Author Archives: Bobby Grow

On the Monad with Attributes

Posted on by
More from the philo class. On the potential problem for classical theism and its doctrine of divine simplicity. How can God be Simple and yet still have attributes? That’s the question I’m responding to w/ ref to our reading of Maimonides.
I overlooked responding to the question: “Can this claim be held together with the claim that God has attributes?” I think this can portend of a weakness for the pure being view of Maimonides et al. I think it is important to say that God is non-composite. But on the other hand, God comes to us by way of names (in the Bible), personal perfections etc.–by revelation. The fact that the Aristotelian view of Maim. et al. requires that a qualification be put in place with reference to the attributes vis a vis God’s non-composite being shows an incoherence built into the negating approach at its base. I think this because to attempt to construct a notion of godness without reference to God’s Self-revelation, which is personal for the Christian, in particular, ends up requiring that the philosopher turn human discussions about divine attributes into a mere heuristic device whereby we can hang our wondering hats vis a vis God, so to speak. But then when we acknowledge, along with Maim. et al. that ultimately these devices cannot really penetrate into the inner-life of God’s life, then in what sense is this a valuable exercise? At the end, this philosophical Monad does not correlate or comport well with a God, in the Christian frame, who has Self-revealed as Father of the Son. The best illustration of this, for me, is that if we follow Maim, or Aquinas , or any number of Muslim thinkers, we can all find a common ground set out for us, ostensibly, by the God of a so-called classical theism. And yet, the point of departure between a God who is triune and a God who is necessarily unitary (unitarian), does not allow for this type of easy fellowship between the disparate doctrines of God embedded in each of the so-called Abrahamic faiths. If God is three in one/one in three for the Christian, from the get go, and the God of Judaism and Islam is not, then just on a purely logical scale we have an inchoate contradiction.

Maimonides on Divine Simplicity: With Christian Relief

Posted on by

More from the philosophy class. As I reread this just now I didn’t really answer the whole question. Although, I amended it since in the class forum.

What does it mean to say that the concept of God is simple? Can this claim be held together with the claim that God has attributes? If so, how? If not, is this a problem for theism?

The concept of God as simple simply entails that the God conceived of by folks like Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas, Maimonides et al. is a Monad. I.e., a non-composite being who is not made up by its parts or properties in addition, but a singular substance who is also identified, within this complex as an actus purus (‘pure act’), pure being, unmoved mover so on and so forth. It is this construct, as in this case, exemplified and articulated in the tongue of Maimonides, that all of the so-called Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) can have a shared starting point in their respective God-talk.

As noted by Maimonides, his knowledge of God, after Aristotle and the philosophers, is arrived at by a process known as the via negativa (negative way). This speculative process is undertaken, as Maimonides develops, within an apophatic frame for thinking the ineffable God. That is to say, that God is so necessarily hidden in this frame, that all the would-be knower of God is left with, at a basic or primordial level, is to engage in a process of negating the seen, the “known,” like the negation of nature in general, or even human being in particular, and to think God’s perfections or attributes, from these speculative means; as the philosopher works their “way up” the supposed chain of being; whose first cause, is indeed the unmoved mover, the monad known as God.

Christian theism alternatively—and I use that language in a particular way, noting a trinitarian way for thinking God—I would argue is necessarily a kataphatic (versus apophatic, in a sense) religion. That is to say, Christian theism thinks God first, not from a negation of human being, or nature in general, but from God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. John 1:18 says: “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” The word translated as ‘explain,’ in the koine Greek is exegesato, to exegete, to “read-out.” Indeed, even in this passage there is a sense of apophaticism in God, that is to say that He indeed is a hidden God. But to the point, on the Christian account, God freely chose to Self-reveal and explain Himself in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is why Christians first think God not as a faraway pure monadic being, but as our Father (as Athanasius emphasizes: “Father of the Son, Son of the Father”). A genuine Christian theology works from a via positiva (‘positive way’) towards thinking God. That is, from revelation rather than speculation.

In the end, classical theism, and as that has been appropriated by certain traditions within Christianity, does take on the type of thinking that Maimonides articulates in regard to divine simplicity; and “its” methodology. And yet there are other traditions, like the one I affirm, within Christianity, who think God from within only positive, Self-revealed terms; indeed, as the base of a theological methodology itself. And yet all orthodox Christians, at some level, will affirm that God is simple (non-composite). Even so, there are other more relational ways to engage with that notion. My teacher, Karl Barth, evangelizes the concept and re-terms it as ‘Divine Constancy.’ But that requires further development, and more space than available at the moment.

God’s Freedom, Goodness and Necessity in Philosophical and Theological Convivium

Posted on by

More thoughts on the properties of God for my philosophy of religion class. As I have been responding, this week, surrounding God’s omniscience, eternality freedom, goodness, and necessity. These are my last three responses.

  1. What is freedom? Does it make sense to talk about maximal or perfect freedom? If yes, how should this be defined? If not, why not?
  2. Do you agree that the ability to do what is morally wrong is a power for human beings but a liability for God? Answer the question by laying out the argument for this as you understand it, or asking any questions about parts that you don’t understand. Then give your reasons for why you think that this is either a good argument or not a good argument.
  3. Could it just be an accident that there is, or that there is not, a God? If not, why not?

Freedom is that aspect to be able to do or not to do. It makes sense to talk about perfect freedom vis-à-vis God. God is maximally or perfectly free in the sense that he literally and absolutely and personally has the capacity within himself (his in se life) to bring this or that to pass, at will. On classical theism, God’s total properties, working one within the other, grounds the fact of divine freedom. That is to say, that God, on this accounting, has libertarian agency, so to speak, to do this or that without contingence or constraint. Or it might be said, that God’s freedom has no constraint other than the consistency of his own inner-life in simple relation.

On the other hand, as Mawson develops, human freedom, finite as it is, given its lack of divine properties, by definition, are not able to be perfectly free. This is the case since human agency is conditioned by its own “finity.” Meaning, human agents are not “omni” relative to the powers of God (on classical theism). This entails, that human freedom cannot be perfectly free insofar that it is necessarily limited by its contingency. For example, human beings have the capacity to supererogate or not; to go beyond the perceived limits of this or that good. This implies that human agents have a lack in their freedom.

[From a Christian theistic perspective, as a theological aside, here is how one of my favorite theologians, Karl Barth, refers to Divine Freedom:

According to the biblical testimony, God has the prerogative to be free without being limited by His freedom from external conditioning, free also with regard to His freedom, free not to surrender Himself to it, but to use it to give Himself to this communion and to practise this faithfulness in it, in this way being really free, free in Himself. God must not only be unconditioned but, in the absoluteness in which He sets up this fellowship, He can and will also be conditioned. He who can and does do this is the God of Holy Scripture, the triune God known to us in His revelation. This ability, proved and manifested to us in His action, constitutes His freedom. (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1 §28 The Doctrine of God: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 47]

Goodness “is a matter of behaving as one ought in one’s relations with other people—and creatures more generally—and perfect goodness is a matter of doing the best thing that one can for them whenever there is a best and doing one of the best things that one can whenever two or more things are ‘joint best’ for them, i.e. are equally good and none is better” (Mawson, 57–8). Good is the objectively understood rightness (or we might say, righteousness) on the classical theistic account. Perfect goodness, on God, is that standard of what counts for right versus wrong. Indeed, wrong is only the privation of right. In other words, there could be no perception or conception of wrong without right being prior to it. That is to say, we understand wrongness only as it is measured against rightness (or goodness). I agree that in ethics there are grades of wrong vis-à-vis the good. At points, in given situations and circumstances, it can be a power for humans to choose a wrong, in order to amplify the good. We might think of Corrie Ten Boom, and her family in the Netherlands during WW2. They hid Jews from the Nazis in their home, and “illegally” found safe passage for some of them out of the country. In a relative sense this could represent a human power, in the sense that the sanctity of life was amplified, in the face a certain dark evil. I.e., on a grade, the sanctity of life is a greater good than is the lesser wrong of lying in order to ensure the good in this case. Such is the human dilemma, at times. Since we aren’t all powerful, all knowing, everywhere present at the same time in the same way, as God is, we must attempt to see what is the greater than rather than the lesser than in any given ethical dilemma, and choose the greater than of life, even if it might require the lesser than wrong in order to ensure the continuance of life rather than death. God is not faced with such dilemmas; again, because, on classical theism, he is “omni,” and much more.

Necessity. God is necessary. Not in a god-of-the-gaps type of way (i.e., as an explanation to fill in the gaps in our logically-deductive schemes to explain reality, per se), but in a necessary way; in the sense that the world itself, contingent as it is, requires an explanation greater than itself to explain its existence in the first place. Or the universe/cosmos as a finite (ever expanding) entity does not have the resources within itself to explain its origin (where it came from, why it continues, and where it is going, if anywhere). Contingency implies a prior non-contingent ground upon which the contingent is contingent. Without the non-contingent prius there can be no contingent after and remainder.

Philosophy of Religion and Christian Theology in Combine

Posted on by

More thoughts on the properties of God for my philosophy of religion class. As I have been responding, this week, surrounding God’s omniscience, freedom, goodness, and necessity. These are my first two responses.

“Could anyone other than you, right here and now, know what it was like to be you, right here and now? Why or why not? What are the implications of your answer for the notion of divine omniscience?” (this, posed by the tutor for the class, based on our readings of T.J. Mawson)

Omniscience. Someone might have the capacity to know what it is like to be me by way of a general set of shared commonalities. So, they might be able to be empathic, in regard, to “how I see things.” But at a basic level, no, someone else, definitionally, cannot know what it is like to be me from the inside/out. I could explain to them what it is like to be me, insofar that I could in fact explain and articulate that; but that would entail the self-limiting factors of my own capacity, as a finite human being, to express such things. Equally, they could “get” what I’m saying to an extent, insofar that they might have similar experiences and socio-cultural conditioning to my own. But that would be as far as we could get.

Divine omniscience, on the other hand, has no such boundaries. Indeed, the living God can know exactly what it is like to be me because he knows everything. And to stretch further: from a Christian theistic perspective, he can know me from the inside/out because he assumed my humanity, and yours, and everyone’s in the incarnation. From this God has a shared human connection to our humanity. Or it might be said, that humanity has a shared connection with his humanity for us. Even so, more broadly, the Bible says in the epistle to the Hebrews, “that everything is bare and naked before Him to who we must give account.” On my view, we can only really understand divine omniscience analogously. That is to say, that as we look out at being all knowing “conceptually,” as finite beings, as humans we come to apprehend what that entails by thinking about what that could be like. We can do so as we commiserate with each other in regard to shared experiences, and socio-cultural conditioning. We might be able to extrapolate from there, and imagine a greater instance of that in an amplitude that goes beyond that imagination itself. That said, it isn’t we that predicate God’s properties, but he who predicates ours; indeed, as we are created and re-created in his humanity for us in Jesus Christ. So, by way of order, in order to think what it means for a being to be omniscient, I prefer to not work from a negation (of human being), in order to construct a positive property for God. But instead, my preference is to think God from God, as God first has spoken Himself for us in and through the Logos of God, Jesus Christ. Since in His Self-revelation and witness, particularly as that is attested to in Holy Scripture, God has made clear that He knows everything; even down to the very beings of our hearts and minds. Philosophy might be able to posit categories that seem to correlate with that; indeed, with reference to a pure being. But ultimately, I would argue that those are only accidentally correlated with who God has Self-revealed himself to be. Insofar that God’s Self-witness remains pervasively and personally present in the world through the Christian witness. And thus, such logoi, or knowledge points are present, even to the philosophers, because God’s Self and personal witness is always already ubiquitously present in the world.

“If you were God but had somehow the choice to be either inside time or outside time (temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal), which would you choose and why? Explain your own understanding of the difference between these two possibilities as part of your answer. Must God’s relationship to time be only one of these? Explain why or why not.”

Eternality. If I was God (God forbid it!), and the only alternatives were to be temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal, I would choose the latter; to be, atemporally eternal. Again, from a Christian theistic (meaning trinitarian) perspective, I take God’s being to be beyond being (to borrow a little from Aquinas); which entails, that I believe that God is absolutely Self-determining, without contingence, to be who he is, and always has been, within the environs of his eternally existing and interpenetrating life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Classically, this type of absoluteness, as Mawson underscores and develops, is a feature of God that precludes God’s life from any type of contingently construed conditionality (i.e., dependence on the natural order, or something). Contrariwise, being temporally everlasting, again as Mawson defines it, entails the possibility that God might have some type of potentiality vis-à-vis the world built into his life. This might be an attractive way out for folks who want to reject the classical theistic alternative, like the open theists among us, but for me it is much too high of a price to pay. It is too high of a price to pay because, in my estimation, it makes God contingent upon us; upon our libertarian freewill, so to speak. But then again, what is freedom?

But I think to think in terms of either a temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal God, as if this binary represents the whole continuum, is false. I think it is false primarily because I believe, confess even, that God’s being cannot be constrained by human reasoning, per se. That isn’t to say that I don’t think some of the grammars developed by the philosophers cannot be of assistance when God-thinkers are attempting to give an articulate and intelligible representation of God in human speech. But it is to say that I believe it is possible, and even necessary, to think God’s triune life as time-predicating in itself. I believe God’s triune life is a novum (‘a new thing’ for which there is no analogy). As such, it could be said that God’s life is both atemporally eternal and also temporally everlasting, insofar that the former, in an antecedent way, predicates and tinges the latter. So, in this way, to take the philosophers’ language, it would be to think the triune God in combine, wherein the persons of God’s life, in their unitary being, condition what is given concretization in the temporally created order. Such that to think atemporality and temporality of God’s being in competition one with the other becomes a non-necessity. In this frame, time has value insofar that God’s life of Father in Son, Son in Father by the Holy Spirit creates the inner-space for time to obtain, as that first obtains in God’s triune and eternal life of communion; one with the other. This would give us a time frame that is conditioned by personal relationality, that is both eternal and everlasting; the former predicating the latter. Much of this remains a mystery (since God is ineffable). But this is how I might attempt to think an alternative theory of time based on the analogy of the incarnation of God in Christ.

The Early Aristotelianization of Reformed and Lutheran Theology

Posted on by

Barth on the stillbirth of the Protestant Reformation. He underscores a reality that I have been, we have been writing about for years, in regard to the scholasticism Reformed and Lutheran. That is to note, the reception of the Aristotelian mantle that had, ironically, brought to formation the very Church, and her doctrina, that Luther was seeking to reform. Unfortunately, very early on in the second and third generation reformers (on both the Reformed and Lutheran sides) imbibed the theological categories that had originally led to the status of the Roman Church that Luther and others believed needed to be reformed from within.

Face to face with the difficulty of both schools, the Reformed no less than the Lutherans, made a formal borrowing at this point from a philosophy and theology which had been re-discovered and re-asserted at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries—the philosophy of Aristotle and the theology of Aquinas. The borrowing consisted in the adoption and introduction of a specific terminology to describe the two partners whose activities are understood and represented in the doctrine of the concursus [accompanying] in terms of a co-operation, the activity of God on the one side and that of the creature on the other. The concept which was adopted and introduced was that of “cause.” For it was by developing the dialectic of this concept that they both effected the differentiation of themselves on the one side and the other, and also decided the difference which already existed at this point within the Evangelical faith itself. This, then, is the controlling concept for the form assumed by Evangelical dogmatics in this and in all kindred topics.[1]

This theological arrangement, ended up thrusting people back upon themselves (as TF Torrance phrases it frequently), by thinking of a God-world relation from within a competitive frame. God above, the great decretal “causer,” and the human below, the striver attempting to meet the conditions of God’s causal-ness (this sounds something like what we see in a Federal or Covenant theology). In this frame we end up with a bilateral, yet asymmetric, relationship between God and humanity, such that God decrees certain things to obtain, whilst the elect of God must discern these things, and again, meet the conditions of the decree; of the covenant of works released through the so-called covenant of grace.

The aforementioned reflects just one example of how this ‘causal’ based relationship gets formulated and expressed. For Barth this would be a theology of the decretum absolutum (absolute decree of predestination, from within a classically construed Reformed theology, in particular). The Lutherans have their own expressions of this type of decretal theology. For a contemporary example see Jordan Cooper’s work.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3 §49 [098] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 97.

Even if you die in unrepentant sin as a Christian; still, you will be saved

Posted on by

I am constantly cognizant of the fact that without Jesus Christ I am doomed; that all of humanity is doomed. There is so much performative Christianity preached and proclaimed out there—whether of the mainline progressive variety all the way to the nomist-legalistic variety. This comes through, often, in the evangelical environs; often of the so-called moralistic therapeutic deism type. But also, among the Piper, JMac, and Washer types. The emphasis is on how a purported Christian person is progressing and thus performing in their daily Christian existences. The frame isn’t one of grace, but of performance; of law keeping, of virtual signaling. The problem with all of this, though, is that we can see you and you can see me. It is clear that we are all jacked up sinners every single day of our lives. We sin constantly. Our bodies of death are shot through with the death-blowing effects and actions of sin. It almost seems like people think that if they talk about a performative Christianity (theirs), that they can psychologically lull themselves into believing that in fact they are performing at a level that makes the cut; whatever that level is (nobody really knows).

But if people are honest with themselves, we all must admit that we fail even more than anyone knows. We have thoughts that no one ever sees; except for ourselves and God. Indeed, we might have actions of sin that we keep hidden. And yet, of course, everything is bare before the One to whom we must give account. Do we really believe that God doesn’t see all of our transgressions; whether acted out, or simply thought out? He does! He knows. Remember, He incarnated as a babe in a manger, becoming sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. We had better hope that He has given account for every single one of our sins, and the sins of the entire world, in all of world history; given account in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Indeed, He has! And it is the ground of His life for us in Jesus Christ that will finally get us into His beatific presence. Our intentions aren’t going to in-break us into the heavenlies. Our particular church tradition/denomination, and its respective teachings, aren’t going to bridge the gap between the Father and us. Our performances and law-keepings aren’t going to finally ingratiate us into the bosom of the Father. Indeed, we might die in the midst of an act of sin; or even with thoughts that are sinful. God forbid it! Then what? Does God put our good works performed over the entirety of our lives, up to that point, on His scales of righteousness and see if they outweigh our sinful works? Is that what ultimately determines whether or not we “make the final cut?”

If you listen closely to many pastors, and even theologians, out there today, you will often get the aforementioned sense about justification before God. But it seems exceedingly superficial and phantasmic-like to me. The good works that finally get us into the Eschaton of God’s life are not ours, they are His for us. If you cannot accept that fact then you haven’t yet accepted the Gospel reality. If you sit under teaching that emphasizes what you do for God, albeit in the name of God’s grace in Christ, as the means of eternal salvation before God, then you aren’t sitting under good teaching. The law has been fulfilled for us in Christ all the way down. If you can’t accept that, then you ought to repent and recognize that you haven’t yet accepted the fact that God’s Grace in Christ supersedes anything that we might have done, or might end up doing in our fallen selves. The Gospel ensures that even if we die, potentially in a moment of unrepentant sin, that we still make the cut. Not because of anything we have or haven’t done, but fully because of all that the Father has done for us in the Son by the Holy Spirit. If what I am communicating makes you think that I am proposing some sort of antinomianism or libertinism, please reconsider the Gospel reality. Indeed, the Gospel isn’t a license to sin. But at the same time, it isn’t also a license to beat people into heaven either; including yourself. It is the height of paganism to imagine that we must do anything to be saved before the living God; indeed, it is to trample the blood of Christ underfoot as if a vain thing. May we learn to repose in God’s life for us in Jesus Christ, as our life. And in this reposition may we learn to rest and live in the life of God’s triune life as we are participants with Him, for all eternity, through and in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. May this compel us unto love and good works; indeed, not as a ground for finding favor with God, but as the outward expression of a heart overflowing with a radical love for God in Jesus Christ; indeed, from God’s love, with which He first loved us, that we might love Him, from Him, in Him, in Jesus Christ.

On Divine Transcendence, Immanence, Omnipotence in Philosophical Projection

Posted on by

More engagement with T.J. Mawson’s book, Belief in God, for my philosophy of religion class. I posted these, along with the one on personhood, which I shared in my last post here, in the discussion forum we have set up for our class. I thought I’d share them here too. These are clearly raw responses to the reading material we are engaging with.

Immanuel Kant

Divine transcendence can be thought of as God’s otherness; His otherworldliness; His awayness vis-à-vis the world.

According to Mawson direct knowledge and direct control are aspects of what it means to have a body. And yet I find this strained to the breaking point. He uses the “body” analogy as a way to construct a concept of a God-world relation. Again, I find this methodology to be flawed. I understand that it is the way of being a speculative/analytic philosopher; but it seems ad hoc, really. Given its “ad hocness” (or we could say “abstractness” vis-à-vis the would-be knower) I’m unsure how this can lead to an “open” notion of godness. That is to say, even if Mawson et al. can construct a concept of godness, and in this case, with reference to transcendence, and even if he can construct it in such a way that it is self-referentially coherent: it nonetheless remains a construct of his own making (and thus a purely coherentist permutation; i.e., lacking the need for real correspondence). I’m unsure how this type of self “projecting” can end up mapping onto an eternal living God. To me it seems like a project in constructing a procrustean bed, and then inviting God to lay His head on its pillow.

Divine immanence. In Mawson’s context it is in reference to God’s relation to the world; His presence in the world (it can also be in reference to God’s inner life, when considered from within a Christian and triune frame). Within Mawson’s system the world becomes God’s body. Not in the sense of the Church; which is how Christians understand God’s body, in participation with Christ’s body. Because of Mawson’s prior thinking on incorporeality, which he pushes into divine transcendence, he seemingly is forced to concede that the world is God’s body. For Mawson, this is how he explains God’s direct knowledge, control etc. And yet, what I find ironic, is that Mawson is in fact a Christian theist. His conception of God’s body, in Christian theological terms, could be referred to as ‘panentheism.’ That is to say, that the world is God’s body in the sense that God might grow and develop in relation to the world. Even so, panentheism sees a distinction, still, between God and His body (the world), wherein God remains its Creator and controller, so to speak. That said, I’d be curious to see if Mawson would own the label of being a panentheist. Or maybe he would prefer the language of pantheist proper; which is to say that God grows alongside and by being in the world as a participant. From a theological perspective, Mawson’s development on a doctrine of divine immanence needs further clarification in order to have some semblance of what in fact he is ultimately getting at with his notion of “God’s body.”

What is an omnipotent being? This seems to be a rather ironic question to ask, at least when left up to purely human machinations. It seems to be too big of a question. How can the human mind (even if it is “hived”) imagine something in such a way that it could ever transcend the would-be knower’s own finite self-limitations? There is a way, a way that developed in the medieval period, known as the via negativa (‘negative way’). This way attempts to develop a concept of godness by negating finiteness, for example. So, indeed, if we posit that humans are finite, if we negate that, we might end up with an infinite (pure) being or some such. So, on this way, if human beings are defined by being rational/intellectual, then to negate that, and extrapolate, the omnipotent being ends up being simply the Biggest brain in the heavens. What I am describing has also been called the analogia entis (‘analogy of being’); Thomas Aquinas, early on, is famous for deploying it in his Christian synthesis with Aristotelian categories. In a less particularized way, in the sense that Mawson is attempting to do an analytic philosophy rather than a Christian theology, per se, Mawson, and philosophers in general use the ‘analogy of being’ to conceive of a concept of godness. I.e., since human beings clearly aren’t “all powerful,” in its negation and extrapolation, the divine being must indeed be almighty, all powerful. I would suggest these are matters too great for the discipline of an analytic philosophy to pierce in any meaningful way. Apocalypse (unveiling/revelation) is required.

An Engagement with Philosophical Personhood in Theological Relief

Posted on by

𝐼𝑛 𝑚𝑦 𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑠 𝑤𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑦 𝑖𝑛 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘 2. 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘 𝑤𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐺𝑜𝑑’𝑠 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑠, 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑒𝑑. 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘 𝑤𝑒’𝑟𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑑, 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒, 𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑚𝑛𝑖𝑝𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑣𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑣𝑖𝑠 𝐺𝑜𝑑. 𝐻𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑎 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛. 𝑊𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑇.𝐽. 𝑀𝑎𝑤𝑠𝑜𝑛’𝑠 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘 *𝐵𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑓 𝑖𝑛 𝐺𝑜𝑑* 𝑎𝑠 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡. 𝑆𝑜, 𝑚𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑜𝑤 ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠 *𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛ℎ𝑜𝑜𝑑* (𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑢𝑚, 𝑜ℎ 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝐿𝑂𝐿).

Boethius

I disagree with Mawson out of hand on the entailments of what makes a person a person. Mawson, is taking a classical way, one we would find in Boethius, Aquinas et al. (most of the Latin tradition). To define the base ground of what it means to be a person, on terms of a purely intellectualist or rationalist ground, is to imbibe a philosophical/speculative tradition; indeed. Unfortunately, for my money, to use this type of speculative ground as one’s major premise, in regard to developing an anthropology, can only lead to a speculative conclusion. Indeed, it might be self-referentially coherent, as I think Mawson’s accounting is; but ultimately, in my view, the conclusion is only as sound as the first premise.

As a Christian theist I would argue that personhood ought to be defined by reference to the imago Dei/Christi (image of God/Christ). That is to say, in my view, to understand the entailments of personhood cannot (or at least, should not) begin with an abstract thought, but instead with the concrete givenness of God’s life for the world in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ (see Colossians 1.15). In this way, personhood’s definition finds an antecedent ground beyond the immanent frame, and has a ‘transcendent’ starting point not from within itself (as an immanent abstraction), but outwith itself in the personhood of the divine Monarchia, as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (the hypostases/persons of the Godhead coinhere one in the other in a filial and eternal relationship of interpenetrating life). If this mysterious (yet revealed) life becomes the ground by which personhood comes to have definition, at the very least what it means to be a person, is to be in a community of love for the other; living a life of self-givenness, one for the other, wherein what it means to be a person isn’t defined by having “rationality” or “self-consciousness,” per se, but to be in person-al relationship one with the other. And what serves as the ground of this community-fellowship-based personhood, only can come first, as gift, as God has graciously invited us into participation with His triune-person-grounded life through Jesus Christ.

If I reject Mawson’s definition for personhood, which I do, of course, then his dilemma of attempting to provide nobility or sanctity for humans without brain-activity is non-starting for me.

Based on my first long response, in regard to the constituents of what makes a person a person, I would argue that the triune God is the personalizing person. So, in this frame, can someone be “more” of a person than someone else? That seems to make an attempt at quantifying what it means to be a person in terms of a quality (or substance) or something. God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, I would argue, is the person making person, in eternal relation; which would make Him the archetypal personalizing person maker. In this sense He is the Alpha and Omega. But since He graciously invites us into participation with Him through Christ, at a purely human level, there isn’t one person who is more person than another. God’s life is sui generis. All people are equal, insofar that all people are created in the image of God/Christ.

According to Scripture (John 4.24) ‘God is spirit,’ and spirit is not gendered, per se. That said, God has Self-revealed Himself as Father of the Son (as Athanasius is wont to press). In the Christian reality God enfleshed came as a Man, as the Son of God (the second person). The Bible refers to God in masculine terms, by and large (except with reference to the Holy Spirit); and for me that ought to be determinative for how we refer to God.

PS. a struggle, which I knew I was bringing to this course of study, is that I am already committed to a certain Christian orientation with reference to thinking God, and everything subsequent. I had attempted to study God philosophically, at a formal level, many years ago now, and found it wanting. Even so, I still think there is value in learning to contemplate and think deeply and rigorously with regard to anything (which is why I paid for the class).

The Father, The External Power of Our Existence

Posted on by

All creatures, since that are from nothing, to that extent share in nothing . . . and are in need of some external power for every moment that they exist.

–H. Heidegger cited by Heppe cited by Barth (CD III/3, 74)

All of humanity is sustained by the Word of God’s power. He came into this world, having made the world, and yet the world knew Him not. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves. If people could begin to lean into this point, made by the Reformed theologian, Heidegger (not the other Heidegger), we would lose so much of our angst and anxiety that we generate all the days of our weary lives. If we could come to recognize that the world is not contingent upon our waning ideas and breaths, and instead, that it is contingent upon God’s indestructible life; all of sleeplessness and depressions could be cast upon the One who cares for us. If we could submit to the idea, in worship, that God is God and we are not; we could finally repose in our Father’s everlasting arms of rest.

God’s Humanity Against Annihilation

Posted on by

The ground and continuity of human being is first God’s election to be human being for us in Jesus Christ. It is upon this solid rock that the wick of humanity can never be extinguished. There are some out there who affirm what they call ‘conditional immortality,’ or what of old was called ‘annihilationism,’ which affirms the idea that the human being can be thrown into the ‘outer darkness’ of non-existence. That is to say, this position holds that people who reject Christ will indeed suffer ‘eternal judgment’ by being snuffed out of existence. They contend that human being only has the possibility for immortality, as this is contingent upon the person’s response to God’s gift of salvation for them in Jesus Christ. The annihilationist contends that as humans are born in their sins, that in this state they are simply born into a status of vanishment. That is to say, that their beings as human do not have an inherent vouchsafe that keeps them “existing” from conception into eternity. And yet, as already noted: since the anchor of what it means to be human is universally and archetypally grounded in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, it is my contention that it is impossible for human being, whether on the left or right side, to be vanquished into non-existence at any point.

Karl Barth writes:

On this living and trustworthy basis in God Himself, it is decided, and continually decided, that the creature may have permanence and continuity. Without this living and trustworthy basis in God Himself, without the continuity in which God abides by His election, by His free but overflowing goodness, and finally, without the election of His grace which is the basis of His goodness, the creature could not and would not continue. But the living and trustworthy basis in God continues, and therefore the creature continues. Because of God it cannot not continue; it cannot perish.[1]

You see God’s humanity stands against non-human being. He has so freely tied Himself to us by His free election to be God with us in Jesus Christ, that it would require that that choice be undone in order for humanity to perish into a final non-existence.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3 §49 [071] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 31.