s lively video presentation (sponsored by The Discovery Institute) available on EvolutionNews.

Professor Tour’s massive case against “life from non-life” gives one an idea of the “integrated chemical complexity” that led the late philosopher (and long-time atheist) Antony Flew (not to be confused with Anthony Flood) to drop his profession of atheism for deism.

“Show me the chemistry!,” Tour demands. So did Flew, but he went away empty-handed.

It doesn’t exist.

The evidence for the existence of God—the God of the Bible, not Flew’s deistic deus—lies in (among many other aspects of creation) scientific inquiry itself, the fit of intelligibility and intelligence. It’s inexplicable apart from the worldview expressed in the Bible. The demonstrated folly of research programs for testing the abiogenesis “hypothesis”—or the dogma masquerading as one—is, at best, a suasive consideration for Christian theism.

So, again, set aside a couple of minutes for the beginning of James Tour’s pedagogical tour de force (sorry!). I defy you not to stay for the whole hour.

Do atheists have an excuse?

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.”

Continue reading “Do atheists have an excuse?”

God has spoken. “So what?,” you might ask.

Forty years ago an atheist drew a sound inference:

Working from the premise that an omniscient, infallible being exists and that this being has revealed a proposition to man, it is a short, logical—and uncontroversial—step to conclude that this proposition is worthy of belief. . . . If the proposition comes from an infallible, nondeceitful God, it cannot be false; therefore, it must be true. George Smith, Atheism: the Case against God, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books 1979, 172. New edition with a foreword by Lawrence M. Krauss 2016

Atheism - The Case Against God.jpg Since the ultimate ground for drawing inferences (including Smith’s) is the existence of the God of the Bible, I take every proposition I find in the Bible to be God-communicated and therefore worthy of belief. To the best of my ability I regiment my thinking in accordance with the information they convey from God’s mind to mine.

So I agree with Smith, not on his authority but on Jesus’:

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Matthew 4:4 (ESV)

That’s how it will be when God governs the Earth. (Jesus said “shall,” not merely “ought to.”) As Isaiah prophesied:

And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Isaiah 30:21 (ESV)

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven! Matthew 6:10 (ESV)

Going forward, I’ll be exploring what that regimentation means. My conclusions won’t please all visitors, even the friends among them. But since I’m morally certain that there are more grains in the bottom of my hour glass than the top, people-pleasing cannot be my priority. Ephesians 6:6. Love the truth, I say, and let the chips fall where they may.

Image result for George H. Smith — George H. Smith

As for what Smith (and others) thought he achieved in that book: his metaphysics of “natural necessity,” epistemology of “reason,” and ethics of “life” (or “happiness”) jointly constituted the philosophy he adduced in support of what he called “critical atheism.” By its internal incoherence it disqualified itself from being a reasonable basis for affirming or denying anything. I exposed that incoherence thirty years ago. The curious among you may read an updated version of that exposé in Atheism Analyzed: The Implosion of George Smith’s “Case against God”, available as Kindle booklet.

“Your word is truth,” the Word said.

Jesus prayed those words to His Father a few hours before His crucifixion. (John 17:17; see also Psalm 119:160: “The sum of your words is truth”). He probably meant all the thoughts the Father had ever communicated to His created image-bearers. He asked the Father to sanctify His disciples (set them apart) in the truth (ἀλήθεια, aletheia).

But He had also said, “I am the way (ὁδός, hodos), the truth, and the life (ζωή, zoe).” (John 14:6) So when He prayed “Your word (λόγος, logos) is truth,” Jesus could as easily also have meant Himself, for He is also the Word of God. (John 1:1) Not figuratively, or poetically, but actually. When Pilate asked Him, “What is truth?,” He denied him the privilege of hearing what Thomas heard: “I am [identical with] the truth and life.”

The Truth of God the Father is expressed in the Word. An excellent translation of the Greek λόγος (logos ) is “expression.” Jesus expresses or “projects” the Father perfectly to us. He’s the invisible God’s εἰκών (eikon) or express image (Colossians 1:15). Jesus, the Son of God, is the “exact imprint (χαρακτήρ, charakter) of God’s nature (hypostaseos, ὑποστάσεως, person, substance). That’s why “If you had known me you would have known my Father also.” (John 14: 7) He’s the perfect expression of the Father, His Character, His Truth.

Jesus’ life is the light (phos) of men (anthropos, not andros). (John 1:3) King David, whose son He was, was divinely inspired to express this insight into the organic link between illuminating Light and Life: “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.” (Psalm 36:9)

If we love wisdom, the wisdom of God (the only wisdom worth seeking), then Jesus is our philosophical (wisdom-loving) GPS.

Jesus declared that “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (Luke 15:7) But as great as that joy is, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth,” wrote the Apostle John under divine inspiration. (3 John 1:4)

How often do our lives occasion this joy in God?

“The Godless Delusion”: my truth-in-advertising concern

Image result for Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley A Catholic Challenge to Modern Atheism is the subtitle of Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley‘s 2010 The Godless Delusion. I applaud their popular presentation of the presuppositional approach to Christian apologetics in the course of taking down contemporary atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and many others. They rack these naturalistic bowling pins and knock them down, with strike after strike. Readers can cull a rich bibliography from the reference notes.

But what is distinctively Catholic about their challenge to atheism?

Granted, Madrid and Hensley are Catholics. So are some (but not all) of the authors they cite in illustration of their arguments. Paragraphs of The Catechism of the Catholic Church are cited on many of the book’s pages. But, unlike virtually every other book by Madrid, it’s not a primer of Catholic apologetics, that is, a case for joining the Roman Catholic communion.

Image result for kenneth hensley — Kenneth Hensley

They argue that the Christian worldview alone makes sense of our sense-making. But that approach to apologetics has been a Protestant, largely Reformed (Calvinist), enterprise for more than a century. Madrid and Hensley do not make that clear. Continue reading ““The Godless Delusion”: my truth-in-advertising concern”