Bill Vallicella – 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.

Christianity and intelligibility, Part III

This continues a series in which I engage Bill Vallicella‘s critical exploration of aspects of biblical theism, especially when he interacts with my efforts to explain what I mean by philosophizing before or after Christ. (See Part I, Part II.)

To return to one of Bill’s recent questions, which I have been answering, but perhaps not (yet) to his satisfaction):

Why does an account of the intrinsic intelligibility of the natural world in terms of Divine Creative Mind require the specific doctrines of normative Christianity? That and that alone is the question I am raising . . . . The question I raised in the initial post was whether the knowledge involved when a person knows that the Sun has risen is exactly the same sort of knowledge involved when a person knows—if he does know—that Christianity is true.[1]

I gave part of my answer in Part II. The intelligibility of the natural world owes to its being what God in Scripture says it is (including what we are). God says many other things from which one may infer the “specific doctrines of normative Christianity.”

How does one know that the Sun has risen? Well, for practical purposes, one trusts that one’s senses, memory, command of language (to affirm the proposition, even tacitly, “The Sun has risen”), and so forth can support perceptual knowledge claims. But what justifies the trust, the memory, the linguistic command, the imperative to tell the truth (even if only to oneself), and so forth?

That’s where worldview comes in. Only one fills the bill, in my view.

Continue reading “Christianity and intelligibility, Part III”

Christianity and intelligibility

Beneath a post on his blog, Bill Vallicella commented on a matter of common interest. I stress that Bill wrote a comment, not a paper for a peer-reviewed journal, and that’s all I’m doing here. I offer the following only as a further, not a last word.

Last Sunday, in responding to one Joe Odegaard, Bill wrote:

While I agree that Christianity makes sense of the world and in particular of the scientific enterprise, and while I myself have argued against materialism/physicalism/naturalism and in favor of Divine Mind as source of the world’s intelligibility, it must be borne in mind that Xianity [Christianity] is a very specific religion with very specific tenets such as Incarnation and Trinity. Why should anyone think that such apparently unintelligible doctrines are necessary for the intelligibility of the natural world? (Emphasis added.—A. G. F.)

The short answer is that appearances can be untrustworthy. Unless it can be shown that those tenets are really, not just apparently, unintelligible, the implicit objection (in the form of a rhetorical question) has no force. I fail to see what special problem the “natural world” allegedly poses.

To know anything about something, we need not know that thing exhaustively (that is, the way God knows it). The Christian does not avail himself of his birthright (Christian theistic) worldview because it confers omniscience on him, but rather because (a) it saves intelligible predication and (b) no competing worldview does. That’s the claim Bill has to defeat.

How is the Incarnation or the Trinity unintelligible, even apparently?

The equal ultimacy of the one and the many in the Triune Godhead saves predication from the consequences of monism and pluralism.

It’s also unclear what problem someone who affirms exnihilation finds in a divine person’s taking the form of a divine-image bearer. Some atheists have claimed, without justification, that exnihilation is “unintelligible” but they do so because they’ve absolutized the created order instead of relativizing it to its creator, who alone is absolute. Bill affirms exnihilation without exhaustively grasping it conceptually. He can do likewise for the Trinity and the Incarnation.

The Christian worldview, expressed on the pages of the Bible, is a revelatory “package deal,” if you will, not a buffet of optional metaphysical theses. The organic connectedness (within the divine decree) of creation, trinity, and incarnation—even the so-called “contingencies of history,” e.g., Joshua’s impaling the King of Ai on a pole after slaughtering all of his subjects (Joshua 8)—await clarification in God’s good time, if He sees fit to provide it, but are put before us for our assent today.

Rights political and epistemic: Biblical theism alone can account for them

Maverick Philosopher Bill Vallicella, a friend of this site (and its ancestor since 2004), posted recently about the source of rights in God, saying things about argumentation that loomed larger for me than any conclusion he drew about rights and their derivation.

Conservatives [Bill writes] regularly say that our rights come from God, not from the state. It is true that they do not come from the state. But if they come from God, then their existence is as questionable as the existence of God. Now discussions with leftists are not likely to lead anywhere; but they certainly won’t lead anywhere if we invoke premises leftists are sure to reject. The Left has always been reliably anti-religion and atheist, and so there is no chance of reaching them if we insist that rights come from God. So from a practical point of view, we should not bring up God in attempts to find common ground with leftists. It suffices to say that our rights are natural, not conventional. We could say that the right to life, say, is just there, inscribed in the nature of things, and leave it at that. Why wave a red flag before a leftist bull who suspects theists of being closet theocrats?

What “common ground” is there between the atheist and the theist? If I understand Bill correctly, it consists in a key worldview concession that the theist allegedly must make to the atheist if there is to be conversation.

For the Biblical theist, the “common ground” between him and his atheist dialogic partner is they’re both divine image-bearers (Genesis 1:26). The one acknowledges that status, the other suppresses it. Continue reading “Rights political and epistemic: Biblical theism alone can account for them”

Did the Apostle Paul argue for God’s existence?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do atheists have an excuse?

In a short post few months ago, Bill Vallicella argued that “If God exists, and one is an atheist, then one is ignorant of God, but it does not follow that one is culpably ignorant.” (Italics added.)

Bill takes his definition of “culpable ignorance” from a Catholic dictionary: ignorance is blameworthy if the ignorant one could have “cleared up” his ignorance, but chose not to. “One is said to be simply (but culpably) ignorant,” the dictionary says, “if one fails to make enough effort to learn what should be known.”

Bill applies this to the atheist this way:

I hold that there is vincible ignorance on various matters. But I deny that atheists are vincibly ignorant. Some might be, but not qua atheists. Whether or not God exists, one is not morally culpable for denying the existence of God. Nor do I think one is morally culpable if one doubts the existence of God.

Bill acknowledges that his exculpation of the professing atheist “puts me at odds with St. Paul, at least on one interpretation of what he is saying at Romans 1: 18-20.”

I’ll say! As Bill wrote in the post he linked to: “There are sincere and decent atheists, and they have plenty of excuse for their unbelief. The best of them, if wrong in the end, are excusably wrong.”

Continue reading “Do atheists have an excuse?”

Bill Vallicella on Cornelius Van Til: An open mind and heart

Image result for bill vallicella Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, is currently reading Cornelius Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith, and that delights me no end. Bill was the first philosopher to welcome my old site (now 15 years old) and greet the launching of this one (which occasioned his republishing a generous and stimulating critique of one of my efforts).

I thank Dave Lull (the “Omnipresent Wisconsin Librarian,” now retired) for alerting me not only to Bill’s “Van Til and Romans 1:18-20,” but also to “God, the Cosmos, Other Minds: In the Same Epistemological Boat? The latter is Bill’s response to my “God: “behind the scenes” (or “under the floorboards”) of every argument.” (I’m grateful to Dave for many other unsolicited yet invaluable leads he has sent my way over the years.) Image result for dave lull

After reading the second post, though, I wonder whether after a few chapters Bill’s thrown Defense against the wall in exasperation—one of my reactions, decades ago—figuratively speaking, of course.

In a blog post I can address only some of the issues Bill raise. That is, what follows does not answer Bill point for point. I’ll only suggest the lines of a fuller response.

Bill is ambivalent about Van Til: his “presuppositionalism is intriguing even if in places preposterous.” Bill doesn’t specify what merits that assessment. In any case Van Til’s distinctive charge was that all non-Christian thought—including much that is professedly Christian but infected with non-Christian presuppositions—is preposterous at its roots.

Continue reading “Bill Vallicella on Cornelius Van Til: An open mind and heart”