Anthony G. Flood

Retrospects and Prospects

This year will be better than next year. Yes, that may reflect more my mood than reality, but it’s a mood that reality reinforces daily.

I’m an eschatological optimist—Christ’s saving work has given me peace (true union) with God, which is all that really matters—but a secular pessimist. The intermittent news of resistance to the totalitarianism that’s coming like Christmas may be accurate, but “So, cheer up, old boy!” doesn’t make me feel better (and making me feel better is no one’s obligation). Things will change for the better, or they won’t; I’ll know which soon enough, should I live so long.

Those charged with preventing with catastrophes (e.g., my country’s invasion) are in fact facilitating them, thereby undermining the good of order that makes the regular enjoyment of other goods possible. I cannot train my attention on the facilitators, however, if the criminal invaders in my vicinity are concentrating my mind wonderfully. Like them, the criminal overlords can be dealt with only by violence; I see no timely way to exercise legitimate violence against either class of criminal. So, I pray each day for safety but, failing that, at least for the opportunity to take a few of the bastards with me.

I will write until I can no longer, content with the probability that what I write might be picked up, if it ever will be, by people who won’t be born until after I’m dead. Perhaps 2024 will see the publication of Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers (the latest draft of which I’m sharing with beta readers) and of the second, expanded edition of Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness. Maybe I’ll get around to mining the 25 diaries (1970-1994) that record my interactions with the remarkable people I’ve met (and the mistakes they couldn’t prevent me from making).

Ultradispensationalist that I am, even the great Reformed Baptist apologist James R. White (b. 1962), whom I’ve been reading and listening to for about ten years has not been able to make a Calvinist out of me (not that he’s tried), but he certainly has ruined any Roman Catholic apologist’s chance of winning me back. Auditing many of his over 180 moderated debates over the past ten years, White always strikes me as having the better of the argument. To the task he always brings not only great learning and preparation, but also grit and not a little humor. A student of history, he teaches biblical Hebrew and Greek, yet wears his learning lightly, if I’m any judge of such things.

A couple of diamonds in the cultural dung heap, however, postpone utter esthetic despair.

One is the Bebop guitar virtuoso Pasquale Grasso (b. 1988) who, after the passing of my teacher and friend Pat Martino (1944-2021), showed me I could get excited about a player again. Here’s a great example.

The other gem is Harlem-born performer Wé Ani (b. 1999), the most versatile, and powerful, pop singer I’ve ever heard, whose voice salves my charred soul and never fails to plaster a smile on my face. My wife and I had first seen her in 2016 on The Voice (when she went by “Wé McDonald”). A physically different (almost unrecognizably so) Wé competed in last season’s (2023) American Idol, making it into the top five. Research revealed she was indeed the same person. What she did this year, however, hooked me. She can belt like nobody’s business, folk her way through any ballad (guitar and all), or rock it out, or out-Broadway any veteran of The Great White Wé, I mean, Way.

There seem to be at least a half dozen Wé Anis: after watching any two videos, I sincerely wonder, “Is that the same singer?” Without, I stress, impersonating any of them, she can put you in mind of Nina Simone, or Mary J. Blige, or Idina Menzel, or Whitney Houston, or Aretha Franklin, or Barbra Streisand. (This list is not exhaustive, but it risked becoming exhausting).

And she gave off a different vibe when belting out a Stevie Wonder classic for Tony Bennett (who clearly inspired her final tonal choice), bringing the Kennedy Center audience to their feet.

And then there’s the uncanny sonic chasm between her childlike speaking pitch and her robust, gritty singing voice: she says she wants to be taken seriously, but “it’s not easy sounding like a 12-year-old at 23.” The simile that comes to my mind is fiction’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (minus the creepy associations): she makes a fool of anyone who prejudges her talent on that basis. (For instance.)

She’s also a modest and charming interviewee (sans tatoos, nose ring, acrylic claws and other accoutrements of female celebrityhood): consider one from 2018 and another from September. The Standard, her latest, will drop on January 12, 2024.

Such are my few oases of refreshment these days. I feel better having shared these sentiments. However quixotic it may sound, I wish all my subscribers and visitors a happy and safe 2024.

On the Centennial of James Sadowsky, SJ: Philosophical Theologian, Libertarian Ethicist, Dearly Missed Friend

My friend James A. Sadowsky, SJ (December 28, 1928-September 7, 2012) would have turned 100 today. I’ve appended the obituary by Mises Institute Senior Fellow David Gordon. My first of many lunches with Jim was at the Brasserie (1958-2015) in the Seagram’s Building in 1983 when he was a youthful 59 years old. Following Dr. Gordon’s tribute is a list of articles whose content you may access on my old website (which will reach its emerald anniversary on January 17, 2024).

James A. Sadowsky, SJ

No one who met Jim Sadowsky could ever forget him. I first saw him at a conference at Claremont University in California in August 1979; his great friend Bill Baumgarth, a political science professor at Fordham, was also there. His distinctive style of conversation at once attracted my attention. He spoke in a very terse way, and he had no patience with nonsense, a category that covered much of what he heard. If you gave him an argument and asked him whether he understood what you meant, he usually answered, “No, I don’t.” He once said to a fellow Jesuit, “that’s false, and you know it’s false.”

Behind that gruff exterior was a very kind and warm person, with a delight in humor. I knew I would get along with him at that conference when he said to a small group of people, “I may not look like a cup of coffee, but I certainly feel like one.” I was the only one who laughed, and he said to me, “You have a discerning sense of humor.” We were friends from then on.

He delighted in paradoxical remarks, such as “The word philosophy comes from the Greek word philosophia, which means philosophy.” “We wouldn’t have the concept of free will, unless we had it.” “A student of mine once objected to Ockham’s razor, on the grounds that it’s unnecessary.”

He told me that a student in one of his philosophy classes at Fordham wore a tee-shirt that said, “I don’t need your drugs.” He said that he asked him, “Does this mean you get enough of your own?” The student answered, “Drugs are a very serious subject; you shouldn’t tell jokes about them.” He said to me, “I don’t understand. If he didn’t think it was funny, how did he know it was a joke?” After he told me that he sometimes played contract bridge, I asked him whether he was a good player. “Yes,” he answered, “but I play with better players.” One of my favorites among his comments was, “I like to get to the desserts first, ahead of all the greedy and selfish people.”

Continue reading “On the Centennial of James Sadowsky, SJ: Philosophical Theologian, Libertarian Ethicist, Dearly Missed Friend”

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.

Philosophy after Christ: First US Amazon review

From a friend, John Lancaster

A Fascinating Read.

Let me first preface this review by mentioning the following:

I was initially introduced to the author via his blog AnthonyGFlood.com. Coming from an Austrian economics background, I gravitated towards the posts covering political economy, history, civics, and individualism. While I also enjoyed Flood’s work in philosophy and theology, I’m not as well versed in those fields. Even though the quality of his work is uniform across his different ventures, my connection to the formerly mentioned topics was far stronger than my connection to the latter.

That being said, as a Christian and eclectic thinker, I jumped at the chance to read Philosophy After Christ. Having already reviewed [Herbert] Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness, I was looking forward to another insightful, concise, and engaging read.

Insightfulness, conciseness, and engagement are in spades with this book. Don’t let the sub-200 page count fool you, this is not a light read.

Flood argues the Christian worldview as “the only worldview that makes possible what philosophers do . . . [and] that everyone, even those who claim to be anti-Christian, operates implicitly in terms of the Christian worldview.”

He supports this stance through rigorous logical deductions while constantly referencing Scripture. Flood’s ability to sequentially link his chains of logic is truly a masterful display.

Along with unraveling the philosophical components of his claim, Flood sharply addresses opposing arguments from distinguished intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell, Cornelius Van Til, and Gordon Clark.

For anyone looking to bolster their understanding of Christian philosophy, look into different theistic interpretations, or enjoy quality cerebral jousting, this is the perfect read for them.

Thanks, John. I hope it will have successors. That’s up to other readers.

What a Difference a Pogrom Makes: Thoughts on the Left’s Embrace of Barbarism

A little over a month ago, I was immersed in a project that now strikes me as an exercise in navel-gazing. It’s one I might salvage, but only if I can recast it in the shadow of the pogrom that Hamas inflicted on innocent Israelis on October 7, 2023.

The project in question, set out here, is my attempt to understand what motivated those who responded to injustice (what any ethical person would regard as injustice) in order establish justice (in matters of, say, labor conditions, race relations, war and peace, etc.), but adopted a worldview and a politics through which they either acted unjustly themselves or supported people, ideas, and movements that did.

That is, they joined a Marxist movement in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to protest company violence against striking workers or the lynching of African Americans, but wound up supporting, and rationalizing support of, regimes whose crimes were far worse than those that first offended their moral sensibilities.

It has sadly come home to me that Alan Wald, the prolific historian of such individuals, whose writings I very much enjoy and who came out of the Trotskyist movement in the 1960s and 1970s is, from my perspective, on the wrong side of the Israel-“Palestine” conflict. The rationalization and even glorification of unspeakable terror has left its mark on every major academic institution, including UMichigan, from which Wald retired in 2014 after almost 40 years. From that stance no nuanced dissent is socially permitted. To my knowledge he has expressed none.

I will see if Wald has expressed or will express condemnation of October 7, but his biography gives me no reason to be sanguine about that possibility. I don’t think he’s ever put distance between himself and the genocidal maniacs who “martyr” themselves for “Palestine” (who would incinerate him without a second thought if it suited them). Today’s Israel-negationists, with their “Jews for Palestine” contingent (“Turkeys for Thanksgiving,” anyone?), have given today’s left their sacramental “antiwar movement,” a platform on which to socialize, propagandize, and organize. Continue reading “What a Difference a Pogrom Makes: Thoughts on the Left’s Embrace of Barbarism”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My book problem (no, not tsundoku) and a possible solution

Over the past fifty-plus years I’ve accumulated thousands of books promiscuously. The promiscuity must end, the piles liquidated.

Not all at once: there are still projects for which having certain volumes at the ready will be convenient, but most do not qualify for that use. (Even that I’ll be able to use any of them that way is, of course, not guaranteed.) If, however, “anything should happen to me” (pardon the euphemism), these wonderful volumes of philosophy, history, theology, politics, biography and so forth, lovingly curated by a bibliophile who loves the distinctive aroma of old paperbacks, will likely wind up in the trash.

I can no longer spare the time and energy to catalog every book and list it on, say, Amazon (something I did years ago for about a thousand books). It requires the seller to “jump” upon receiving a “Sold! Ship Now!” email and schedule a trip to the post office. In short, I have no desire to set up a formal used book business. I will proceed more informally.

What I will do is append to my Portfolio a list of what I’m ready to part with. At first, and slowly, I will list only authors and titles. If an item catches a visitor’s eye, he or she can enquire via Contact Me about its physical condition and terms of sale.

No trusted third party will govern any transaction that might follow. For many of my visitors/subscribers, however, that will not be an issue. Perhaps they will be the only enquirers. Or maybe word-of-mouth will encourage a few others.

My interest is in seeing the books that I’ve enjoyed reading (and beholding) occupy someone’s else’s shelves. I have ever been only their temporary custodian. Each of them will, I hope, find another conservator.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who needs government? A response to Bill Vallicella’s comment on David Mamet

While composing a response to William “Bill” Vallicella’s recent posts on presuppositionalism (starting with “The Holocaust Argument for the Existence of God”), his Substack post, “Notes on David Mamet,” arrived in my inbox. In that post, Bill takes issue with what this distinguished playwright and self-described conservative said about government and taxes.

I will evaluate, not the dramatist’s claims, but Bill’s dismissal of them. Bill shows no awareness of, let alone respect for, the well-developed case that has been made for a philosophical position (with which non-philosopher Mamet loosely identified himself in an interview).

That is, I’m interested in whether Bill fairly represented, not Mamet, but the view that Bill, the self-described conservative, excoriates as “absurd.”

I stipulate that I’m ripping out of context (a context available to interested readers who take the link above) these sentences of his:

Conservatives . . . . are not anarchists because they accept the moral legitimacy of the State. Conservatives are law and order types, but there can be no law and order without a coercive state of [sic] apparatus that forces people to do what they are often uninclined to do. Conservatives believe in a strong national defense. They want the nation’s borders to be secure. All of this requires local, state, and Federal government. Conservatives are not libertarians because they understand that culture matters and that not every question is an economic one.

The last implication is, apparently, that for libertarians, either culture doesn’t matter, or every question is an economic one (or both). As someone who read and befriended Murray Rothbard 40 years ago, I never met a libertarian who held either belief. Whom did Bill have in mind?

The conservatives whom I’m sure Bill and I admire have cared a great deal about justice. Thoughtful conservatives, when confronted with argument and evidence that suggests that the way they go about establishing law and order, a strong national defense, and secure borders has offended justice—that is, that the policies they sincerely intended to secure those goods are unjust—don’t retort, “So what!” Rather, they examine the libertarian’s premises to see whether they’re (a) true or false and/or (b) linked validly or not in support of his conclusion. Bill neither did this nor pointed his readers to those who have.

Continue reading “Who needs government? A response to Bill Vallicella’s comment on David Mamet”