Category Archives: Analytical Theology

What do we know of evil and sin?: A Response to Open Theism from Christ Concentrated Theism

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I have been having a quick discussion, once again, around the issue of so called ā€˜Open Theism.ā€™ I had a ā€œfriendā€ on Facebook who is a strong proponent for Open Theism, so strong that he helped organize (I think) the first Open Theology theological conference (last year) that has ever taken place in the United States. This quick discussion (I really did not engage that much this time, although I have more in the past) is prompting me to write this post. So this post will be briefly sketching and engaging with Open Theism, and its antidote provided through the theological thinking of Karl Barth.

creationgod

For my Old Testament class at Princeton Theological Seminary, we were assigned reading from Old Testament scholar, Terence Fretheimā€™s book Creation Untamed: The Bible, God, and Natural Disasters. As is apparent from the sub-title, the theme of the book is to engage with the problem of God and evil (theodicy); more particularly with God and human suffering (vis-Ć -vis natural disasters, human caused disasters, etc.). I was excited to get into this book, but once I made it through chapter one I quickly realized Fretheimā€™s method to answering this purported problem (of God and evil, i.e. theodicy) was going to be his employment of ā€˜Open theologyā€™ categories. Maybe you have never heard of Open theology, here is an example of it from Terence Fretheim applied to answering how human beings relate to God and creation in purely ā€˜freeā€™ ways (supposedly):

Though human beings certainly need to hear that they often think of themselves more highly than they ought to think, it is also important for them to hear that they often think of themselves less highly than they ought to think. To speak less highly of the human is to diminish the quality of Godā€™s own work. And this is the case not least because of such continuing divine evaluations of them as good. The creational commands in Genesis 1:28 and Godā€™s engagement with the human in 2:19-20 indicate that God values human beings, places confidence in them, and honors what they do and say, though not uncritically. Human words and deeds count; they make a difference to the world and to God, not least because God has chosen to use human agents in getting Godā€™s work done in the worldā€¦. We need constantly to be reminded that the godness of God cannot be bought at the expense of creaturely diminishment.

Another word that can be used to designate the goodness of creatures is ā€œfree.ā€ One way in which the creation accounts witness to this reality is the seventh day of creation (Gen. 2:1-3); this day on which God rests (not human beings) is testimony to Godā€™s suspension of creative activity, which allows the creatures, each in its own way, to be what they were created to be. God thereby gives to all creatures a certain independence and freedom. With regard to human beings, God leaves room for genuine decisions as they exercise their God-given power (see already 2:19). With regard to nonhuman creatures, God releases them from ā€œtight divine controlā€ and permits them to be themselves as the creatures they are. The latter includes the becoming of creation, from the movement of tectonic plates to volcanic activity, to the spread of viruses, to the procreation of animals. This divine commitment to the creatures entails an ongoing divine constraint and restraint in the exercise of power, a divine commitment that we often wish has not been made, especially when suffering and death are in view. But God will remain true to Godā€™s commitments, come what may.[1]

Further:

And so God creates a dynamic world in which the future is open to a number of possibilities and in which creaturely activity is crucial for proper creational developments. In other words, God choosesĀ  to establish an interdependent relationship with the creation; God chooses to work with others in creating. Certain constants are in place: seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night (Gen. 8:22). But beyond that, the future of the world is characterized by a remarkable open-endedness, in which more than God is involvedā€¦.[2]

What stands out most immediately and prominently is how for Fretheim in order for creation to be ā€˜freeā€™ it needs to be independent from God, and so he can conclude that in creation something ā€˜more than God is involved.ā€™ But this is precisely the point of departure between thinking Christianly or from Godā€™s Self-revelation in Christ, and thinking philosophically about Godā€™s relation to His grace contained creation. By trying to create space for human suffering, evil in the world, etc. Fretheim unnecessarily unhinges God from creation in a way that God is placed into competition with creation; leaving room for creation to act independently from God. Which for Fretheim allows him to leave creation open, not just for human beings, but for God himself; and so this then becomes the way for Fretheim to start thinking about why humans suffer, and in a way that does not implicate God (since there is ā€˜more than God involvedā€™).

What Fretheim does, though, is in order to explain God and evil (theodicy), he sacrifices orthodox Christian reality for heterodox Christian un-reality. If he was thinking christologically, he is offering us an adoptionistic version by unhinging humanity from God in the way that he does (I will have to get into this further later).

But since I am running out of time for this post, let me get to the antidote to Fretheimā€™s ā€˜Openā€™ thinking. We should not attempt, as Christians, to elevate our own reasoning and interpretive capacities beyond their given reality (especially in light of the ā€˜Fallā€™ and the noetic effects of the ā€˜Fallā€™). When we attempt to move beyond Godā€™s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ we indeed are exalting ourselves too much, and at least signaling what kind of theo-anthropology and doctrine of sin we are operating from (and how that shapes our hermeneutic and the confidence we have in accessing reality apart from God in Christ). I believe Fretheim in particular, and Open Theology, in general, move within this kind of analytical philosophical venture of doing theology that thinks beyond and outside of Christ while at the same time trying to work its way back to Christ (which would be Pelagian). But I digress. Here, I suggest, is the proper way to think of God and human suffering; and how to do so from a genuinely Christ-centered way versus the philosophical way that Fretheim and Open Theology gives us.

What does it mean? Is it not the opposite of what we might expect from the news that God became Man? Here there is suffering. Notice that it is here for the first time in the Confession that the great problem of evil and suffering meets us directly. Already, of course, we have frequently had to refer to it. But according to the letter this is the first time we have an indication of the fact that in the relation between Creator and creature everything is not at its best, that lawlessness and destruction hold sway, that pain is added and suffered. Here for the first time the shadowy side of existence enters into our field of view, and not in the first article, which speaks of God the Creator. Not in the description of creation as heaven and earth, but here in the description of the existence of the Creator become creature, evil appears; here afar off death also becomes visible. The fact that this is so at least means this: that discretion is demanded in all descriptions of wickedness and evil as being to some extent independent. When that was done later, it was more or less overlooked that all this enters the field only in connexion with Jesus Christ. He has suffered, He has rendered visible what the nature of evil is, of manā€™s revolt against God. What do we know of evil and sin? What do we know of what is called suffering or what death means? Here we get to know it. Here appears this complete darkness in its reality and truth. Here complaint is raise and punished, here the relation between God and man is really made clear. What are all our sighs, what is all that man thinks he knows about his folly and sinfulness and about the lost state of the world, what is all speculation about suffering and death beside what becomes manifest here? He, He has suffered, who is true God and true man. All independent talk on the subjectā€”that is, talk cut loose from Himā€”will necessarily be inadequate and imperfect. Unless talk on this matter goes out from this centre, it will be unreal. That man can bear the most frightful strokes of Fate and comes through untouched by anything as through a shower of rain: that can be seen by us to-day. We are simply untouched either by suffering or by evil in its proper reality; we know that now. So we can repeatedly escape from knowledge of our guilt and sin. We can only achieve proper knowledge, when we know that He who is true God and true man has suffered. In other words, it needs faith to see what suffering is. Here there was suffering. Everything else that we know as suffering is unreal suffering compared with what has happened here. Only from this standpoint, by sharing in the suffering He suffered, can we recognize that fact and the cause of suffering everywhere in the creaturely cosmos, secretly and openly.[3]

There is much to commend here, but I best stop for now. (See footnotes below for further comment)

[1] Terence E. Fretheim, Creation Untamed: The Bible, God, and Natural Disasters (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2010), 15-16.

[2] Ibid., 17.

[3] Karl Barth, Dogmatics In Outline (Great Britain: The Camelot Press Ltd., 1949), 103-04. This book is an off the top (for Barth) series of lectures that he gave to students at the University of Bonn (Germany) in the summer of 1946. It was his explication of The Apostlesā€™ Creed, and the quote I have from him above is his reflection on the part of the creed that goes: ā€˜Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hellā€¦.ā€™

What Barth is taking seriously is the theological/christological and biblical reality that all of creation is within the domain of Godā€™s grace in Christ; and furthermore, that all of creationā€™s point and purpose, then, is in and for and from Christ. If this is so then what becomes impossible is to attempt to think about anything unhinged, as it were, from Christ (so against Fretheim, Open Theology, et. al.).

Ā 15Ā He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.Ā 16Ā For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.Ā 17Ā And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.Ā 18Ā And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. 19Ā For it pleasedĀ the Father thatĀ in Him all the fullness should dwell,Ā 20Ā and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. ~Colossians 1:15-20

What is Natural Theology, and Its Persistence in the Christian Church

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If ‘what’ natural theology is, is still escaping you, then let me try to explain it again; well, let me have George Hunsinger explain it for you, at least in the way that Karl Barth understood what natural theology was, and for what reason it continues to persist, especially and primarily in the Christian church. Here is Hunsinger on Barth and an explication of what natural theology entails:

bartwithglasses

[I]t is this conception of human existence as in itself hostile to grace, even and especially when confronted by God’s Word, that underlies Barth’s analysis of the persistence of natural theology in the church. Natural theology, it might be said, is presented as a theology that violates the essential precepts of objectivism, actualism, and particularism [all three identified as regulatory and organizing principles for Barth’s theological methodology]. Not mediated, not miraculous, and not unique in kind is the way our access to God appears, from the standpoint of natural theology. According to natural theology, as Barth understands it, our access to God is not something mediated exclusively in and through Jesus Christ; rather it is, at least in part, immediately open to us (and we to it). Again, it is not something miraculously enacted and bestowed (in and by Jesus Christ) by virtue of special and self-renewing event, but is rather, at least in part, at the disposal of or own innate capacities. Again, it is not something uniquely grounded in itself both ontically and noetically, but is rather, at least in part, independently and generally given to us apart from the particular history of divine self-revelation as centered in Christ. Natural theology is thus conceived as a theology according to which our access to God is not mediated but immediate, not miraculous but natural, and not unique in kind but generally given. [brackets mine] [George Hunsinger,Ā How To Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology,Ā 99-100Ā nook.]

So take notice, the rejection of Barth’s alternative to natural theology, the analogy of faith/relation, for knowledge of God is based upon an anthropology that is not needy, but full of self-glory. What is built upon this exaltation of a self-glorious human existence is what, well, is ‘natural’! We would rather build our knowledge of God up on a verification process whereby we get to dictate the verification parameters, instead of allowing the object/subject under consideration to dictate those for us in ever opening and increasing ways as we engage with, well, God in Christ, in ever refreshing and more intimate ways. Natural theology is built on an human existence still clinging to the hubris that the cross left an aspect (our intellects) of our existence alive and well, and it is thereupon which we have the capacity in ourselves to provide the controls through which we engage with God in Christ. Natural theology, then, operates from a mode of fear, and the lie, wherein the human is enclosed and conquered by a posture of fear; fear that he or she might be duped by something, or someone that he or she does not have control over.

There are other things to be said, and other implications to be noticed. But hopefully you have a better feel for what a Barthian notion of ‘against natural theology’ is, because you now have a better conception of what Karl Barth was against [as what he notoriously called, ‘anti-Christ’, and you can now see why].

Really, Nash? Ronald Nash’s Attempt to Critique Torrance, Barth and the Whole Crew: My Brief Response

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It is always nice when an Evangelical (Reformed) philosopher of religion takes note of Christian Dogmaticians outside of their normal sphere of comfortability, but sometimes this is a dangerous path to travel. Such is the path philosophythat Ronald Nash has chosen to trek.

I was sent some copies of pages (Pdf file) from Ronald Nash’s bookĀ The Word of God and the Mind of ManĀ Ā from a reader of my blog, an MDiv student (just finishing up) at Fuller Seminaryā€”this reader is about to become (Lord willing!) a pastor in a Presbyterian church in the States. Anyway, he has been turned on to Torrance as a result of some exposure that he has received while attending Fuller (which is no surprise). Apparently he was reading this book by Nash (or became aware of Nash’s critique [of Barth, Torrance, and others like minded]), and came across the points of critique that the rest of this post will endeavor to engage. I am not really intending on mounting a defense, but more of a short (bloggy) exercise in providing context that will contravene and contradict Nash’s reading of Torrance in particular. In the following, as we read along with Nash, I hope you will notice how shallow of an attempt Nash’s is to provide critical depth in engaging Torrance’s perspective on reality, theology, etc. Here is what Nash writes (I will offer quote in full, in order to provide the necessary context):

[…] Can a similar distrust for or contempt for logic and reason be found in the writings of Christian theologians [Nash has just finished reviewing a theologian or philosopher with the last name of Stace, who I am unfamiliar with; but Nash seems to think that Torrance, Barth and others are engaging in the same style of mysticalĀ aberrant and irrationalist kind of theologizing as Stace, it is just that Nash thinks Torrance is more cloaked in his mode]?Ā Ā One thing that hinders a simple answer to this question is that few writers are as daring and as explicit as Stace. Discussions about the proper place of reason in religion are frequently plagued by inattention to tow quite different senses the wordĀ reasonĀ can have. Consider the following claims:

(1) The Incarnation is unreasonable; that is, the claim that Jesus Christ is God in incredible. I simply cannot believe it.

(2) The Incarnation is unreasonable; that is, the doctrine of the Incarnation violates the Law of noncontradiction.

In the second case, a particular Christian belief allegedly violates a principle or law of logic. Anything that is unreasonable or irrational in sense (2) is such in an objective and universal way. But in the first case, a particular Christian belief is called unreasonable simply because some person cannot understand it or believe it. Unreasonableness in sense (1) is person-relative. It should be obvious that all sorts of beliefs that some people cannot accept and thus find irrational are readily acceptable and rational to others.

When religious thinkers [ha, not Christian, eh, Nash?] like SĆøren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and Emil Brunner proclaimed the irrationality of certain Christian beliefs, I suspect that what they really meant to say was that something about Christianity was so shocking and so offensive to the “reason” of many unbelievers that they (the unbelievers) found it irrational. Since the New Testament itself suggest this position, and since it accords with what any observer can detect in the reactions of people to many Christian claims, the view itself is quite unexceptional.

Unfortunately, the extreme rhetoric of some Christian writers suggests that they also mean to say that Christianity is unreasonable in the second sense, that it actually involves violations of the law of non-contradiction. The writings of the Scottish disciple of Karl Barth [which by the way, Torrance was not an uncritical disciple of Barth, see Alister McGrath’sĀ T. F. Torrance, An Intellectual Biography], Thomas Torrance, are a case in point. Torrance certainly appears to claim that there is a difference between God’s logic and human logic [that’s weird!, God forbit it!, you mean I don’t have anything in myself to stand on that provides rational certitude?], and, further, that the forms of “human logic” cannot be extended to a transcendent God. Torrance seems to believe that human “ideas and conceptions and analogies and words are too limited and narrow and poor for knowledge of God.” His suspicions about purely “human” logic are evident in such statements as: “Real theological thinking” should be freed from “imprisonment in timeless logical connections.” Knowledge ofĀ eternalĀ truth, he suggests, is hindered by insisting on “fixed categories of thought.” What Torrance seems to give us is a statement that human knowledge about God is impossible and that human forms of reasoning are completely incapable of understanding truth and reason as it exists in the mind of God. [brackets throughout are mine] [Ronald N. Nash,Ā The Word of God and the Mind of Man,Ā 93-4.]

Grr … where do I start? Let me start with Torrance himself; here is a kind of summarizing quote of Torrance’s style of theologizing, and something that directly illustrates the kind of thing that Nash is seeking to critique (in a passive aggressive way, you’ll notice his frequent usage of “it seems” throughout this quote from him, but then he later offers the aggressive side of this in his critique of Torrance as he apparently has moved beyond his perception of “it seems” into “it is” or “this is how it is” and “this is why Torrance and others like him are wrong”). Anyway, here is Thomas Torrance:

[O]ur task in christology is to yield the obedience of our mind to what is given, which is Godā€™s self-revelation in its objective reality, Jesus Christ. A primary and basic fact which we discover here is this: that the object of our knowledge givesĀ itselfĀ to us to be apprehended. It does that within our mundane existence, within our worldly history and all its contingency, but it does that also beyond the limits of previous experience and ordinary thought, beyond the range of what is regarded by human standards as empirically possible. Thus when we encounter God in Jesus Christ, the truth comes to us in its own authority and self-sufficiency. It comes into our experience and into the midst of our knowledge as aĀ novum,Ā a new reality which we cannot incorporate into the series of other objects, or simply assimilate to what we already know. [Thomas F. Torrance ā€œIncarnation: The Person And Life Of Christ,ā€ 1.]

In other words, for Torrance, there is no analogy in nature for the Incarnation; I am not aware of any analogies that ontologically correlate to the Incarnation, apparently Nash, though thinks that the Incarnation represents something ordinary and mundane; such that any average sentient person could rationally conceive of suchā€”simply by reflecting on the proclivities of nature, abstracting said proclivities and then using this as theĀ Foundation[alism]Ā upon which we as humans know God through, and by which we justify His existence as God. Torrance, if Nash would have taken the time to actually read or attempt to faithfully understand him, would have understood what causes Torrance to write such as he does in the quote that I just provided from TF. Torrance inverts Nash’s paradigm, and sees our order of knowledge contingent upon an antecedent (or ‘outside of us’) order of ontology. In other words, Torrance believes in what he calls anĀ epistemological inversionĀ (which if Nash really read Torrance’s ‘Theological Science’ he would know) wherein for knowledge of God to be truly determinative of a genuine knowledge of God, that this knowledge isĀ RevealedĀ notĀ philosophically discovered.Ā And so, we can only come to know God under the constraints and categories that are imposed upon us by the nature of the reality with whom we encounter, God in Christ.

There is much more that I need to say about this. And it gets even more philosophical, but of the kind that Nash is not comfortable(it has already been made into a demon by him, in need of exorcism); there is the reality of Continental Philosophy at play in much of what Torrance and Barth are dealing with. But I think I will save that discussion for another day, and another post. Suffice it to say, Nash, and anyone really serious about critiquing Barth, Torrance & co. ought to read the more recently released book (2011) Ā Karl Barth And American EvangelicalismĀ edited byĀ Bruce L. McCormack & Clifford B. Anderson.Ā Obviously this book post-dates Nash’s book, but in a revision, this could be helpful for Nash and his students. McCormack’s and Anderson’s edited book (which I am still reading) provides excellent background and coverage of the issues that Nash is superficially (without understanding) critiquing in the aforementioned quote from him.

I will close by asserting that it is all about Faith,Ā not of the blind variety, but of the variety that is grounded in the vicarious humanity of Christ. The kind that provides vision of the Father, that outwith all we will end up doing is worshipping the creation rather than the Creator.

I almost forgot; I ran a series of posts that dealt with this kind of issue of Torrance and his purported method before. Here is the link to the index of those posts: ClickĀ Here

We Need More Christian Dogmatics and Less Apologetics

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I am just rereading John Webster’s chapter inĀ The Oxford Handbook of Systematic TheologyĀ on ‘Theologies of Retrieval’. As he begins his essay he sketches how theologian Eberhard JĆ¼ngel engages this mode of theological endeavor in his bookĀ God As the Mystery of the World.Ā In his sketching, Webster highlightsĀ JĆ¼ngel’s primary thesis overriding his book, and that is […] “The book is best read as a set of analytical soundings in the modern history of the relation between theology and philosophy, seeking to show how theĀ rise of atheistic philosophy is parasitic upon decay in Christian thought about God….”Ā (Webster, p. 586) This is a very intriguing point, and one that Christian Fundamentalism, which has now come of age in American Evangelicalism would do well to take heed to. I say this because in many quarters of Evangelicalismā€”and I say in the quarters that make up the academic side of Evangelicalism, mostly found in seminaries, and then parachurch ministriesā€”there is still to be found the ‘fighting Fundy’ spirit. That is, Evangelicals are consumed with matching wits with their atheist and “Liberal” counterparts by engaging the atheist (or whomever) on their own terms; nary realizing that maybe the terms set by the atheist panoply might be a result of Christians (Evangelicals or otherwise) not taking care of proper business in their own house. Namely, that Christians, in theirĀ abandonmentĀ of the doing of actualĀ Christian DogmaticsĀ (Theology) have in this vacuum created space for antagonists to the Christian faith to bottom feed off of the waste produced or not-produced by Christian thought today. Webster writes further ofĀ JĆ¼ngel’s thesis:

apologetics

[W]hat is most noteworthy inĀ JĆ¼ngel’s diagnosis is its focus on the mismatch between the authentic content of Christian faith and the conceptual version of itself by which it sought to retain its authority in the face of modern critiques. ‘Atheism’ is as much a child of theology’s theistic self-alienation as of philosophical unbelief.Ā JĆ¼ngel’s presentation of this authentic content is undoubtedly dogmatically compressed, appealing to only a narrow selection of doctrinal material; and his historical narrative can lack complexity and nuance. The book’s appeal is, indeed, as much kerygmatic as historical. What gives strength to his account is his insistence that the crisis of Christian thought and speech about God ‘is to be worked through in terms of the particular character, theĀ propriumĀ of the Christian faith’ (JĆ¼ngel 1983:229). What is required is not a more effective apologetic strategy but a better dogmatics. [emboldening mine] [John Webster,Ā The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, Chapter 32 Theologies of Retrieval,Ā 587.]

Maybe if Christians, and Evangelicals in particular, got back to engaging with actualĀ positivelyĀ shaped Christian Dogmatics (instead of following the ‘negative way’), and abandoned the current trend of continuing to engage with a god largely shaped by classical theism (still!); then maybe atheists and the rest of the unbelieving crowd would lose the traction they currently have in the culture today. It is much easier for an atheist to argue with a conception of god that is humanistically constructed based on philosophical reflection and abstraction of the universe versus dealing with a God, who by definition, is shaped by His own internal Self-presentation and revelation through Jesus Christ. If ‘apologists’ were to become theologians, instead of philosophers, atheism might fade away; and if not fade away, it would at least have to reconsider how to assail the conception of the Christian God who resists philosophical manipulation, and instead contradicts it (by the wisdom of the cross!). We need more Christian Dogmaticians, and less Christian philosophers of religion.

‘Thingness of Godness’: Questioning the Adequacy of B.B. Warfield’s Trinitarianism

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My e-friend, Michael Jones has started a new Facebook page;Ā Reformed Theologians.Ā It looks as if Michael will be highlighting various quotes, pictures, and other things associated with the Reformed faith. He has a couple of warfielddrawingquotes up, currently, from Princeton theologian of yesteryear, B.B. Warfield. Michael offers this quote from Warfield on the Trinity:

The doctrine of the Trinity is “the doctrine that there is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three coeternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in subsistence.”

-B. B. Warfield, “The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Biblical and Theological Studies, p. 22.

I think this short quote offers an illustration of what sounds perfectly orthodox (and it is in many ways!), but it also illustrates something that I have been after for quite some time. For Warfield, as for Charles Hodge, the informing theology behind his thinking comes from Westminster Calvinism; and in particular, as for Hodge, and thus by way of influence, for Warfield, Francis Turretin’s Elenctic Theology (‘Polemic Ā Theology’) played an indubitle role in shaping his doctrine of God and the categories through which he thought.

All I want to highlight with this quote from Warfield on the Trinity, is that if the reader pays careful attention and reads slow enough; he or she will recognize the role that so called substance metaphysics or classical theism (the synthesis of Aristotelian categories with Christian Theology) is playing in giving expression to Warfield’s articulation of the Trinity. We have ‘unity of the Godhead’, that is good! We haveĀ ‘three coeternal and coequal Persons’,Ā also good!! Then we haveĀ ‘the same substance but distinct in subsistence’,Ā not good!!! What this substance language presupposes is the Aristotelian distinction between ‘essence’ and ‘accident’; the former is necessary attribution of a things constituent parts (like for Thomas Aquinas’ anthropology he believed that the intellect was the touchstone of what it means to be a human being created in the image of God), but the latter (i.e. accident) is not a necessary feature of what identifies someone as a human beingā€”so a person can’t be a person without an intellect, but a person can still be person without having red hair or being a tennis player (these are accidents of their person-hood). If we use this dualism, this binary-code, this distinction to describe God’s oneness and threenessā€“as Warfield hasā€“then we end up with a concept or thingness of Godness that stands behind the back or above the subsisting persons that flow from this thingness of Godness; one consequence of this is that there is no necessary relationship between being God (in unity) and the subsisting persons who hang arbitrarily below this essence or substance or thingness of Godness. The only thing correlating the oneness and threeness of God together in Warfield’s account is his piety and assertion; it is not his theology. [Let me add this clarification: What I am saying is that in Warfield’s account there is no necessary relationship between the person’s who subsist from the unity of God, and the unity of God. God could still be a unity without his subsistence, just as I could still be a human being without being a tennis player. Evangelical Calvinism, as construed by Myk, myself, and foremost, T. F. Torrance, offers a doctrine of the Trinity that works from what Torrance calls ‘onto-relations’. This emphasizes a subject-in-being distinction, but it is this distinction in perichoretic (interpenetrating relation) that defines the one subject of theĀ MonarchiaĀ or God-head; so God’s oneness defines his threeness and his threeness defines his oneness. There is nothing subsisting in this schema, Godself if anything is his own subsistence in onto-relation one with the other … there is no God[ness] then behind the back of Jesus, or for that matter, behind the Holy Spirit.]

This is one of the reasons why in classic Westminster Calvinism we end up with a God who is disjointed, ruptured from within, impersonal and a host of other things when considering the theology that stands behind the beautiful piety of their classic Reformed faith. And this is why Warfield and others need to be questioned in regard to the adequacy of their relative doctrine of God, and other subsequent doctrines that followā€”like theories of revelation, atonement, bibliology, salvation, etc.

Origins, Dawkins, and the Myth of Origins: A Faith Account

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It is often assumed by atheists/fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins and the so calledĀ new AtheistsĀ that macro-evolutionary biology, and big-bang cosmology (amongst other disciplinary distinctives) is the death-knell for richard-dawkinsthe Christian explanation of things; i.e. that reality has an explanation that isĀ extra nosĀ (outside of us), and thus is not absolutized or made immanent to material nature itself. These new Atheists though, move too quickly; they presume that their explanation for realityā€”metaphysical materialismā€”comes with its own explanatory power as to the origins itself. But one major problem with this supposition is that the categories with which their supposed explanation for origins comes, does not by definition come with something outside of material reality; and thus by definitionā€”if material reality is the end in itself that these new Atheists naĆÆvely presuppose it to beā€”the confines of thought from which they have to work, at a first order level (or a general knowledge level) is defined with the prior commitment that material reality is all that there is. But, again, this does not tell us about the origin of material reality, it only tells us that there is material reality, and that material reality, enclosed in on itself, as it is, has a set of conceptual categories through which to think; but these categories, by definition, do not include the kind of conceptual ingression required to explain the origins of material reality itself. And so these new Atheists fool themselves into thinking that they have a corner on reality, that left to their own devices, they really don’t have after all. David Bentley Hart makes my point more prescient:

There is, after all, nothing inherently reasonable in the conviction that all of reality is simply an accidental confluence of physical causes, without any transcendent source or end. Materialism is not a fact of experience or a deduction of logic; it is a metaphysical prejudice, nothing more, and one that is arguably more irrational than almost any other. In general, the unalterably convinced materialist is a kind of childishly complacent fundamentalist, so fervently, unreflectively, and rapturously committed to the materialist vision of reality that if he or she should encounter any problemā€”logical or experientialā€”that might call its premises into question, or even merely encounter a limit beyond which those premises lose their explanatory power, he or she is simply unable to recognize it. Richard Dawkins is a perfect example; he does not hesitate, for instance, to claim that “natural selection is the ultimate explanation for our existence.” But this is a silly assertion and merely reveals that Dawkins does not understand the words he is using. The question ofĀ existenceĀ does not concern how it is that the present arrangement of the world came about, from causes already internal to the world, but how it is that anything (including any cause) can exist at all. This question Darwin and Wallace never addressed, nor were ever so hopelessly confused as to think they had. It is a question that no theoretical or experimental science could ever answer, for it is qualitatively different from the kind of questions that the physical sciences are competent to address. Even if theoretical physics should one day discover the most basic laws upon which the fabric of space and time is woven, or evolutionary biology the most elementary phylogenic forms of terrestrial life, or palaeontology an Ā utterly seamless genealogy of every species, still we shall not have thereby drawn one inch nearer to a solution of the mystery of existence. No matter how fundamental or simple the level reached by the scientistā€”protoplasm, amino acids, molecules, subatomic particles, quantum events, unified physical laws, a primordial singularity, mere logical possibilitiesā€”existence is something else altogether. Even the simplest of things, and even the most basic of principles, must first of allĀ be,Ā and nothing within the universe of contingent things (nor even the universe itself, even if it were somehow “eternal”) can be intelligently conceived of as the source of explanation of its own being. [David Bentley Hart,Ā Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies,Ā 103.]

The author to the Hebrews has written:

Ā 3Ā He is the radiance of the glory of God andĀ the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.Ā After making purification for sins,Ā he sat downĀ at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ~1:3

3Ā By faith we understand that the universe was created byĀ the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out ofĀ things that are visible. ~11:3

Thomas Torrance articulates the God-world relation by using the concepts of God’s non-contingent independence, and the world’s contingent independence; I think this asymmetric mutually implicating binary correlates well with what Hart is getting at. The world cannot provide its own ground for its own being. The world can speak of things from within its own being because the being of the world is given an intelligible order and coefficient knowledge because of its contingent dependence upon something else as the given for its being as the world. It is thus unintelligible to assert that the world has its own independent giveness based upon what we can emperically observe in the given world. In other words, the fact that there is a given world presupposes something that the world itself, left to itself, cannot explain under its own strength. This is what the author to the Hebrews is asserting; that is, that we cannot explain the being of the world by the being of the world by finding an analogy in the being of world for its own being (this is circular). Instead we must relate to the giver of the giveness of the world through an analogy or relation of faith; and this is only possible if the giver of the giveness of the world graciously chooses to reveal himself to us, breaking in on the world he has given its being to.

In short, the new Atheists need something more than they have available to them, left to their own bereft machinations and apparatuses. They need more than theĀ beingĀ of this world has to offer them; they need some grounding that will allow them to discern the possibility, more, the reality, that the world itself, by definition, is contingent; not upon itself, of course, but upon a ground that comes before the being of the world itself. But this would mean that they would have to walk by faith, not by sight; and unless they have the Spirit they will never be able to say that Jesus is Lordā€”of all men (and women), then, they are the most to be pitied.

What Does Thomas Torrance Think about Theology?

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I have just finished reading three books in succession, and I’m now beginning a fourth, which represents a re-read. The first three that I have finished already are:Ā Thy Word Is Truth: Barth On ScriptureĀ edited byĀ George Hunsinger,Ā Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s ThoughtĀ byĀ John Webster,Ā andĀ Predestination: Biblical and Theological PathsĀ byĀ Matthew Levering; and the re-read I am just starting isĀ TheologicalĀ tommytorranceScienceĀ byĀ Thomas F. Torrance.Ā The reason I mention this is because there are things in each book that I would like to share with you here at the blog; things having to do with theological method (Torrance), how Barth and Eberhard JĆ¼ngel understood the context for human freedom from within a moral ontology founded within a soteriological justified by faith alone frame (Webster), how Barth interpreted particular passages of scripture (so not abstract discussion, but concrete looks at his actual exegesis) (Hunsinger). So plan on getting bits of all of this over the next few weeks; we will see if I can actually do all of this, I am often too idealistic with my blogging :-). To kick this time off though I want to start with a lengthy piece from Thomas Torrance on what he terms ‘Theological Science’. I am afraid that some of my readers don’t really understand what is informing my own methodological approach, and so hopefully this long quote (which I provide at length for context … in case this is the only exposure some of you will ever have to TF Torrance) will help provide you with more context for reading me. This quote comes from Torrance’s preface to his ‘Theological Science’, it is important to understand that what Torrance is articulating is quite distinct from the mode of theologizing and exegeting that most of us are used to in day to day Evangelical life. Here is the quote, enjoy:

[I]n discussing the meaning and place of authority in his second series of Gifford lectures delivered in St. Andrews, during the session of 1927-8, my revered teacher, A. E. Taylor, called for the locating of authority, neither in individualism nor in some institutional seat, but in a reality that is wholly given and trans-subjective, and simply and absolutely authoritative through its givenness. If knowledge is to be more than personal opinion, he argued, there must be control of our personal intellectual constructions by something which is not constructed butĀ received.Ā In our human knowledge of God this is humbly to acknowledge that what is genuinely given has unquestionable right to control our thinking and acting, just because it is so utterly given to us and not made by us. With that notion of authority clarified, Professor Taylor held that we might entertain hope for the future of theology as ‘a genuine, assured, and yet progressive science of God’. (The Faith of a Moralist,Ā vol. 2, p. 241.)

That is what I believe theological science to be and how I try to engage in it, but we are not concerned with that here in its positive and material content. This is a book about the philosophy of the science of God, a discipline which the theologian must undertake if he is really to do his job. What is required of us here is not a Philosophy of Religion in which religion is substituted in the place of God, but a Philosophy of Theology in which we are directly engaged with knowledge of the Reality of God and not just with religious phenomenality. Whenever religion is substituted in the place of God, the fact that in religion we are concerned with the behavior ofĀ religious people,Ā sooner or later means that the substitution of humanity in the place of religionā€”the point at which our ‘secularizing’ philosophers of religion appear to have arrived. There is undoubtedly a place for the scientific study of religious people, of religious phenomena, and of religious language, but none of these can be substitute for the Philosophy of Theology in which we are concerned with the meta-science of our direct cognitive relation with God. Science and meta-science are required not because God is a problem but becauseĀ weĀ are. As Austin Farrer has said, ‘the existence of perfection requires no explanation, the existence of limited being requires explanation’ (Finite and Infinite,Ā p. 15). It is becauseĀ ourĀ relations with God have become problematic that we must have a scientific theology.

If I may be allowed to speak personally for a moment, I find the presence and being of God bearing upon my experience and thought so powerfully that I cannot but be convinced of His overwhelming reality and rationality. To doubt the existence of God would be an act of sheer irrationality, for it would mean that my reason had become unhinged from its bond with real being. Yet in knowing God I am deeply aware that my relation to Him has been damaged, that disorder has resulted in my mind, and that it is I who obstruct knowledge of God by getting in between Him and myself, as it were. But I am also aware that His presence presses unrelentingly upon me through the disorder of my mind, for He will not let Himself be thwarted by it, challenging and repairing it, and requiring of me on my part to yield my thoughts to His healing and controlling revelation.

Scientific theology is active engagement in that cognitive relation to God in obedience to the demands of His reality and self-giving. In it we probe into the problematic condition of the human mind before God and seek to bring knowledge of Him into clear focus, so that the truth of God may shine through to it unhindered by its opacity and the human mind may acquire clear and orderly forms through which to apprehend and conceive His reality. That is to say, we seek to allow God’s own eloquent self-evidence to sound through to us in His Logos so that we may know and understand Him out of His own rationality and under the determination of His divine being. In the course of this activity we being to understand something of how the cognitive relation of men to God can be so sharply refracted that double vision results, in which human knowers are unable to trace the thought of God back to its proper ground in His reality. Although God does not cease to disclose His power and deity to them the truth becomes stifled, for at the very roots of their knowledge, as St. Paul said, they twist it unto untruth. All a man may be able to do then in his sense of the presence of God is to give it oblique, or symbolic, meaning only to discover that he has thrust himself into its content, or he may try to straighten out the connections of his thought and make them point into emptiness and nothing, even though he remains haunted, as it were, by the ultimate rationality of God all around him.

This is where theological science must step in to help men refer their thoughts properly beyond themselves to God. We cannon communicate God to men directly, but we can engage in normal acts of communication in which we use language with a semantic intention, not so much to express our minds as to refer other minds to something beyond ourselves. While our linguistic and conceptual forms may be communicated directly to other minds, intuitable realities are not directly communicable: we may point them out, or refer to them through accepted signs or acquired designations, in the hope that others will perceive or apprehend them also, but unless that takes place communication has not achieved its end. Communication takes place between minds that are directed to the same or similar objects and so is necessarily indirect through a triadic relationship in which one mind directs another to an object by referring to it, and in which the other mind by following through the reference to the object understands the intention of the first mind.

This presupposes the rationality of the medium and the context in which communication takes place, that is, not only an intelligible language, but an intelligible subject-matter. The things about which we speak to one another must be capable of rational apprehension and of semantic designation. This is something that we assume and operate with continually in ordinary experience and in science, without attempting to explain it. If the nature of things were not somehow inherently rational they would remain inapprehensible and opaque and indeed we ourselves would not be able to emerge into the light of rationality. It is because things are amenable to rational treatment that we can apprehend them at all; we understand them, or get light upon them, in so far as we can penetrate into their rationality and develop our grasp of it. Scientific knowledge is that in which we bring the inherent rationality of things to light and expression, as we let the realities we investigate disclose themselves to us under our questioning and we on our part submit our minds to their intrinsic connections and order. Scientific activity certainly involves a give and take between subject and object, while all knowledge is by way of being a compromise between thought and being; nevertheless it remains an awesome fact that if the nature of things were not intelligible and apprehensible, knowledge could not arise at all, far less communication. We communicate with others only when we get them to submit their thoughts to the same rationality of things that we experience. Thus communication from the very start involves an element of persuasion. So far as theological knowledge is concerned this is what we call, perhaps mistakenly, ‘apologetics’, but, whatever we call it, it is a necessary part of scientific activity in theological communication. [Thomas F. Torrance,Ā Theological Science,Ā viii-xi.]

Okay, still here? After this I am going to go care for my carpal tunnel (after typing all of this šŸ˜‰ ), but I hope you are better able to appreciate what informs my own approach; I along with Thomas Torrance am aĀ criticalĀ orĀ theological realist.Ā I believe that in order to successfully talk about God the first positive supposition in that direction is that he is there; not because I proved that he is there, not because my tradition says so, not because my socio-linguistic context purports this to be the caseā€”but simply becauseĀ He is!, and He has revealed Himself to be so through Christ. So my approach sits under the weight of God’s own Self-directed, Self-interpreting, Self-revealing Word; and as such, I am not free to roam here and there in my theological thinking. I must go where God goes in Christ. And I don’t go anywhere God goes without relating to Him throughĀ faith.Ā I don’t relate to Him by first understanding Him from a cornerstone in my ownĀ being,Ā or in yourĀ being;Ā I enter the holy of holies through the torn veil of Christ’s body. When I think theologically I am not also engaging in Philosophy of Religion, as if this is doing theology (as so many Evangelicals seem to think), I want to simply, and I mean, simply go where God goes and is, in Christ.

There you have it. I have more posts coming, and I will be referencing those other books I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

A Christian Apologetic: Torrance and “Justin Martyr,” Proving Jesus

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Thomas Torrance, in his Theological Science (his theological method, and a title of one of his books), follows what he calls an epistemological inversion; in short, epistemological inversion is the approach that holds out that an object or subject (or both as in the case of Christian Theology) acts upon us (the knowers and inquirers), such that it itself opens up to us its own reality and structures of thought—this process remains an open structured event. It is from within this context that we can better understand Thomas Torrance’s appropriation of someone like Justin Martyr, and his defense of Christian reality and the Christic event itself (one and the same). Let’s follow along as Torrance engages Martyr, this quote will end with Torrance quoting Justin (which is the piece I really want to get to with this post—viz. Martyr’s “argument”):

The distinctive feature of this Word is its relation through the Spirit to historical facts and events. It is when we allow the Scriptures to direct us to these facts and events that our minds fall under the power of their truth and we are compelled to believe for they carry in themselves their own demonstration. This is not, of course, any kind of logical proof, but the kind of demonstration that arises immediately out of the facts and events themselves through their self-evidence. This is particularly well expressed in a fragment of a lost work on the resurrection that has survived through John of Damascus and attributed to Justin.

[T]he Word of truth is free, and carries its own authority, disdaining to fall under any skilful argument, or to endure the logical scrutiny for its hearers. But it would be believed of its own sake, and for the confidence due to him who sends it. Now the Word of truth is sent from God, wherefore the freedom claimed by the truth is not arrogant. For being sent with authority, it were not fit that it should be required to produce proof of what is said, since neither is there any proof beyond itself, which is God. For every proof is more powerful and trustworthy than that which it proves, since what is disbelieved, until proof is produced, gets credit when such proof is produced, and is recognised as being what it was stated to be. But nothing is more powerful or more trustworthy than the truth; so that he who requires proof of this, is like one who wishes it demonstrated why the things that appear to the senses do appear. For the test of those things which are received through the reason, is sense; but of sense itself there is not test beyond itself. As then we bring those things which reason hunts after, to sense, and by it judge what kind of things they are, whether the things spoken be true or false, and then sit in judgment no longer, giving full credit to its decision; so also we refer all that is said regarding men and the world to the truth, and by it judge whether it be worthless or no. But the utterances of truth we judge by no separate test, giving full credit to itself. And God, the Father of the universe, who is the perfect intelligence, is the Truth. And the Word, being his Son, came to us, having put on flesh revealingĀ  both himself and the Father, giving to us in himself resurrection from the dead and eternal life afterwards. And this is Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord. He, therefore, is himself both the faith and the proof of himself and of all things. [Thomas F. Torrance, Divine Meaning, 95-6; the quote from Justin, De resurrectione, 1.1f, from the Sacra Parallela of John of Damascus. E.T. from Ante Nicene Christian Library, vol. 2, pp. 341ff. This is not generally accepted as Justin’s own work, but like the Cohortatio ad Graecos was at least written under his influence.]

For all those weary souls who have labored under the Evangelical mantle of ‘Fighting Fundamentalism’ and the Apologetic Faith (as Warfield called it); won’t you join me in commending yourself to a more Christian Way? A ‘Way’ that does not entangle itself in the realm of rationalist-historicism, that seeks to ‘prove’ Jesus to themselves and the world. I am sure that it is the other way around … we are in need of ‘proving’. And I think the “Martyr” quote helps us to think in this order, and not the order of the “world.”

The Philosopher’s Theology, and Calvinism

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I am writing a review for this book right now, for the Pacific Journal of Baptist Research; I should be done with the review by tomorrow. But I thought I would throw something up here from the book for your consideration. Michael Rea writes:

The methodological divide between systematic theologians and analytic philosophers of religion is ripe for exploration. It is of obvious theoretical importance to both disciplines, but it also has practical import. The climate in theology departments for analytic theologians is muck like the climate in English-speaking philosophy departments for continental philosophers: often chilly. Moreover, the methodological divide is surely the most significant obstacle to fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue. The problem isn’t just that academics with different methodological perspectives have trouble conversing with one another. Rather, it is that, by and large, the established figures in both disciplines don’t even view mutual conversation as worth pursuing. They ignore one another. They (implicitly or explicitly) encourage their students to ignore one another. They allow their methodological preferences to play a very large role int their judgments about hiring and about the quality of papers they referee for professional journals. And the divide only grows deeper. No doubt many (on both sides) will thin that all of this is perfectly legitimate. Maybe it is, but that is beside the point; its legitimacy shouldn’t just be taken for granted. It is an open and interesting question whether theology can sensibly be done in the analytic mode. [Michael C. Rea in Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, 2]

For some of you you could care less about what appears to be cutting the bologna way too thin. But I assure you this represents a substantial issue with real life fall-out (which I understand personally). The divide that Rea is speaking about represents a substantial methodological difference between how folk “do” theology. The difference is the difference between starting with Christ, in principle (principially) and methodologically (which is the method I follow); or starting with generic philosophical abstractions about nature and the god of nature, and from this set of principles working toward God and Christ. This divide works its way out, finally, to the issue that I am often harping on here at the blog; the distinction that I often draw between classical Calvinism and Evangelical Calvinism—viz. the disparate doctrines of God, for example (do we have a substance metaphysic [classic Calvinism] or a [onto] relational metaphysic [Evangelical Calvinism] shaping how we conceive of God and all the subsequent doctrines that follow? etc.).

I realize that I moving fast, from one thing to the other; but I want to illustrate how this “divide” that Rea is speaking about can play out THEOLOGICALLY.

How To Think Theologically and Historically, or Christianly, as an Evangelist

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Analytic theology would have us bound by analytics, and even foundationalism. The general populace at large has been infected by this disease of “faith seeking proof of the self.” This bait is always present for the theologian and biblical exegete; that is the bait of establishing the self as the canon of all that is right and true in the world. I recently fell prey to this bait when in discussion with someone from the general populace side. The bait, in this instance was “proving” the historicity of the resurrection of Christ through the canon of self (or maybe positivism). The Apostle Paul admonishes us, and writes: “For although we are walking in the flesh, we do not wage war in a fleshly way, since the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments and every high minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” [II Corinthians 10:3-5] We are Christians, and we are guardians of the truth of the Gospel as we participate with Christ in his ongoing priestly ministry. We don’t fight to establish ourselves so that we can establish Christ; Christ fought for us through his battle with the principalities and powers [Col. 2:15] so that he might establish us and our humanity in his!

Thomas Torrance has a good word on how we ought, as Christian theologians, operate in a way that demolishes arguments against the knowledge of God. It is not through engaging the world on their terms (the constant battle and bait), but it is through approaching the world through a differentiated mode of witness. In other words, we assume a posture that stands from within the uniqueness and weirdness of the Gospel and the Incarnation of Christ. Here is Torrance,

[T]he mystery of Christ is presented to us within history — that historical involvement is not an accidental characteristic of the mystery but essential to it. That is the problem.

Let us first put it this way, recalling the bi-polarity of our theological knowledge. If God has become man in the historical Jesus, that is an historical event that comes under our historical examination so far as the humanity of Jesus is concerned, but the fact that God became man is an event that cannot be appreciated by ordinary historical science, for here we are concerned with more than simply an historical event, namely, with the act of the eternal God. So far as this event is a fact of nature it can be observed, and so far as it is historical in the sense that other natural events are historical, it can be appreciated as such; but the essential becoming behind it cannot be directly perceived except by an act of perception appropriate to the eternal event. That act of perception appropriate to the eternal event is faith, which is an enabling of reason given to it in the very act of receiving revelation.

But now we have not said too much? The act of perception appropriate to an eternal act, or divine act, would surely be the pure vision of God, which we do not have in history. Here on earth and in time we do not see directly, face to face, but see only in part, as through a glass enigmatically, in a mystery. We see the eternal or divine act within history, within our fallen world where historical observation is essential. Faith would be better described then as the kind of perception appropriate to perceiving a divine act in history, an eternal act in time. So that faith is appropriate both to the true perception of historical facts, and also to the true perception of God’s action in history. Nor is it the perception of history by itself, divorced from revelation, but it is the way we are given within history to perceive God’s acts in history, and that means that faith is the obedience of our minds to the mystery of Christ, who is God and man in the historical Jesus. What is clearly of paramount importance here is the holding together of the historical and the theological in our relation to Christ.

If the two are not held together, we have broken up the given unity in Christ into the historical on the one hand, and the theological on the other, refracting it into elements which we can no longer put together again. We then find that we cannot start from the historical and move to the theological, or from the theological and move to the historical without distortion, and nor can we rediscover the original unity. We can only start from the given, where the historical and the theological are in indissoluble union in Christ. [Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ,” edited by Robert T. Walker, 6-7]

We can hear Torrance’s influences, from Polyani and his Tacit Knowledge, and maybe some of Anselm’s Fides Quaerens Intellectum (faith seeking understanding) tradition. This has led to Torrance’s epistemological inversion and kata physin (according to the nature of the thing, or scientific knowledge); wherein the object of consideration acts upon the knower, and the object opens itself up more and more as the knower engages with the object (and subject in our case) on its own terms. This is Torrance’s way of demolishing arguments against the knowledge of God. It is not to fall prey to the constant bait of self; it doesn’t take the self that seriously. Instead it is to work within the canons of knowledge that God has revealed of himself in Christ. It rebuffs Cartesian foundationalism; so that humanity is not engaged in proving their structures of thought prior to their ability to affirm God’s existence, the historicity of the resurrection and a whole host of other things. Instead, what justifies humanities’ belief is faith (so Barth and Torrance’s, amongst others, ‘analogy of faith’ methodology). It isn’t rationalist certitude; it isn’t basic ideas formed in the halls of the academy; it is Faith!

So how am I supposed to interact with someone at my workplace who operates from a convoluted, water downed rationalist mode of thinking (where the self is king)? My method, even amongst the most hostile, is to frame the whole discussion by starting out with; “as a Christian,” and then begin to explain what it is that Christians (like Evangelical Calvinists) believe about God (as love and Triune etc.). At the end I can invite that person into a participatory relationship with the God of the resurrection. I have done this often in Evangelistic situations (even in the church šŸ˜‰ ), and it is one of the best ways to counter the world’s mode of rationalist self perpetuation. And it allows me to freely talk about Christ, without also having to prove Christ (that’s just not proper theological method). Battle on!