Stalin: Apostate, terrorist, tyrant . . . philosopher

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

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

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

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

Christianity and intelligibility, Part VI: Something about Mary

This continues a series of posts in which I engage Maverick Philosopher Bill Vallicella over my idea of philosophizing before and after Christ. (See Parts I, II, III, IV, V.)

Bill Vallicella asks me if Mariology (the doctrine of Mary, the mother of Jesus) is a part of the presuppositionalist “package deal,” that is, an essential element of the worldview that (I argue) uniquely makes intelligible predication possible.[1]

My answer is, yes, “some version of Mariology,” as Bill puts it, is derivable from an exegesis of Scripture, but not the Roman Catholic version that Bill tacitly presupposes.

That version was unknown to the writers of Scripture and the early Church Fathers. History knows of no writing alleging Mary’s “immaculate conception” (freedom from contracting Adam’s sin, “original sin”) until over a thousand years since Christ’s Ascension had passed. That’s when theologians could consider, and then reject, the musings of Eadmer, a 12^th-century monk who studied under Anselm (who denied Mary’s immaculate conception).[2]

Bernard of Clairvaux rejected the idea as a novum. He was joined in rejecting it (as inconsistent with the need for universal redemption in Christ) by Peter Lombard, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Aquinas. The distinctive dogma that the Roman Catholic magisterium has since 1854 taught de fide (that is, as binding on all Catholics) forms no part of the Biblical worldview. Continue reading “Christianity and intelligibility, Part VI: Something about Mary”

Christianity and intelligibility, Part V: Worldview and the “eye of faith”

This continues the series in which I discuss Maverick Philosopher Bill Vallicella‘s critique of my idea of philosophizing before and after Christ. (See Parts I, II, III, IV.)

In Philosophy after Christ, I wrote:

The relationship of evidence of one thing to another depends on there being minds fitted with reliable cognition that can surmise and test that connection. What must the world include for evidentiary relationships to be possible?

We may not be certain whether A is evidence of B, but that things are in evidentiary relationships to each other is something about which we not only have no doubt but wouldn’t know how to doubt. Is that merely a brute psychological fact without further ground? For doubting expresses intellectual exigency, critical “demandingness,” a healthy fear of being duped; exercising that virtue makes no sense except in a world that is completely intelligible (formally, efficiently, materially, and finally).[1]

And that brings us, as every philosophical question must, to worldview.

Continue reading “Christianity and intelligibility, Part V: Worldview and the “eye of faith””

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.

“Presuppositionalism”: a reply to an implicit criticism

In “Christ on the Possibility of Social Order without Christ (Matt. 12:24-6)”, an anonymous blogger led into his polemic against “political presuppositionalism” with a swipe at unnamed advocates of generic “presuppositionalism.”

Presuppositionalism, at least in some of its articulations, is the Christian epistemological and apologetical philosophy according to which knowledge is only possible on the condition of a self-conscious presupposition of the existence of God and the truth of his revealed word. One of the problems with presuppositionalism, at least insofar as it represents a distinct theory, is that it confuses the metaphysical conditions for the possibility of knowledge with the epistemological conditions for the possibility of knowledge. God’s existence and role as first cause may be metaphysically necessary for there to be knowledge, but it doesn’t follow from this that God has therefore made it the case that the presupposition of these truths is necessary to have knowledge. (The Natural Law Libertarian, June 19, 2023)

No, presupposing the worldview is necessary, not to have truth, but in order to give an account of how one has it. Accounting for knowledge is an epistemological task.

Continue reading ““Presuppositionalism”: a reply to an implicit criticism”

No Mere Assertion: The Transcendental Argument for the Christian Worldview (and, Therefore, for the Existence of God)

Have I merely been asserting, gratuitously, the Christian worldview, thereby inviting equally gratuitous denial? When I asked a friend for his opinion of the previous post, “Explanation Unexplained,” he replied:

If there is a weakness in your argument, I’d say that it doesn’t distinguish between ontology and epistemology. That is, suppose the Christian worldview, as you expound it, is correct. Suppose someone fails to accept this worldview. Why should this person accept the view that his refusal is a suppression of a view he really knows to be true, even if in fact this is the case? If the reply is that competing worldviews do not explain how truth and knowledge are possible, then perhaps a counter would be that the Christian worldview does not explain this either, but rather asserts its own exclusive rationality.

I will try to remedy this appearance of weakness by asking about the origin of the rational exigency (demand for reasons) behind the criticism. Where does that come from?

The Diagnosis

The answer to my friend’s question is that although the unbeliever may be psychologically unlikely to admits that he’s suppressing the truth, he must live with the logical consequences of the suppression I diagnose on the warrant of Romans 1:18-20 (ESV).

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress (κατεχόντων, katechonton, “hold down”) the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

The one who fails to accept this diagnosis is, according to the Apostle Paul, self-deceived. Despite that condition, however, the rejecter relies on principles of intelligible predication that he cannot account for (again, the laws of logic, the regularity of nature, and moral absolutes).

Unless something explains their mutual comportment, however, every utterance floats in a void, a cosmic theater of the absurd, rendering all predications (including “Christian theism is false” and “The Bible is not the word of God”) meaningless.

Continue reading “No Mere Assertion: The Transcendental Argument for the Christian Worldview (and, Therefore, for the Existence of God)”

Worldviews, potent and impotent: Noam Chomsky’s “lucky accident”

My work on Philosophy after Christ proceeds; today’s post expresses part of what I mean by philosophy, not only chronologically after Christ’s earthly ministry, but also “according to Christ” (κατὰΧριστόν, kata Christon) (Colossians 2:8).

We all take many things for granted. If, however, we would honor our mental obligations, we ought not to take things for granted, but rather examine their grounds. That is, whoever aspires to pursue wisdom or “philosophize” (which pursuit the linguistic analysis called “philosophical” ought to subserve) should not take taking-for-granted for granted. We ought to ground that habit.

We can do that by examining our worldview to see whether it can bear the weight we put on it. The German for “worldview” is Weltanschauung, a calque of the Greek kosmotheoria. A worldview is a network of first truths that constitute our pretheoretical propensity to see (theoria) the world (kosmos), which includes God, mankind, and nature.[1]

Our worldview-forming capacity is innate. It is a heuristic for making sense of the world, including our sense-making. The Christian claims that the kosmotheoria on display in the Bible alone fills that schema concretely and successfully. It’s our birthright, which except by God’s grace we incline to trade for a pot of message. The history of philosophy is the story of the attempt to put something else in place of God’s Word, the chronicle of the many ways human beings can devalue their inheritance.

The renown linguist and cognitive scientist, Noam Chomsky (b. 1928) provides a glaring example of this devaluation. He matter-of-factly consigns science, his intellectual milieu for seven decades, to a meaningless void:

[A] partial congruence [Chomsky writes] between the truth about the world and what the human science-forming capacity produces at a given moment yields science. Notice that it is just blind luck if the human science-forming capacity, a particular component of the human biological endowment, happens to yield a result that conforms more or less to the truth about the world.[2]

Continue reading “Worldviews, potent and impotent: Noam Chomsky’s “lucky accident””

The Problem OF Philosophy

Obligations are currently limiting my free writing time to the books I’m working on; lately, and unfortunately, that has meant republishing older posts. Today’s falls into that category. At the end of it, I’ve appended a list of links to posts germane to the problem OF philosophy. I hope to generate fresher material soon.—Anthony Flood

Aristotle’s School

There are problems of philosophy, which philosophers have perennially asked and attempted to answer. What really exists? What can (and do) I know? What is the nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful?

But there’s also the problem of philosophy, one that philosophy raises implicitly but cannot answer directly. That’s the problem of worldview. Do my answers to those philosophical questions comport or clash with one another? How much about the world must I “take for granted” when I ask my first question? Can I query those takings?

When one is adverting to the problem of “background” worldview one is not trying to solve problems that arise on its terms. And one’s worldview must be able to acknowledge worldview-diversity. But where is one standing when one entertains that problem?

As my interest in the worldview problem has increased, that in philosophical problems has decreased. That’s because philosophical problems now seem to me a function of one’s basic, non-negotiable stance toward the world. When philosophers pay attention to it, they’re not “doing” philosophy. When they don’t, their philosophical work is exposed to worldview-level criticism.

It’s not that philosophical questions are unimportant. The almost fifty years I spent studying them were not wasted time. Philosophical questions are endlessly interesting culturally and historically. But worldview questions have supplanted philosophical ones in my mind, perhaps because my worldview is of paramount importance to me and, going forward, I wish to advert to it explicitly. Worldviews assign various values to cultural and historical importance and hence to philosophy.

Philosophers who profess the same worldview can agree or disagree fruitfully about, for example, the veridicality of sense perception. Those who do not profess the same worldview, but are not conscious of that disparity, may misunderstand both their agreements and disagreements, even if when they use the same natural language correctly. If they are conscious of that disparity, then it is not clear what their apparent agreements or disagreements could mean. “God exists,” affirms the Christian, who thinks the idea of God important. “Yes, God exists!,” answers the Buddhist, who deems it a distraction from the main issue of living.

If philosophical problems are embedded in a worldview, then worldview conflict-adjudication is not a philosophical problem. The attempt to resolve the conflict also operates at the level of worldview. There is no worldview-neutral stance from which to make that attempt.

That one’s philosophical system is one’s final court of appeal for all questions was my assumption. Glancing at my life’s clock and calendar, however, I no longer care to do that. I’ve achieved enough clarity about my position to give myself permission not to.

The implications of the Christian worldview, the one that permeates the pages of the Bible, exhausts my philosophical interests. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is the only worldview that makes possible what philosophers do. (Indeed, what we all do at the inception of our every predication, even our silent ones.)

I further claim (as an implication of my worldview) that everyone, even those who claim to be anti-Christian, operate implicitly in terms of the Christian worldview. It’s the birthright of all those created in the image of God.

I prefer exploring the Christian worldview, as Biblical exegesis reveals it, to burrowing down the tunnel of worldview-justification. For life is short, and justification tends to be a long-winded if not also interminable affair. Still, as my position is in need of clarification, I will try to clarify it in future posts.

Postscript, July 21, 2020: Here are those “future” posts, i.e., subsequent to November 26, 2018, when the essay above was first published:

The Apostle Paul preaching to the philosophers. Acts 17:16-34

A Debate on the Existence of God: Greg Bahnsen vs. George Smith (1991)

A lively debate between Christian philosopher and apologist Greg L. Bahnsen (1948-1995) and libertarian atheist author George H. Smith (b. 1949) took place at Los Angeles radio station KKLA FM 99.5. It serves as a popular introduction to the approach to Christian apologetics promoted on this site. Long (10K+ words), but in my opinion smooth.

I spoke with Bahnsen by phone in 1991 not long afterward, but can’t further specify the date; I’d be grateful to hear from anyone who can. Bahnsen’s 1984 debate with Gordon Stein (1941-1996) is still the classic, but in some ways this one is more accessible: there’s more “back-and-forth” between Bahnsen and his opponent; John’s Stewart’s moderation is present, but more informal than the one held at the University of Southern California.

We owe this transcription to a “Jonah” (screenname) who posted it online “for whoever wants it” on January 7, 2011; unfortunately, that link is now “dead.” I made some editorial decisions: stylistic changes, mostly in punctuation. To conserve space, I deleted the repeated introductions and other announcements by the radio host and debate moderator.

I did not check the transcription against the audio broadcast, but as someone who has listened to it many times over the past thirty years, I can attest to its fidelity. No need to take my word for it, however: the audio recording of the debate, just under an hour in length, is available on YouTube.

My internal critique of Smith’s worldview, Atheism Analyzed: The Implosion of George Smith’s “Case against God” (2019) reflects the state of my understanding Bahnsen’s apologetic method in 1989, when I drafted it. A search of his name on this site will yield the record of the progress I hope I’ve made.

A Debate on the Existence of God: Greg Bahnsen vs. George Smith

Moderator: God. Well, the Bible begins with—“In the beginning God!” and the Bible says twice in the Psalms, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God!” But why are there so many agnostics and atheists if God’s existence is so evident? There may be many explanations, but there are certain arguments consistently raised by skeptics which call into question God’s existence. Coming up we’ll discuss atheism and the case against God with atheist George Smith and Christian apologist Greg Bahnsen. My guest, George Smith, has written two books. One is entitled Atheism: The Case Against God; the other, Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies. George first published Atheism: The Case Against God in 1974. The book is still in print published by Prometheus. For six years he was a general editor and scriptwriter for the Audio Classics audio tapes by Knowledge Products, currently senior research fellow for the Institute for Human Studies at George Mason University, and again his latest book Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies. George Smith, we welcome you to the program.

Smith: Thank you.

Moderator: Let me get you to get a little closer to the mic there, George.

Moderator: Also, we have Dr. Greg Bahnsen, presently scholar in residence at the [now defunct] Southern California Center for Christian Studies, an author of five books and nearly a hundred journal or periodical articles in Christian apologetics, ethics, and theology. His doctorate is in philosophy . . . from the University of Southern California, and he has degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary. Dr. Greg Bahnsen, we welcome you as well. Continue reading “A Debate on the Existence of God: Greg Bahnsen vs. George Smith (1991)”