Author Archives: Bobby Grow

KJV’s Mere Christian Hermeneutics

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Just finished. As an after Barth, Torrance, Calvin, Athanasius (and patristic theology), John Webster (on Scripture) person, I would say that Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s book fits well with what us Evangelical Calvinists (after our books and my blog work) call a Dialogical Theology and reading of the text of Scripture. It is more about the encounter, transformation, and instrumentality of the reading of Holy Scripture versus the academic slicing and dicing of things; the latter often being under higher critical antisupranaturalistic pressures. This is not to say that the grammatical historical has no place, but that such a frame is only as real as the humanity of Jesus Christ is real (which has ultimate real-ness); as the veil, indeed torn, by the illuminating power and transfiguration of resurrection. I would say that KJV has put to words a hermeneutical frame that I have been engaging the text with myself for the last many decades. Although I would say, as Richard Muller has referred to Calvin’s christological reading of the Bible, that on a continuum, KJV’s offering fits with Calvin’s soteriological-extensive christocentrism rather than Barth’s principially-intensive christocentric frame of reference for reading Scripture. That notwithstanding, I don’t think these distinctions must be held in a competitive frame of understanding either. I commend, Vanhoozer’s work to you.

My Final Oxford Essay for My Philo Rel Course: God’s Existence in Cosmic Relief

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God’s Existence in Cosmic Relief

Is there any need to explain why there is a universe at all? Would God be an explanation? This is the question the rest of this essay will engage with. 1) This essay will reason on the moral need for an explanation of universe’s existence vis-à-vis human teleology. 2) Based on the affirmative of point one this essay will further attempt to reason from the universe’s apparent contingency concerning God’s existence as the best inference to an explanation, regarding the universe’s existence in general, and human existence embedded in the universe in particular. 3) For purposes of thoroughness T. J. Mawson’s chapter on the cosmological argument[1] will be engaged with as how we might conclude on the universe having an explanation for its existence (or not). As we engage with Mawson, it will become clear that the author of this essay affirms some relative value in thinking God’s existence from the cosmological argument. But in the end, it will be concluded that such metaphysical abstractions cannot finally lead a person to a knowledge of God in ways that satisfy the need for human purpose and value as that is evinced (or not) within the vastness of the universe. Once these matters have been duly weighed, this paper will summarize the various ideas posited and engaged with. As a parting note, the author of this paper will suggest a way forward towards thinking about what type of God might fit best with a universe that has at least one known planet (Earth) where human beings who are personal persons exist.

The universe is there. As such, an adequate explanation for its existence is required; at least, insofar that the people inhabiting it would like to live an ‘examined life.’ Being rather than not being ought to inculcate within someone’s inner being a desire to know why they have being and extension into the universe rather than not. I would argue that this is so because as self-reflecting entities, that is, as sentient beings extending into space and time, to know our whence, indeed, to know the universe’s whence, presents it with a potential context for understanding human self-determination and purpose in a universe wherein to the naked eye it might appear to be simply here for no reason at all. But human beings live with a sense of inherent purpose; humans move and breathe with sets of values—culturally ladened as they might be—which presents each and everyone of us with a ‘common sense’ of a shared being in the universe that preceded us, along with all of humanity from all time, that pressures the genuinely self-reflective agent towards a desire of knowing: “where did it all come from?” Once that desire is cultivated, even among just a percentage of people through the millennia, it is proper and even required for us to pursue the “whence” question of the universe that we inhabit. And as a first instance of that pursuit towards understanding the whence of the universe, I would argue that the most organic question to probe is to understand whether the universe has always been, or did it have a beginning.

Since the universe is a finite entity, observable simply from the fact that human life, and other life forms, have beginnings and endings, it is proper to conclude, by extrapolation, that the universe itself, ever expanding as it is, likewise had a beginning. If this is the case, then to reason about the universe’s beginning from its contingency has a certain explanatory power to it all by itself; even if that only leads to a capacity for the reasoner to infer from the negation of contingency that there is something prior to the contingent, definitionally, that in itself is non-contingent. And to reason thusly, I would suggest, ought to lead the reasoner to an openness about their being what is classically understood as a God as the non-contingent begetter of the contingent.

The previous line of reasoning leads us to what philosophers have identified as a ‘cosmological argument’ or ‘argument from contingency’ regarding the existence of a Creator God. I believe, on its own, the cosmological argument, or argument from contingency, is a powerfully intuitive argument for the reasonability of a God’s existence. Beyond that, as already alluded to, as the literature and empirical data presents[2], the universe itself, in its expansive nature, is a contingent entity which, according to the “Principle of Sufficient Reason,” as described by Mawson[3], requires a conclusion concerning its original instantiation. I think that rejecting the principle of sufficient reason is done so from a prior commitment to not want to believe that it is reasonable to believe in a God’s existence; of course, the obverse is also the case. That is, to want to believe that it is reasonable to believe in a God’s existence is done so from a prior commitment that already knows there to be or wants there to be a God who exists. In this sense, in my view, it becomes a matter of what “a priori” has the greater “intuitive” or even “revelational” explanatory power for it. That is, does an atheist’s desire, like Bertrand Russell’s, for there to only be the physical universe in a closed system determinately governed by random chance, space and time[4] fit better with this “pre” approach to something like affirming the cosmological argument? Or does the Christian theist’s desire, like mine, for there to be an “enchanted” universe, fulgent with a living and triune God’s glory to be on display, as revealed particularly in the face of Jesus Christ, fit better with a “pre” approach to something like affirming the cosmological argument of some type?

So, I might agree with Mawson that the cosmological argument left to itself isn’t a good argument for proving God’s existence.[5] But, when it is placed in a broader noetic web, it can come to have a serviceability to it that fits better with the affirmation that a living God exists rather than a No-God not existing. In other words, it is the prior and broader belief-frames that will end up determining whether or not someone seeing the cosmological argument has any value. And so, as Mawson rightly argues, it is required that we look elsewhere, and interrogate other things, to arrive at a conclusion that a God does or doesn’t exist.[6] And these other things, like “religious experience”, while related to the questions of contingency in deep ways, often, have a different criterion built into them; such as “encounter” “experience” “revelation” so on and so forth, that attempting to argue from mere physical or even metaphysical premises cannot inherently offer in and of themselves. That is to say, what is required is a personal touch, so to speak; that is, because we are persons and not just random quantum happenstances miraculously “happening” in the ether of a purely brute type of contingent universal and cosmic order. Notice, appeal to the black boxes of quantum happenstances, in the end, is just to appeal to something like a god, but a god who remains hidden, in the dark, and to whom we can ultimately remain unaccountable.

I see these matters as moral issues, which a cosmological argument, while compelling in highly intuitive ways, in and of itself, cannot ultimately address, per se. The cosmological argument cannot apprehend the moral issue, because, at best, all it can do is leave the universe open in regard to its need for a God to explain its existence. It cannot describe, per se, whether or not this God is personally present, or impersonally distant (like the God of the Deists). As a result, other means are required for determining whether or not the non-contingent being known as God is indeed personal and active in the universe’s world, or if God is simply a generic placeholder to fill in the gap in people’s minds with reference to the origination of the universe in toto.

Conclusion

This essay has considered the following things: 1) It is reasonable for sentient human beings to reflect on the universe’s existence. It was argued that this is the case because human beings, as finite beings in a finite universe, inherently desire to know their purpose whilst inhabiting the universe; which entails morality. 2) It was further argued that since life in general is finite, and thus contingent, by extrapolation, the universe in general is also a contingent entity that the ‘examined life’ seeks to understand regarding its origination. 3) Engaging with philosopher, T. J. Mawson, based on the “principle of sufficient reason,” as he explained, since the universe, as a contingent entity is, it requires an explanation.[7] Even so, it was reasoned that ultimately the cosmological argument only has relative value in regard to proving God’s existence.

In conclusion, this essay concludes that the universe does require an explanation for its existence, and that its best explanation is positing something greater than itself as its cause: this “greater than” is classically understood to be God. Even so, it has also become apparent that a simple appeal to something like a cosmological argument does not suffice towards providing human beings with enough knowledge of who or what this God might be regarding the deepest questions of the human heart. So, while an argument from contingency might serve well for pointing out the coherence of a Creator God, it remains unhelpful in presenting someone with a personal God who can make sense of the various moral quandaries human beings are presented with throughout their lifespans. For this, what is required, this essay suggests, is an engagement with revelation claims about God such as is found among the Christians.

References

Mawson, T. J. Belief in God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

NASA Hubblesite. “One of Hubble’s Key Projects Nails Down Nearly a Century of Uncertainty.” Accessed 03-28-2025.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Russellian Monism.” Accessed 03-28-2025.

[1] T. J. Mawson, Belief in God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 153–62.

[2] NASA Hubblesite, “One of Hubble’s Key Projects Nails Down Nearly a Century of Uncertainty,” accessed 03-28-2025.

[3] Mawson, Belief in God, 154–55.

[4] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Russellian Monism,” accessed 03-28-2025.

[5] Mawson, Belief I God, 161–62.

[6] Ibid., 163–78.

[7] Mawson ultimately believes that the principle of sufficient reason can function as a double-edged sword which, in the end, can be applied to both the theist’s side as well as the physicalist side of the atheists. See Mawson, Belief in God, 161–2.

Bosom of the Father Knowledge

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No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. –John 1:18

Jesus has brought all who will, because He first willed for us, into the bosom of the Father in union with Him. It is here, this locale, where knowledge of God alone obtains. It is God’s Self-knowledge that He has invited us into, as if a banqueting table. The Christian, by the grace of God in Christ, shares in the divine nature; indeed, the particular nature of the particular and only living God. Without God’s revelation there would be no reconciliation; and without reconciliation there would be no revelation of God; because ‘revelation is reconciliation,’ for all who will; because He first willed for us. So, a genuine knowledge of God is a necessarily Christian knowledge; for outwith this participation in the triune life, there is no God to have knowledge of; other than a knowledge of the self projected out onto a notion of godness that humanity itself has constructed.

On the Cosmological Argument and the Universe’s Existence

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Plato

My Philosophy of Religion class at the University of Oxford is now complete. I have just submitted my final essay (1500 words approx.) for the class, which represents the capstone project. I essentially wrote my paper on the cosmological argument for God’s existence. The question I was addressing was “does the universe require an explanation for its existence; and if so, why would it be God?” The following represents my conclusion to said paper.

This essay has considered the following things: 1) That it is reasonable for sentient human beings to reflect on the universe’s existence. It was argued that this is the case because human beings, as finite beings in a finite universe, inherently desire to know their purpose whilst inhabiting the universe; which entails morality. 2) It was further argued that since life in general is finite, and thus contingent, by extrapolation, the universe in general is also a contingent entity that the ‘examined life’ seeks to understand regarding its origination. 3) Engaging with philosopher, T. J. Mawson, based on the “principle of sufficient reason,” as he explained, since the universe is, it requires an explanation. Even so, it was reasoned that ultimately the cosmological argument only has relative value in regard to proving God’s existence.

In conclusion, this essay concludes that the universe does require an explanation for its existence, and that its best explanation is positing something greater than itself as its cause: this “greater than” is classically understood to be God. Even so, it has also become apparent that a simple appeal to something like a cosmological argument does not suffice towards providing human beings with enough knowledge of who or what this God might be regarding the deepest questions of the human heart. So, while an argument from contingency might serve well for pointing out the coherence of a Creator God, it remains unhelpful in presenting someone with a personal God who can make sense of the various moral quandaries human beings are presented with throughout their lifespans. For this, what is required, this essay suggests, is an engagement with revelation claims about God such as is found among the Christians.

Disallowing Secular Unbelief to Dictate the Terms of God

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Secular, worldly unbelief. I think Christians often allow the bar to be set much too low. Much of Christian theology, for example, especially those that have taken shape in the natural theology forest, allow the skeptic’s unbelief to dictate the types of questions the theologians seek to answer. Primary of which are observed in Thomas Aquinas’ Prima Pars (first part) of his Summa Theologiae. Here, Thomas seeks to answer the questions of God’s existence, and whether or not it is coherent to believe that God exists (like a generic God; albeit, in Thomas’ context this would be applied to the Christian God simplicter, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case for him). Once Thomas felt that he had sufficiently answered the skeptic’s arguments, about what God is; he then proceeded onto other matters—which would entail the Trinity, the Church, Justification and all other theological matters. It isn’t really the order of theology, per se, that is problematic with Thomas’ method (although I would qualify and say: that the order is bereft because it starts with a Monadic conception of God; even so, it starts with God, just from the wrong place). But the fact that he feels compelled to first prove “a God’s” existence, and then only after that apply this “proven God’s” existence to some of the more Dogmatic questions of the Church has a highly disordering effect after all.

So, the above is an example of how I believe, at a high level, theology can take its cues and categories from the wrong unbelieving people; and then, of course!, end up with the wrong theological and biblical conclusions. But I think this happens to each and everyone of us, as Christians (at least those attempting to walk as intentional Christians), as we are constantly bombarded with the wares of our Secular Age. As the Apostle Paul counters, even as he is referring to the false teachings and antagonisms of the Pseudo-Apostles in Corinth:

Now I, Paul, myself urge you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am meek when face to face with you, but bold toward you when absent! 2 I ask that when I am present I need not be bold with the confidence with which I propose to be courageous against some, who regard us as if we walked according to the flesh. 3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. 5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, 6 and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.

I am looking at the principle embedded in the emboldened section in particular. Wherever these “speculations” are coming from, whether it be from Joe Pagan at work, or if it be Plato in the heavens, we are to discern such things for what they are, and “take it captive” unto Christ. The simple point I am drawing on is that it is a spiritual battle to ensure that the way we think God, as Christians, is only taken from, and in an immediate way, from God who has spoken to us (and speaks to us) in His Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Even if there are hallowed traditions, some might call it the Great Tradition of the Church, without any further explication (i.e., it just is), these traditions themselves are always subservient to the reality of Holy Scripture, the theology of the Word, Jesus Christ. And this is the battle we face, on the daily, as Christians. This applies to all Christians, in one way or the other. We are faced with unbelief all around; that’s what this evil age entails. But we are to be more vigilant than theologians of glory, who seek to synthesize the wisdom of the world with the wisdom of the cross. Indeed, we are to be theologians of the cross; and by the wisdom of God, which is the cross of Christ, we are to recognize these false speculative and flighty ideas about God, even if they have many solid layerings and accretions of traditions behind them, in the name of the Church, and test them, in the face of Christ and the triune God, to see if they be so.

This is a prayerful way though.

‘At any rate, it is not at all clear that He controls dogmatic thinking concerning Himself.’

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It is time to break my blogging fast. It is fitting, the topic of this post, because I am nearing the end of my Philosophy of Religion class at the University of Oxford (next week is the last). There is one unit left, it is on Faith, Prayer, and the Spiritual life. The class is largely populated by atheists and agnostics. The text we used for class (which was augmented by many other readings and lectures) was written by an Oxford philosopher named T. J. Mawson, Belief in God. He is a Christian theist, but a panentheist who holds to a Christian universalism. What became stoutly reinforced to me was that the god of the philosophers (or the no-god) has no correspondence with the God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ. Mawson is arguing for the existence of a philosophical Monad; a Pure Being; an Unmoved Mover; Pure Act (actus purus). Indeed, he is arguing from within an analytic philosophical key; but, nevertheless, this key is still funded by the Hellenic Monad of the classical philosophers.

Unfortunately, too much of that “key” has been pressed into the development of Christian theologies; both antique and modern. This has always been at the basis of my critique of what I have called classical Calvinism (as a riff on classical Theism). Too much of the ‘being’ that can be proven is synthesized with the God of Christian revelation, such that the God produced is something of a hybrid notion of God wherein God functions more like a philosophical monad rather than a personal and relational God of triune Self-given love, one-in-the-other as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The god of the philosophers has no place with the God who we have come to know in the face (prosopon) of Jesus Christ.

Karl Barth, observes the same thing as that has largely taken place in the ‘older orthodox theology’ of the Protestant Reformed of the 16th and 17th centuries, respectively. Indeed, what is imbibed by the orthodox, it could be said, is simply just the re-gestation of a mediaeval theology as that developed on the ‘Western front’ of the Latin church. Barth writes:

The weakness of the older orthodox theology was that in all its doctrine of the divine providence, and of the creation and man, and earlier of God and the election of grace, it believed that it could dispense with this relationship either entirely or almost entirely. It thought and spoke about the divine ruling as an idea. With all of its divergence from individual philosophical systems, its development of the concept was far too like the philosophical development of a concept. In spite of the testimonies from Scripture, it was content with what was basically a quite formal and abstract consideration of the subject. It did not make it at all clear to what it ought really to be looking at as a Christian theology, and more often than not it did not even look there, but somewhere else. This was the root of all its uncertainties and deviations, of all the dangers to which it more or less openly exposed itself as it proceeded, and above all of the insipidity or colourlessness of all its thinking to which we drew attention at the outset. The One who is described as King in Holy Scripture is acknowledged to be such, but He does not act as such. At any rate, it is not at all clear that He controls dogmatic thinking concerning Himself. At many points He seems in fact not to control it. What does control it, and what is passed off as the authority which controls the whole universe, seems rather to be the concept of a supreme being furnished with supreme power in relation to all other beings. And the credibility of what is ostensibly said about the rule of God seems to depend upon the existence of this being. With regard to this, we may say: 1 that the existence of such a supreme being is itself highly doubtful, and therefore the credibility of a doctrine of God’s rule cannot be a Christian doctrine because the God of Christian teaching is certainly not identical with that supreme being. If we are still under the shadow thrown by this twofold difficulty, it is high time that we moved away from it.[1]

I clearly concur with Barth’s last clause (and the whole passage!): “. . . it is high time that we moved away from it.”

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3 §49 [176] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 180.

An Eastertide Break from Blogging

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Dearest readers, I am going to take a break from blogging, at least through Easter Sunday (April 20). My blogging has slowed anyway, from my typical pace, years past. I am not feeling as motivated to post like I used to. It has become more like work, than a joy; even though I appreciate the fellowship that it fosters with you all (especially, Richard B., my most faithful interlocutor over these last many years). I just need a time to step back, and refresh. I just deleted my X/Twitter accounts as well. I love Jesus Christ, and the Father, by the Holy Spirit; and I think I need to take a time away from this platform in order to think through my various priorities, before Him, and how those interface with my blogging career (ongoing since 2005). I don’t necessarily think this is the end of my blogging habit, but it surely is going to be a time of reflection and some type of reorientation as it comes to my writing here.

I pray for you all, that you have a blessed time during this forthcoming Eastertide season. I hope the power of Christ’s resurrection is set ablaze in your hearts, ever afresh ever anew. Maybe Jesus will come again, once and for all, for all of us, and we will finally meet personally in eschatological glory, before I make my way back here; I pray for that everyday! He is risen!

PS. If you support me financially for my blogging, please feel free (of course!) to cancel that (since I won’t be blogging). Again, I don’t think this is the end, but at the same time, and at the moment, I’m not totally sure. Blessings in Jesus Christ.

No Human Freedom Outwith Participatio Christi: On an Order of Being to Evangelicum

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Karl Barth being rightfully critical of a reformed Federal or Covenantal theology. Here we see what it looks like to think from a noncompetitive relationship between God and humanity; and to simply think humanity from God’s life for us. It is God who is genuinely free in His inner and eternal life, and not us (‘Not unto us, not unto us, but to God be the glory’ Ps 115). It is God’s being in becoming for us, wherein the “us” comes to have the type of creaturely, and thus contingent independence (as TFT would say it) vis-à-vis God that the creature has. That is to say, it isn’t us, apart from Him, or prior to Him, that grounds a relationship, a knowledge of Him; indeed, quite the contrary! God in Christ is the condition for all that is, and ever will be. The primacy of Christ (see Col 1.15ff), the “pantocrator-ness” of the living God is indeed that. As such, as we abide as humans, in the Branch of God’s life for us, it is here where we come to move and breathe and have our being; since this is the only place where human being obtains in and through the free humanity of God in Jesus Christ.

. . . If we hold fast to God’s decree of grace in Jesus Christ, and to His activity of grace in the history of the covenant, we can never dream of setting the creature over against God as a kind of second party to the contract, knowing as we do that the creature has no freedom but that which is grounded on the unconditioned and irresistible freedom and supremacy of God, having no power to concur but only to corroborate and understand and glorify. If we take absolutely seriously the meaning and character of the divine lordship, we are in a position to take with equal seriousness recognition of it as such.[1]

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3 §49 [119] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 121.

The Accidental God and the God of Logical Possibility

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Questions we are engaging with for this week’s philosophy of religion class. Part of this, the last part represents its own separate forum for the class; it is supposed to be a debate forum.

Creator of the world

Does the theistic view that God created the universe imply that the universe must have had a beginning? What might the implications of the answer to this question be?

Yes, the theistic view, in particular, the Christian theistic view entails that the universe had a beginning. I’d go so far to say that it entails the creatio ex nihilo (created out of nothing) position. What this implies is that all of reality, including knowledge, is contingent on God speaking (revealing) Himself for us.

Creator of value

Is something good because God wills it or does God will it because it is good?

Euthyphro’s Dilemma can be avoided if we posit what can be called a Trinitarian actualism (versus essentialism, which is the Thomistic way out of the dilemma). A trinitarian actualism entails a notion of God wherein God’s being is in becoming. That is to say, like essentialism attempts, that God just is. But in the actualistic sense, God just is his personal relation to the world; contingent upon nothing else but who he is in his inner-personal freedom as the triune God. Something is good, therefore, because God is good in himself; but he has freely chosen for himself that his goodness becomes what it is as he graciously and dynamically becomes us that we might become him (not by nature, but grace). More to clarify, but this will have to suffice for my sentence long response 😉.

Revealer

Does the fact that there’s such disagreement between theists over what exactly it is that God has revealed provide a reason to suppose that God hasn’t revealed anything? What would follow from this conclusion?

No. It isn’t this relative. It may be this relative for the outsider looking in. But if the work is done, like through comparative religions, for example, and we engage in an abductive exercise, so to speak, it is clear that not all “revelations” are equal. So, I think the question itself is non-starting in this sense.

Offerer of eternal life

Can an intelligible and plausible account of ‘eternal life’ be given?

As we’re interested in both the truth and meaning of this question you may want to break this down into the following:

    • Could personal identity endure after bodily death? Can any of the accounts that Mawson discusses be defensible? Why/why not?
    • In what way would ‘eternal life’ be a good?

You may want to begin to answer this question by offering a definition of ‘eternal life’, and its relation to bodily death.

I must answer this is as a Christian theist (of the Trinitarian variety) first; and attendant with that, refer to the only one who has provided a concrete answer for that question.

Eternal Life

Eternal life is God’s triune life in relation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is no other eternal life available. This life, entered into humanity (‘he who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him [Jesus]), and made God’s eternal life available to all of humanity by taking all of human life, as he is archetypal human life, putting it to death (the sinful, separated heart of humanity from God), rising again (on the third day)—and in turn, raising all of humanity with his—which has thus forged a way for all of humanity, if they will, through his willing for them first, to participate in his eternal and ascended life with the Father forevermore; indeed, by the Holy Spirit.

A Raw Syllogism

P1. The triune God alone is eternal life.

P2. Human beings can participate in God’s triune eternal life, if God makes a way for them to enter that type of life.

P3. God has made a way for human beings to participate in God’s triune life, through uniting humanity to his humanity in Jesus Christ.

P4. Human beings can participate in God’s triune life, in the humanity of Jesus Christ, if they choose to do so.

P5. Therefore, human beings who choose to participate in God’s triune life, in and through the humanity of Jesus Christ, can experience God’s triune and eternal life that he alone is.

It seems as if Mawson is attempting to purely think of eternal life as the perdurance of human life, albeit in the presence of God. I don’t think this quite follows. The only perduring life and eternal life, in the theistic frame, is God’s life. As such, the discussion must be oriented by how it is that a human being might come to participate in God’s eternal life. I tried to tease that out above. I think Mawson hinders himself by presupposing that all of the so-called “Abrahamic faiths” are “essentially” referring to the same God. But that is, at the very least, a very debatable premise.

The motion we will be debating is: ‘This house believes that it is logically possible that there be a God.’

There is nothing inherently illogical in believing that a god exists. It is possible, as Mawson et al. has done, to construct a notion of godness that is self-referentially coherent vis-à-vis this god’s properties; whether, essential or accidental properties. But just because this notion of godness can be constructed in a self-referentially coherentist manner, does not in itself, lead to the conclusion that this god must necessarily exist, per se. It only leads one to the conclusion that such a god could exist (which seems to be the minimum being sought by the theistic philosopher).

So, alternatively, as a Christian theist, what I present as a thesis, in regard to a god necessarily, or even tacitly existing, is that we expand our horizons, categorically. I propose that in order for us to concretely know that God exists, that we adopt an orientation that sees revelation claims as the necessary ground by which the seekers might come to know that God exists. This might entail that the God we encounter through a revelation claim is not concordant with the self-referential and coherentist account of God that Mawson presented and argued for. It might mean, that if we were to encounter such a “revelational God,” through his self-revelation, that we might be asked to go beyond what a purely philosophical accounting of a god provides us with.

So, I would argue that merely presenting the seekers with a purely self-referential coherentist account of a god, as a logical possibility, while coherent, sets the would-be knower of God up for potential failure; in the sense that false expectations have been given over against the categories and emphases that a god outside of our “immanent frames” might present us with. Logical possibility vis-à-vis God’s existence is something that human agents might attempt to construct in an a prior fashion. But there is no guarantee that the god so constructed is corollary with the God who might potentially show up through self-revelation. In other words, I would argue that simply constructing an argument for the logical possibility of a God’s existence simply sets the would-be knower of God up with a procrustean bed. In which case, the logical possibility for there being a God might in fact bring the would-be knower of God to miss encountering the real God if he discloses himself in his self-revelation in such a way that ends up transcending the would-be knowers already developed notion of godness. At best, this would-be knower, upon encountering an ostensibly self-revealed God, might attempt to shape this self-revealed God into the form they had already constructed for this God to logically fit. But then, this might result in the seekers’ ultimately rejecting the logical possibility for a God’s existence; insofar that the philosophical construct and revelation claims end up being so discordant, that the seeker simply throws their hands up in frustration and disbelief.

In the end: I think Mawson and other theistic philosophers can present and develop an argument for the logical possibility for a God to exist. But ultimately, this could be a self-defeating venture; insofar that this God’s existence, circumscribed by the philosophers’ wits as it is, might cause seekers for God to miss the real God, if in fact the real God appears differently than the philosophers had imagined him to necessarily, or even to tacitly be.

The Answer is Jesus: John 3:16 in its Theological Depth Dimension

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I take this to be something of a paraphrase of John 3:16 by Karl Barth (even though he doesn’t identify it as such, explicitly):

Basically, the doctrine of the concursus [trans. accompanying] must be as follows. God, the only true God, so loved the world in His election of grace that in fulfilment of the covenant of grace instituted at the creation He willed to become a creature, and did in fact become a creature, in order to be its Saviour. And this same God accepts the creature even apart from the history of the covenant and its fulfilment. He takes it to Himself as such and in general in such sort that He co-operates with it, preceding, accompanying and following all its being and activity, so that all the activity of the creature is primarily and simultaneously and subsequently His own activity, and therefore a part of the actualisation of His own will revealed and triumphant in Jesus Christ.[1]

This might be said to be the supralapsarian backdrop to what finally actualizes in the economy of God’s life for the world in Jesus Christ. Indeed, aren’t such inklings what are required of prima facie teachings as we find in John 3:16. As TF Torrance would say, there is a “depth dimension” to Holy Scripture. That is to say, Scripture itself is hung together by something deeper than itself; i.e., than its syntax, philology, grammar, history, so on and so forth. This is what is going on in Barth’s development on a doctrine of God’s concursus vis-à-vis His creation, us. It is this type of theologizing above, from Barth, that something like the Dominical teaching found in John 3:16 moves and breathes from. Essentially, at bottom, what Barth is saying is that, “the answer is Jesus, what’s the question?”

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3 §49 [105] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 107.