Philosophy – Anthony G. Flood

The preeminence of Christ over all things requires distinguishing Philosophy AFTER Christ from Philosophy BEFORE Christ

How is philosophy after Christ (κατὰ Χριστόν, kata Christon) related to philosophy after some other principle? (See Colossians 2:8.) Say, how does it related to philosophy before Christ?

In Philosophy after Christ[1], I explain that by “after,” I don’t mean “later than” (i.e., chronologically after). I mean “in the manner of,” as an artist might paint “after Picasso.” The preposition “after” translates κατὰ (kata).

Likewise, when Yahweh—whose incarnation Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ) is—used the Hebrew equivalent of “before” in expressing the First Commandment, He said that no one who calls Him Lord shall put anything before Him in priority or reverence, thereby risking idolatry: “You shall have no other gods before (עַל, al) me” (Exodus 20:3). Continue reading “The preeminence of Christ over all things requires distinguishing Philosophy AFTER Christ from Philosophy BEFORE Christ”

How to defeat the transcendental argument for the existence of God (TAG), if that’s what you wish to do

You can defeat the TAG[1] if you can show that there is a way to account for intelligible predication without presupposing the Christian worldview. Otherwise, the latter’s claim to account for it stands.

Go ahead. Make my day.

If Christ is πρό πάντων (pro pantōn), that is, before (“prior to”) all things (Colossians 1:17), then He is πρό φιλοσοφία (see Colossians 2:8), that is, before philosophy.

If awareness of Christ is the foreword or prologue to sound philosophizing (wisdom-seeking), if such cognizance is the beginning (תְּחִלַּ֣ת, tehillat) of wisdom (חָ֭כְמָה, hakmah); Proverbs 9:10), then believing that God exists (ὅτι ἔστιν, Hebrews 11:6) is not an afterthought, an inference from something created (e.g., a “theistic proof”).

If Christ is the ground of inference, then you cannot philosophize (analyze, synthesize) profitably without acknowledging the priority that πρό implies, that is, without acknowledging who Christ is. You’re just beating the air. Continue reading “How to defeat the transcendental argument for the existence of God (TAG), if that’s what you wish to do”

On dogma and dogmatism

Bill Vallicella, a friend and philosophical sparring partner of two decades, recently discussed another thinker’s argument from design to God.[1] Since my interest lies in biblical rather than “classical” theism, I will not engage with the argument itself or his discussion of it. Instead, I want to examine the presuppositions of philosophical theology general and a thesis of Bill’s in particular.

The presupposition of philosophical theology is that it is licit for a human being to suspend his knowledge of יהוה (Yahweh)—the God of the Bible—in order to explore the limits of philosophical inquiry with respect to God’s existence. From time to time, Bill revisits his thesis that there are no rationally compelling (“knock-down”) arguments for or against any metaphysical position. He did so again in his recent post, providing an opportunity for me to restate my position.

I was reminded of an essay I reposted in 2023, which first appeared on my old site twenty years earlier. In it, I critique “Dogmatic Uncertainty” by the British libertarian classicist and novelist Sean Gabb.[2] Both Gabb and Bill implicitly rely on the contrast between δόξα (doxa) and ἐπιστήμη (epistēmē)—that is, between “mere” opinion and certain knowledge. I presume that Bill, an expert in argumentation, has not ruled out the possibility that we are within our rights to claim ἐπιστήμη about God without supporting argumentation. But if I make that claim, am I being necessarily “dogmatic” in the pejorative sense? Continue reading “On dogma and dogmatism”

“I’m doing philosophy; you’re doing apologetics!”

“No, I’m philosophizing Christianly.[1] Together, let’s uncover the What is Cultural Apologetics? worldview you’re defending (wittingly or otherwise).”

When an epistemologically self-conscious Christian makes a point that discomfits someone who’s not epistemologically self-conscious, it’s not long before the latter questions the former’s motive. “You’re not interested in the truth of the matter; you’re trying to sign me up for something, you special pleader you!” Since the Christian’s motive is not neutral, they suggest, it’s not pure. It’s suspect.

Christians who engage in apologetics are philosophizing—they’re pursuing wisdom at the highest level of generality—but they do so in dialogue with unbelievers (or inconsistent believers). The apologist may, if it’s called for, employ the analytical tools on display in articles published in peer-reviewed journals labeled “philosophical.”

Qua apologist, however, he is not necessarily trying to negotiate the conceptual terrain at the highest level of analytical exactitude. That is partly because the latter is not necessary for the apologist’s task, which is to present the excellent message or “news” (εὐαγγέλιον, evangelion) of Jesus Christ and demolish the objections to it, if any, that his auditor may throw back at him.

There’s a time and place for analytical depth and scholarly excellence, but the motive of apologetic theoria is to be found in polemical give-and-take of apologetic praxis. The Christian “lover of wisdom” (for whom Christ is the Wisdom of God) does not do apologetics “for its own sake” or to impress his fellows in the common room. He’s trying to get the other guy to recognize his need for peace with God and hopes God will use his (the apologist’s) effort to remove obstacles to that recognition. God has, of course, already ordained the outcome; it’s a discovery process for both parties. Continue reading ““I’m doing philosophy; you’re doing apologetics!””

Why not be arbitrary? A worldview-based answer.

Last week I posted a grad school paper I wrote in 1978 about the problem (scandal?) of diversity in philosophy. Bill Vallicella commented on it in his site’s combox. I mostly agree with his criticisms of how I formulated things then, but in the end he mentioned a persistent issue between us, namely, my worldview approach to philosophy in general (“presuppositionalism”) and Christian apologetics in particular.

As Bill’s passing (hand-waving?) comment was not a paper for academic peer review, I won’t hold it to those standards. I caught in it, however, a dismissive attitude, shared by many, that casts aspersions on what I’m up to. It occasioned and merits a response. I give one with no insinuation of “So there!” but rather in Bill’s irenic spirit.

He wrote:

. . . I think you and I have much common ground. The difference is that you have opted for a presuppositionalism that to me makes no sense and is a privileging of an arbitrarily adopted position. I have shown to my satisfaction that TAG [the Transcendental Argument for the existence of God] is a non-starter. You of course disagree. This is yet another philosophical disagreement. You may think you are beyond philosophy and that philosophy is, as you term it ‘misosophy,’ but you are still stuck at the philosophical level.[1]

Greg L. Bahnsen would often charge his debate opponent with being arbitrary. Don’t be!, he’d advise, before showing how his opponent offended in that respect.

The Christian worldview’s grounding of intelligible predication extends to one norm informing the giving of reasons, that is, of not being arbitrary. If you’re not thinking in harmony with that worldview—if the Word of God is not behind your admonishments—why not be arbitrary? Continue reading “Why not be arbitrary? A worldview-based answer.”

How Lonergan’s “Insight” was received: the case of Quentin Lauer, SJ.

Image 2 of 5 for Insight; A Study of Human Understanding People who find Bernard Lonergan’s writing forbidding might benefit from this review of his magisterial Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, the subject of yesterday’s post, by Husserl and Hegel scholar Quentin Lauer, SJ (1917-1997).

It’s a short answer to the question: what was Lonergan up to in Insight as one of his scholarly contemporaries (and fellow Jesuit) interpreted that enterprise?

The review was published in the June 1958 issue of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Research. Insight’s year of publication is given as 1956; in fact, it was published in 1957, so Lauer’s review appeared one year, not almost two years later. Continue reading “How Lonergan’s “Insight” was received: the case of Quentin Lauer, SJ.”

Bernard Lonergan’s insight into philosophical diversity: the variable of personal development

Bernard J. F. Lonergan, SJ (1904-1984). Late 1940s, early 1950s.

Last month I published an old (1978) paper of mine on the problem (scandal?) of philosophical diversity, “Philosophic Diversity and Skeptical Possibility: A Confrontation with Hegel”[1]—why is it that brilliant minds committed to discovering truth cannot agree?—but I forgot to mention that when I wrote it, my discovery of Bernard Lonergan and his proposed outline of a solution to the problem was still a few months in the future.

The first step in cornering it, he said, lies in grasping “the polymorphism of human consciousness.” Consciousness operates differently in different contexts, for example, commonsense understanding, theoretical reasoning, artistic expression, or moral deliberation, and so forth.

In his magnum opus, Insight: A Study in Human Understanding, Lonergan makes this bold pronouncement:

. . . the polymorphism of human consciousness is the one and only key to philosophy.[2]

I learned only today of the publication, in 2008, of a (prohibitively expensive) book that elaborates upon this proposition.[3]

Continue reading “Bernard Lonergan’s insight into philosophical diversity: the variable of personal development”

How I philosophized when I put philosophy before Christ

In Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him, I essayed an approach to philosophizing that in some ways is continuous with the way modern philosophers (and their ancient, classical, not to mention non-Western, counterparts) go about their business, but in other ways, or rather in a fundamental way, discontinuous, even offensively so to their sensibilities (when they become aware of it).

You see, they assume a stance of theoretical and ethical neutrality toward Christ’s claims, and for one who pursues Christ as the Wisdom of God (the only wisdom or sophia worth loving), such a posture is as impossible as it is unacceptable.

The typical response, even from philosophers who identify as Christians, is that I’m seriously misunderstanding the role of philosophy. They argue that I’m blurring the line between philosophical analysis and Christian apologetics.

To integrally perform the former, that is, philosophical analysis, requires philosophers, including the Christians among them, to bracket or suspend their commitments. An example of this is the “presumption of atheism” that the late atheist-turned-deist Antony Flew (not to be confused with Anthony Flood) defended: like the presumption of innocence, the “presumption of atheism” may be defeated, but only by a sound argument for biblical theism that does not presuppose that biblical theism is true.[1]

However, my position (following, if at a galactic distance from Cornelius Van Til) is that God’s existence is the precondition of acquiring true premises and relating them logically, that is, of rational argumentation. If that is so, then one rationally ought to explicitly advert to that precondition rather than pretend that it doesn’t hold. (Even the argument for this conclusion, however indirect, presupposes that the precondition is met.)

I first tried out this idea in a post that is an ancestor of a chapter of my book: “The Problem of Philosophy” (first on November 26, 2018, then republished with links to subsequent posts, which also evolved into chapters, on July 21, 2020; the book was published June 2022).

I think that those whom I’ve failed to convince regard me as either stubborn or obtuse. This experience has persuaded me that resistance to the exposure of theoretical neutrality (and the “presumption of atheism” it seems to entail) is so sedimented into the consciousness of the modern intellectual—again, even of the Christian modern intellectual—that he or she cannot imagine an alternative to that stance. Continue reading “How I philosophized when I put philosophy before Christ”

Van Til on C. S. Lewis: man’s problem is rebellion, not finitude

Not able at the moment to cobble together an original post, but also not wanting more time to pass before I post something, I share this brief criticism of an aspect of the theology of Anglican lay theologian and evangelical apologist C. S. Lewis by the Reformed apologist Cornelius Van Til.—AGF

A position similar to that of Romanism [i.e., Roman Catholicism] is frequently maintained by evangelical Protestants. As a recent illustration, we mention the case of C. S. Lewis.[1]

Like Romanism, Lewis, in the first place, confuses things metaphysical and ethical. In his book Beyond Personality he discusses the nature of the divine trinity.

To show the practical significance of the doctrine of the trinity he says:

The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way ‘round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance.[2]

The purpose of Christianity is to lift the Bios or natural life of man up into the Zoe, the uncreated life. In the incarnation there is given one example of how this may be done. In him there is “one man in whom the created life, derived from his mother, allowed itself to be completely and perfectly turned into the begotten life.” Then he adds: “Now what is the difference which he has made to the whole human mass? It is just this; that the business of becoming a son of God, of being turned from a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporary biological life into timeless ‘spiritual’ life, has been done for us.”

All this is similar in import to the position of Aquinas which stresses the idea that man is, through grace, to participate in the divine nature.

It is a foregone conclusion that the ethical problem cannot be fairly put on such a basis. Perhaps the most fundamental difference between all forms of non-Christian ethics and Christian ethics lies in the fact that according to the former, it is man’s finitude as such that causes his ethical strife while according to the latter, it is not finitude as such but created man’s disobedience of God that causes all the trouble. Continue reading “Van Til on C. S. Lewis: man’s problem is rebellion, not finitude”

Stalin: Apostate, terrorist, tyrant . . . philosopher

Mugshot, 1901 (age 23) © David King Collection, London

Realizing that there’s more sand at the bottom of my life’s hourglass than at the top, I’ve been reflecting on that life’s inflection points. One was my conversion to Marxism.

I’ve been thinking about Josef Stalin (1878-1953) for over fifty years, that is, for about as long as I’ve studied philosophy, by which I mean the pursuit of answers to questions of the greatest generality (being, knowledge, goodness), whether or not my philia of sophia (or, as has too often been the case, moria) has ordered that pursuit.

I had rebelled against my Christian inheritance to embrace Stalinist Marxism while attending a Catholic military high school—just as Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili—whom the world knew as Joseph Stalin—had given himself over to Marxism at Tbilisi Seminary in Sakartvelo (Georgia to Westerners, Gruzia to Russians). He had succumbed to Lenin’s malign influence; I, to that of Herbert Aptheker, who came of age in the decade following Stalin’s consolidation of power at the end of 1929. Continue reading “Stalin: Apostate, terrorist, tyrant . . . philosopher”