Anthony G. Flood

Christian worldview apologists don’t beg questions. We ask them.

Do apologists for the Christian worldview “beg the question”? That is, do we assume as true what we’re arguing about rather than deduce it from propositions shared by the people we’re arguing with?

No. Ironically, this charge of begging the question (petitio principii) commits the fallacy of missing the point (ignoratio elenchi).

The point? Asking questions has conditions. The Christian worldview apologist asks about the necessary characteristics of a world that fulfills those conditions. (Some might discern the “transcendental” direction of this query. It is not a “garden variety” investigation.)

The charge of begging the question here, when it’s not a dodge, reflects a failure to understand the relationship of a worldview to its component beliefs. A worldview is neither the premise nor the conclusion of a syllogism. One’s worldview will, however, make syllogistic reasoning itself possible or impossible.

To self-consciously affirm and defend one’s worldview is to bring to the foreground what is usually in the background. Its vindication is indirect; so must be any effort to discredit it.

The Christian worldview apologist draws attention to features of the experience of his or her dialectical adversary. Noting that we all take those features and their interdependence for granted, the apologist invites the critic to stop taking them for granted, at least for the duration of the conversation.

That is, the apologist bids the critic to reflect on how these radically diverse aspects can possibly comport with each other in the same world.

Biblical Worldview

The apologist claims that (a) the Triune God of the Christian scriptures is the primary, indispensable member of that network of truths we take for granted and (b) that the critic suppresses awareness of that indispensable member. According to the apologist’s theology, the suppression has a psychological driver: the suppression is “unrighteous.” (Romans 1:18-20)

This is not to “psychoanalyze” the critic ad hominem, but rather to lay out what follows from the denial of God’s self-revelation in creation and scripture.

When we ask questions, we bring into play (at least) two disparate things, each of them irreducible to the other(s). For one, we value truth. For another, in the pursuit of truth, we draw conclusions from premises.

Continue reading “Christian worldview apologists don’t beg questions. We ask them.”

In defense of Lord Acton

On the occasion of the birthday of the great liberal Catholic historian John Dalberg-Acton (1834-1902), I’m publishing not only links to earlier posts about him, but also a 2006 essay. The latter replies to an attack on Acton, one I’d call ignorant if its author weren’t a learned Catholic historian. Like my Christ, Capital & Liberty, whose chapters began as blog posts critical of another traditionalist Catholic, the arguments and evidence marshaled in my essay deserve more exposure than my old site can give them.

The links:

- Lord Acton: ambiguous democrat, libertarian modernist (December 7, 2018)
- When Acton met Whitehead? (December 11, 2018)
- Happy Birthday, Lord Acton! (January 10, 2019; a year ago today)

John C. Rao, Ph. D. [Oxon.], Associate Professor of History, Saint John’s University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

“In Defense of Lord Acton” was written in January 2006 in response to “A Message from Bethlehem: Lord Acton Tends to Corrupt,” a smear of Acton as a “Gnostic” by Professor John C. Rao of St. John’s University. The Remnant, a traditionalist Catholic periodical, published Rao’s defamation of Acton on the last day of 2005. Its original title of my response was, “Do Illiberals Tend to Smear? Or Is It Just Professor Rao When It Comes to Lord Acton?” The editor not only didn’t publish it, but even after more than one query, wouldn’t even acknowledge receiving it.

In Defense of Lord Acton

The significance of the Incarnation of the Prince of Peace for society is always a timely topic, and never a more welcome one than at Christmastime. It is the motif of Professor John C. Rao’s vast historical studies, and I expected his recent column in The Remnant¹ to add one more variation on that theme. He more than disappointed any such expectation by taking the occasion of the season to impute heresy-mongering, if not heresy itself, to Lord Acton, a man who regarded communion with the Church as dearer than life itself. That is, Professor Rao maligned a fellow member of his own profession, a towering figure in European historiography who participated in the unearthing of many official archives. And he did it not by examining any of Acton’s own words, but rather by repeatedly asserting what he “really” meant. Feeling glum² cannot excuse such a lapse from the standards of controversy. Continue reading “In defense of Lord Acton”

The quadrancentennial of Murray Rothbard’s passing

[NOTE: I hit “publish” too late on January 7th, 2020, apparently, so this post is unfortunately date-stamped January 8th. Murray Rothbard passed away on January 7, 1995, 25 years ago “yesterday.”—Anthony Flood]

Twenty-five years ago the world lost Murray Newton Rothbard; someday, maybe, it will find him. He died pre-Y2K, pre-9/11, heck, even pre-Oklahoma City Bombing. What he would have thought about subsequent events is the subject of educated conjecture, but no more. Image result for young murray rothbard"

I’m embarrassed that this anniversary just struck me. The best I can do last-minute is offer my post from last May, “Murray Newton Rothbard: Notes toward a Biography” and “Murray Rothbard: on my late friend’s lamentable error,” originally published a year ago today (now Appendix A of Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic):

“I was sure I was going to predecease him.”

That’s how my friend Father James A. Sadowsky (1923-2012) confirmed the news of the passing of Murray Newton Rothbard (1926–1995) two dozen years ago today [written in 2019].

It was after Sunday Mass at St. Agnes. Finishing breakfast with friends in a 42^nd Street coffee shop, I excused myself to call (using a 20th-century pay phone) my wife who, enduring a cold, couldn’t join me in Manhattan that wintry day.

“Father Sadowsky called,” she said. “Murray Rothbard died yesterday.”

It’s now been almost 36 years [now 37] since the first chat that began my friendship with Murray, which continued through his last dozen years. His writings, illuminated by conversations, formed a major part of my education in economics, history, and politics. His personal influence makes it difficult to make a selection among the many memories.

In 1943 Murray Rothbard, then a high schooler in his 17th year, wrote a 7,000-word autobiography. The Ludwig von Mises Institute made it available about a year ago. I can’t recommend it highly enough to those interested in the formation of a future (six years later!) student of Ludwig von Mises and author of Man, Economy & State, Power and Market, The Logic of Action (One and Two), An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (two volumes), Conceived in Liberty (five volumes), and thousands of articles.

In “Anatomy of the State” (1965) Murray summed up his insight into the State, his lifelong object of demystification:

Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area.

In particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

While other individuals or institutions obtain their income by production of goods and services and by the peaceful and voluntary sale of these goods and services to others, the State obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion; that is, by the use and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet.

Having used force and violence to obtain its revenue, the State generally goes on to regulate and dictate the other actions of its individual subjects.

One would think that simple observation of all States through history and over the globe would be proof enough of this assertion; but the miasma of myth has lain so long over State activity that elaboration is necessary.

How ought we evaluate this insight? It seems to suggest, rather un-Rothbardianly, that a collective called “the State” has intentions (and agency to carry them out) over and above the individuals who comprise it. But let’s attribute this inaccurate suggestion to the need for an efficient (if roundabout) way to refer to the State’s constituent individuals. That is, the need for shorthand. There is, however, a less tractable problem with this historical generalization.

To me, it is plain that the same sin-warped mammalian species that has for millennia generated polymorphic structures of compulsion, regulation and dictatorship—parasitic upon free, peaceful and voluntary markets—is unlikely to ditch those structures for any meaningful interval. The same all-too-human material is found both in markets and in their hampering. Or rather, in the individuals who are both market actors and governmental aggressors and/or victims.

The legacy of Murray Rothbard is primarily one of polymathic erudition in the service of the natural right to liberty, suffused with optimism and humor. I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion, however, that his conceit that sustained statelessness is possible—and worth devoting one’s life to achieve—was an error. But it is also my conviction that we can learn more from Rothbard’s viewing of history through that conceit’s lens than from statists who never took that inspiring possibility seriously.

Murray’s error, if error it be, is nearly inexhaustibly instructive.

James Sadowsky, SJ: philosophical theologian, libertarian ethicist, dearly departed friend

On the occasion of what would have been the 96th birthday of James A. Sadowsky, SJ, I reproduce the September 18, 2012 obituary David Gordon wrote for Mises.org.

Father James A. Sadowsky, SJ, RIP

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.”

As one might expect of someone with this cast of mind, his specialty was logic, and he taught this subject at Fordham for over 40 years. He began teaching there in 1960 and continued giving courses in logic long after his retirement; he also taught logic for several years at Blackfriars Hall in Oxford University. He was very popular with the Oxford dons and once brought down the house with his instant response to the question “What would be the appropriate penalty for attempted suicide?” “Execution,” he said.

As many readers of Mises Daily will know, he was in political philosophy and economics a follower of Murray Rothbard, who esteemed him highly. He had come across Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression shortly after its publication in 1963. He soon sought out the book’s author and became part of a group that frequently gathered at Rothbard’s Manhattan apartment.

What attracted him to the libertarian point of view was its individualism: libertarianism rejects the notion of a collective interest apart from that of individual persons. In this he found echoes of one of his favorite thinkers among the scholastics, Francisco Suarez, who maintained that political authority rests on consent. If this idea were followed to its full implications, Sadowsky thought, it would lead to anarchism, an implication he fully accepted. Once, sitting on the floor on Rothbard’s living room, he said, “I hear that Roy [Childs] is in danger of lapsing into archy.” He would never be in this danger.

Sadowsky’s distinctive approach to political thought is best summed up in the last paragraph of his most influential article among libertarians, “Private Property and Collective Ownership.” He says, “If there is a lesson to be learned from this paper it is that the only enlightening way of analyzing economic and property problems is by always returning to the individual who, alone, is real. People are ill-served by the manufacture of spurious entities.” (A number of other papers by Sadowsky are available on this site, maintained by Tony Flood. It was Tony who telephoned me on the morning of September 7 with the sad news of Jim’s passing, and he has his own memorial notice here. [Having deleted anarcho-catholic, the blog on which that notice appeared, I removed the link to it that David originally embedded in the previous sentence. Most of that blog’s posts live on in Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic.]

Sadowsky’s article first appeared in the Autumn 1966 issue of Rothbard’s journal Left and Right, under a slightly different title and under the pen name “Eric Dalton.” Jim was somewhat crestfallen when he showed the article to his great friend and colleague in the Fordham philosophy department, Father W. Norris (“Norrie”) Clarke. Clarke said, “It sounds just like you, Jim.”

He had extremely high standards of rigor and as a result did not publish very much, but he held distinctive opinions on a wide variety of philosophical topics. One of the most important to him was “strict finitism,” a position he had learned from his friends Morris and Alice Ambrose Lazerowitz. In this view, there cannot be an actually existing infinite number of physical objects. As he often said to me, “the world is a totality.” He used this view to support an argument for the existence of God called the “kalam cosmological argument”; but it was the standard cosmological argument that he deemed the strongest proof for God. He rejected the design argument but argued in a paper he deemed one of his most important — “Did Darwin Destroy the Design Argument?” — that the theory of evolution was irrelevant to its truth. He also held that it was possible to know what someone will in future freely decide to do: there is, he held, no difference in principle between knowledge of the past and knowledge of the future. He also rejected “middle knowledge,” but I don’t think this is the place to explain the idea to those unfamiliar with the controversy.

In the fall of 2011, he had surgery to relieve the pressure of blocked arteries in his neck. Owing in part to his advanced age — he was then 87 — he never fully recovered from this operation; but he was still anxious to discuss philosophy in our almost daily telephone conversations. In the last few months, I could tell that a lung complaint was causing him severe difficulty, and he was unable to talk over the telephone very much. In our last talk, he complained that broadcasts of the London Olympics were interfering with Days of Our Lives, his favorite soap opera, but he was still looking forward to his two scoops of chocolate ice cream after lunch and dinner every day. Now my dear friend is gone, and I’ll never be able to tease him about the ice cream again.

David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, and editor of The Mises Review. Contact David Gordon

Jesus’ birth, the pagan calendar, and Scripture’s

Yesterday on Fox & Friends Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, said:

We don’t absolutely know the date that Jesus was born, but it surely made eminent sense for the early Church to say, why don’t we do it at the darkest time of the year, when the sun is about to rise and the Son, Jesus, the Light of the World, is born.

Of course, the English homonyms “sun” and “Son” weren’t available to anyone in the 4th-century, when certain Church leaders officially conformed the Christian’s calendar to the pagan’s. His Eminence might have been remembering Augustine’s rendering of the metaphor:

Hence it is that He was born on the day which is the shortest in our earthly reckoning and from which subsequent days begin to increase in length. He, therefore, who bent low and lifted us up chose the shortest day, yet the one whence light begins to increase. Sermon 192

But should poetic sense trump the seasonal facts Scripture records? It would have made the opposite of eminent sense for Caesar to have ordered “the whole world” to be taxed in the dead of winter or for shepherds to be tending their flock under those conditions.

Or for a pregnant woman to be traveling in them. Continue reading “Jesus’ birth, the pagan calendar, and Scripture’s”

Birdland, 1949-1965: Hard Bop Mecca

As an amateur Jazz guitarist, it’s my pleasure to take a break from theology and philosophy to note the 70th anniversary of the original Birdland club.

First, happy birthday to Barry Harris (b. 1929) and Curtis Fuller (b. 1934)!

70 years ago, December 15, 1949, a basement Jazz club—following the Ubangi, the Ebony, and The Clique—opened as “Birdland: The Jazz Corner of the World.” Its birth coincided with the demise of “The Street,” i.e., the serendipitous concatenation of jazz clubs that sprung up on 52nd Street between Fifth and Seventh Avenues in the wake of Prohibition. (See Patrick Burke’s scholarly Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street. Arnold Shaw’s 52nd Street: The Street of Jazz makes an excellent companion reader.) Continue reading “Birdland, 1949-1965: Hard Bop Mecca”

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”

To govern is to steer: demonstrably, we cannot govern

“Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires.” James 3:4

Ships of state are ever careering off the courses set by their human pilots.

Their “governors” can hold things together for, maybe, a generation and stave off annihilation; at worst, they steer the people, wittingly or no, into armed conflict.

By a kind of dialectical irony, they inexorably undermine the very order they depend on.

They manipulate currencies, thereby distorting the signals of markets. They do all of these things for perceived short-term gain.

And the governed go along with their governors whom, ironically, they sometimes have the high honor of electing to high office.

President Donald Trump, America’s kybernesis (1 Corinthians 12:28), is attempting to decelerate social and civilizational decline and reverse certain evil tendencies. Enjoying partial success, he may get re-elected.

(I don’t deny the relevancy to Trump of the Apostle James’s next verse: “Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things.”)

But the transient enjoyment I experience is a function of my self-centered projection of my expected lifespan. I’m hoping that the worst possible outcome will occur only after I’m safely dead.

Beneath the waters on which Trump steers the ship of state from one superficial “victory” to another, however, is an undertow of evil. It consists of (to name but a few horrors): slavery, including child sex-trafficking; the African diamond trade; drug trafficking; the predations and designs of the fascist ethnostate of China; radical Islamic terrorism and its state enablers. Let’s not forget the barbarism-promoting communists who are currently vying to replace Trump. There is no permanent escape from any of these scourges in this dispensation.

Continue reading “To govern is to steer: demonstrably, we cannot govern”

The day Otis Q. Sellers received Christ: November 23, 1919

A century ago today, 18-year-old Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. This future maverick Bible expositor was raised in Wellston, Ohio; when he was 15 the family moved to Cincinnati. Hall of Famer Edd Roush led the Cincinnati Reds to the 1919 World Series. Evangelist Billy Graham was a year old. Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith created United Artists. The United Mine Workers struck the coal industry on the first of the month during the first Red Scare. Wilson was President. The armistice ending the Great War was signed ten days later; on the 19th, the Treaty of Versailles failed ratification in the U.S. Senate.

Below are my lightly edited transcriptions of Sellers’s recollections from recordings made in 1975. My work on his life and Biblical theology proceeds. Thanks are due his daughter, Jane Sellers Hancock (she’s all of six in the second photo below), and her son (Otis’s grandson), Rusty Hancock, for the family photos used here and for other indispensable assistance I cannot summarize here.

—Anthony Flood

I was born in a Wellston, Ohio, small town of about 5,000 people; I lived there for the first fifteen years of my life [until 1916]. That had to do with the shaping of my thinking. When I first went to the big city, I was just a country boy in the big city. This town shaped my thinking and my actions. Sometimes I think that was for the good.

TL148 31:46-32:15

It was a warm afternoon in of August [1919], and I was upstairs getting dressed to go out on a Saturday afternoon. I was just 18. I came downstairs to put on my necktie; it was cooler downstairs.

My father and my brother were sitting near the bay window in our little house, and the windows were open. Dad had his Bible open. I noticed he was talking about a young preacher he very much admired.

My father was a Baptist. He and my brother were talking, and my father was impressing upon him the way of salvation. My brother James said:

Well, I haven’t been a perfect person, but I’ve never robbed any banks. I’ve never killed anyone. I never committed adultery. I’ve honored my father and mother.

And he had.

I think if anything happened to me, I’d be all right.

Otis Q. Sellers, Sr., holding Joann Morton, Otis Q. Sellers’s niece as Jane, his daughter, watches. September 20, 1933

Then my father said something that I’d never before heard in my life. I was baptized when I was 12. I have a pin to show that I had gone to Sunday School every Sunday without missing for fourteen years. (Then I quit!)

Then I heard my father say,

James, you aren’t saved by what you do, your good works; you’re saved by what Christ does. And you’re saved by believing on Him. The Bible says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Continue reading “The day Otis Q. Sellers received Christ: November 23, 1919”

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”