Theology – Page 4 – Anthony G. Flood

Only God can calm the perfect storm

Over at “Maverick Philosopher,” Bill Vallicella’s blog, yesterday’s post got airplay and commentary, for which I’m grateful. I expect he’ll post my response to a commenter, but here are its key paragraphs.

The perfect storm that I conjecture is not necessarily an existential threat to humanity. No member of the crew of the fishing vessel Andrea Gail survived, but their survivors held a memorial service. Millions of Germans and Russians are alive today because, even in the worst years of Stalin and Hitler, people still fell in love, married, and had children. For tens of millions, however, there was no memorial service. They would not have the privilege, as we do, of reading and reflecting upon the history of their era in their golden years. It was simply “over” for them. They await resurrection.

If my mind were a quantum computer with all historical and current data at my fingertips, I could score the accuracy of my Antonesque “cry.” But it’s not, so I can’t. I’m only a Christian struggling to make sense of a fallen world in the light of God’s Word in the day of God’s (relative, gracious, and temporary) silence. (See my series on this topic: “The Silence of God”: Anderson’s 1897 book, Otis Q. Sellers’s 1929 turning point—Part 1.)

Offsetting the gloom-and-doom is knowing that the human drivers of the storm’s vectors are not omniscient or omnipotent. And neither is the Prince of this World (kosmos; or age, aiōnos). It’s a safe bet that he inspires them, even coordinates some of their actions (John 14:30; Eph 2:2-3, 6:12; 2 Cor 4:4). But I foresee no programmatic response to their programmatic attacks except the blazing forth (epiphaneia) of His Kingdom (not yet His second advent) for which I live in expectation (1 Tim 6:14; 2 Tim 1:10, 4:1, 4:8). That is to say, there is a programmatic response, but it’s divine.

A perfect storm of converging crises

The dictionary defines a perfect storm as an “unusual combination of events or things that produce an unusually bad or powerful result.” The latter, as I see it, is life as we’ve become accustomed to enjoying it.

Four years ago, I stated my grounds and posed a question to a writer who thinks Christian Reconstruction or Theonomy meets the level of our times:

The argument . . . is over hermeneutics and confessional commitments that flow from one’s interpretation of Scripture. Do libertarians wish to have that conversation? That would be more than fine with me. I’ll need bullet-proof exegesis, however, to believe that Christians are charged, as Dominion theology teaches, with overthrowing Satan’s dominion of this world with its sex-trafficking, drug cartels, arms dealers, blood diamond trade, supervised as they are by pathological warlords; the totalitarian ethnostate of Communist China; radical Islam whose agents are sprinkled the world over; pandemics exploited by globalists and their medicrat tools; the virtually total loss of privacy at the hands of the Deep State, Big Pharma, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence; the trillions of dollars in unpayable debt and the hyperinflation that must follow central banking as the night the day—just to name some of the enormities that blight our planet.

In that post, I didn’t refer to this concatenation as a “perfect storm of crises,” but since then I’ve used this meteorological metaphor when considering our parlous estate.[1] It has come to mean any situation where a highly improbable concurrent of circumstances leads to an event of unusual magnitude or severity. I’d like to know where it falters, if it does.

The “event of unusual magnitude or severity” I refer to is the total collapse of the good of order—civilization, what’s left of it—on which any regular enjoyment of goods of consumption depends. Continue reading “A perfect storm of converging crises”

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”

“At the end of the day”: Trump’s compromise

Donald Trump on abortion: 'It should be the law of the state' “The states will determine by vote, or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land—in this case [abortion], the law of the state. Many states will be different. Many states will have a different number of weeks … at the end of the day it is all about the will of the people.” Donald Trump, Truth Social, today. (Emphasis added.)

“At the end of the day”? Say, when the sun goes down (as I once heard Bill O’Reilly quip)?

Trump’s context is, of course, the U.S. politics and Constitution, not eschatology. The end of the day (ἡμέρας) of man (ἀνθρωπίνης) (1 Corinthians 4:3), every detail of which having been ordained to come to pass (Ephesians 1:11), will inaugurate the day (ἡμέρας) of Christ (Χριστοῦ) (Philippians 1:6; not the Day of the Lord).

In that day, co-extensive with the manifest Kingdom of God, there will be The mercy of God and the unborn child - St George Orthodox Ministry no exceptions for any species of homicide. The penalty will be death (Acts 5:1-11; the Acts period being a foretaste of the Kingdom[1]). God’s will, not “the people’s,” will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

Note

[1] See my “Sellers’s Eschatology: Some Distinctives,” June 7, 2020.

Michael Volpe’s thoughts occasioned by “Philosophy after Christ”

Michael Volpe had intended to append the following as a comment to the last post, but it merits standing alone as a post. I appreciate the effort he put into it; in due time, I’ll address his criticisms in a comment of my own.—A.G.F.

In his book Philosophy after Christ: Thinking God’s Thoughts after Him, Anthony Flood opts for a transcendental argument for the existence of God. It can be summarized as the impossibility of the contrary because Christianity as a worldview alone gives the conditions that makes predication possible. Since Anthony clearly states his indebtedness to Cornelius Van Til, one must ask what difference, if any, there is between their understanding of the same argument.

The Calvinistic Van Til built his form of the transcendental argument to justify the contradiction that God desires the salvation of those whom He does not choose. And though He elects, this free offer of Christ for all supposedly relieves God of the charge of being evil for not choosing everyone when He could have done so. Especially since it is man and not God who is the ultimate cause of sin deserving of hell. Thus, Van Til needs to combat not only the belief in free will and free thought, but rationalism. The former two lead to chance as being ultimate and the latter requires omniscience. Either way, if any of these are true, they would destroy the belief that his hyper-infralapsarian Calvinism (grounds the free offer in Christ’s limited atonement) is the transcendental truth or worldview alone which establishes predication but without its constituent truths logically entailing each other for a sound and consistent deductive system. Continue reading “Michael Volpe’s thoughts occasioned by “Philosophy after Christ””

Evidence I wasn’t always a “Van Tillian”

Listening this morning to an old (well, 2022) podcast[1] by the great Calvinist apologist James R. White, I was startled by his reference to Thom Notaro’s 1980 Van Til and the Use of Evidence. (White says he paid $3.75 for his copy back in the day, but a used copy on Amazon will set you back forty-five bucks.) Startled, I say, because over forty years ago, the Roman Catholic periodical New Oxford Review published, in its November 1981 issue, pages 29-30, my cluelessly negative review of Notaro’s book.

Consistent with my habit of airing my political and philosophical dirty laundry (which exercise works against one’s intellectual pride), I hereunder post that review’s text (and its prefatory note), which I took the liberty of posting in 2013 on my old site (whose anniversary I noted the other day).

* * *

On a “cringe-ometer” scale from 1 to 10, with 10 inducing a coma from embarrassment, this rates a 9. I pontificated about Van Til’s thought, about which I knew little first-hand, instead of actually reviewing a book about the role of evidence in an apologetic often mischaracterized as anti-evidence (even “fideistic”). In less than 600 words, I managed to beg every apologetical question, rendering myself a poster boy for the epistemological un-self-consciousness that, Van Til argued, renders every anti-Christian theistic worldview impotent.

In slight mitigation of my offense, I recall that as a New Yorker, who was not long before writing this a student in a doctoral program in philosophy, could not interact regularly with Van Til’s protégé, California-based Gregory L. Bahnsen, a Ph. D. in philosophy (USC, 1978). Had I been able to, my confusions would have been exposed and rectified much sooner. As it happened, I had to wait for the day I could carry around dozens of mp3s of his recorded lecture series and read many articles that are now freely available online. Even the very best of Bahnsen, his Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, was not available until after his passing.

I am posting this only to memorialize the flawed inception of my investigation into Van Til’s thought. I also observe that I did not give up.

Anthony Flood

January 16, 2013 (Slightly amended January 21, 2019) Continue reading “Evidence I wasn’t always a “Van Tillian””

Two Cheers for Lord Acton

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (1834-1902)

Instead of posting links to my essays on Lord Acton, as I’ve done in the past on his birthday (e.g., see here and here, which sport links of their own), I will sound a critical note on this master of historical sources.

Like his fellow Victorian, John Henry Newman, he knew better (an understatement) than to take at face value just-so stories about about what Christians have allegedly always believed, even in the first century, despite there not being a shred of evidence to that effect. The Vatican sets the boundaries of what its scholars can find and, more importantly, what they cannot contradict. The First Vatican Council (1869-1870) tested Newman and Acton’s integrity, especially with respect to defining the dogma of papal infallibility, formally binding on members of the Roman Catholic communion.

“To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant,” Newman aphorized, and his reasons for breaking with the Church of England are of biographical interest. To affirm, however, that the Bishop of Rome as the “Vicar of Christ” is protected from propounding doctrinal error (under certain conditions) was the constant and ancient belief of Christians is to abandon history for pious historical fictions and the attendant pleasures of belonging. Same for the earlier dogma of Immaculate Conception (1854) and that of the Bodily Assumption of Mary (1950).

Newman and Acton caved. Newman, a brilliant intellect who, in the end, came to know his place and kept it, smothered his historically grounded “reservations.” Acton sought and got the protection of his diocesan bishop from the grasp of his nemesis, Cardinal Manning. He had an escape hatch as exquisitely lawyerly in its expression as is the dogma.[1]

So, one cheer for his love of liberty, another for his productivity (which, however, never resulted in a book). For his “yielding obedience,” not to sola scriptura, of course, but sola ecclesia, a Bronx cheer.

Note

[1] “. . . Acton protested [to his bishop] ‘that I have given you no foundation for your doubt. . . . I have yielded obedience to the Apostolic Commission which embodied those decrees, and I have not transgressed . . . obligations imposed under the supreme sanction of the Church.’ That satisfied Acton’s ordinary, and that was that.” Anthony Flood, Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic, 2019, 310.

Conceived on December 25th, born on September 29th

I’m reposting what first appeared here July 19, 2022 under the title, “Having become flesh on 25 December, 5 BC, He began tabernacling among us on 29 September, 4 BC” (and republished December 23, 2022). I excavate E. W. Bullinger’s argument, buried in the notes of his Companion Bible, published a century ago. Don’t miss this post’s notes. Merry Christmas! —A.G.F.

“And the Word became (ἐγένετο, egeneto) flesh (σάρξ, sarx) and dwelt (ἐσκήνωσεν, eskēnōsēn) among us . . . .” John 1:14

In “The Divine Purpose,” Otis Q. Sellers wrote:

In all the work that God has done for mankind, is now doing for mankind, and will yet do for mankind, there is a definite goal, a fixed purpose. To state it as simply as possible, His object in all His work is to produce a people who know Him, who understand Him, who love and appreciate Him, a people with whom He can joyfully dwell, and among whom He can center Himself in view of a greater program for the universe.

If the Bible is read carefully from Genesis to Revelation, it will be found that this end is reached and becomes a reality in Revelation 21. There under a new order of things described as “a New Heaven and New Earth,” the tabernacle of God is seen as being with men, He is dwelling (tabernacling) with them, they are His people, and He is their God. This is as far as Revelation takes us, yet we can rightfully go a step beyond this and envision a great divine program in which mankind will be vitally involved as those who are working and not those upon whom God is working. A tabernacle (skenos) in Scripture when used figuratively always denotes a center of activity, and it could not be that God would bring about such a center and then not use it.[1]

To “become flesh” is to be, not born, but rather “begotten,” that is, conceived. The root of ἐγένετο (egeneto) is γίνομαι (ginomai), to come into existence.

The one who is born, who exits the womb, is already flesh, which precedes “dwelling among us.”[2] (She who “can’t bring a baby into this world” and so procures an abortion only achieves the death of an already begotten and in-the-world baby.)

The English “to dwell” doesn’t capture the Greek ἐσκήνωσεν (eskēnōsēn), the form of σκηνόω (skēnoō) in John 1:14. The root is σκηνή (skēne), originally the hut or tent where players changed masks and costumes behind the stage; later, the stage itself. (Our “scene” descends from this.)

When Jerome translated into Latin the Hebrew הַסֻּכּ֛וֹת (hasukkoth) of, say, Deuteronomy 16:16, he used tabernaculum, the diminutive of taberna. (Our “tavern” echoes this.) He rendered that verse’s Hebrew as in solemnitate tabernaculorum, that is, “in the feast of the tabernacles.”

Tabernacles are booths. Annually, Jews today set up booths where they commemorate סֻכּוֹת‎, Sukkot, one of three Torah-commanded pilgrimages to the Temple which was destroyed in 70 A.D. (The other two are פסח, Pesach, “Passover” and שבועות, Shavous, “Pentecost.”)

In 5 BC, the angel Gabriel announced two conceptions, that of John (the “Forerunner”: Luke 1:13), and then of his cousin, Jesus (Luke 1:31). Gabriel addressed the first to John’s father, Zacharias; the second to Jesus’ mother, Mary. According to E. W. Bullinger: Continue reading “Conceived on December 25th, born on September 29th”

Criticism of Presuppositional (Worldview) Apologetics

I welcome it, and recently got some from William Vallicella, Ph.D., a rejoinder to my response to him. Unfortunately for me, however, it’s part of a long series that bears on what I tried to do in Philosophy after Christ, and I haven’t yet been able to give the series’ members the study they deserve.

What I’m focusing on is Bill’s helpful distinction between a rationally acceptable argument and a rationally compelling one. I think my Van Til-inspired transcendental argument can be formulated so that it’s not merely acceptable, but also one that “coerces” rational assent (at least by those who value rational standards). Bill charges me with conflating, if not confusing, epistemic and ontic possibility, a serious matter, one I will confess if I must. How one coordinates one’s metaphysics (which determines ontic possibility) with one’s epistemology has its own presuppositions.[1]

I can “live with” a “merely” rationally acceptable argument that can defeat any candidate, alternative to the Christian worldview, for the status of transcendental condition of intelligible predication, that my interlocutor might suggest. Of course, such serial refutation, however successful for however long, falls short of proof. To be able, however, to pre-emptively rule out the possibility of there being any successful candidate remains for me a desideratum. I’ll let others speculate about what psychological type that confession betrays.

Note

[1] See, e.g., Greg Bahnsen, “The Necessity of Coordinating Epistemology with Metaphysics,” Section 1 of Chapter 3, “Neutrality & Autonomy Relinquished,” Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended. Joel McDurmon, ed. American Vision Press, 2010. See also Bahnsen’s magisterial exposition of Cornelius Van Til:

Van Til did not address specific disputes between philosophers or contemporary debates regarding possibility, but he realized that Christians are committed to hold certain beliefs about possibility that unbelievers will reject. “It is today more evident than ever before that it is exactly on those most fundamental matters, such as possibility and probability, that there is the greatest difference of opinion between theists and antitheists.” To put it simply and memorably: “Non-believers have false assumptions about their musts.”

Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Reading and Analysis. Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1998, 281. The internal quotations are from Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology. Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1974, 36, 264. To the latter footnote Bahnsen appended:

That is, they [antitheists] utilize a false philosophical outlook regarding “necessity,” “possibility,” etc.

Man’s “true self”: my reply to critics

Last December, I asked Bill Vallicella, my philosophical interlocuter of almost two decades, why in a Substack essay he referred to the soul as one’s “true self.” I noticed only recently, however, that I hadn’t commented on his reply (or the comments it received), and the window for that combox closed some time ago; thus this belated post.

Bill had written on the atheist Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011):

Those of us who champion free speech [Bill writes] miss him and what he would have had to say about the current state of the world had he taken care of himself, or rather his body, his true self being his soul.

On Bill’s blog, I asked:

Briefly, why do you refer to the soul as one’s “true self”? Genesis 2:7 reports that from the dust of the ground (ha-adamah) God created ha-adam, i.e., “the man.” The man became a living soul (le-nephesh hayyah) when God breathed the breath of life (nishmat hayyim) into him. The pre-animated ha-adamah was neither dead nor a “less-than-true” or incomplete human being; the animating nephesh is not the man’s self or ego. When God withdraws the breath of life from a soul, that soul dies. I think know your non-Genesis source, but I want to hear it from you. Your passing comment reminded me that I had written quite a bit about this earlier this year [i.e., in 2022].

Bill replied:

What I wrote suggests that there is a difference between body and soul in a person, and that the soul is the person’s self. But why true self? Well, if I can exist without a body, but I cannot exist without (being identical to) a soul, then “my” soul, or rather me qua soul is “my” true self.

I invite my reader to consider Bill’s 634-word post. Here I can only reply to points of contention, not work out a biblical anthropology.

Continue reading “Man’s “true self”: my reply to critics”