Category: Evangelical Calvinist

Questions we are engaging with for this week’s philosophy of religion class. Part of this, the last part represents its own separate forum for the class; it is supposed to be a debate forum. Creator of the world Does the theistic view that God created the universe imply that the universe must have had a beginning? What might the implications of the answer to this question be? Yes, the theistic view, in particular, the Christian theistic view entails that the universe had a beginning. I’d go so far to say that it entails the creatio ex nihilo (created out of…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

I am starting my Philosophy of Religion class tomorrow (January 13th) at the University of Oxford (by distance, of course). Thanks again to a friend of the blog for his donation, in order to pursue continuing education like this. I am critical of philosophy, often, but let me qualify that a bit further. I am only really critical of philosophy when it is used as a basis and the material for doing Christian theology. If these disciplines are kept separate and distinct, then I have no problem learning to think with the rigor of a philosopher. As long as the…

As Christians we want to think about God as Christians. Christians, definitionally, aren’t profane persons. Indeed, according to Scripture, Christians are saints; i.e., set apart in Christ who is our Set Apart in the presence of the Father for us. This might seem scandalous to even recognize, but Christians are simply in a different place in regard to knowing reality as it is; insofar as the Christ (Jesus) allows us entrée in these, our bodies of death, in this in-between time. Some might want to push back and describe my observations as idealist. But it is just the opposite, in…

Portrait des Theologen Karl Barth in Basel. Photographie 1956. Portrait of the theologian Karl Barth in Basel. Photography. 1956. I was chided back in the day by some Princeton Theological Seminary, at that point, MDiv students (who now have their PhDs from the same school), by referring to Scripture as containing biblical revelation; and this with Barth’s theology as the broader background. These guys asserted that Barth would never refer to the Bible as containing “revelation” of God. And yet clearly these lads had never really even read Barth in depth. Barth’s doctrine of the Threefold Form of the Word…

It is no secret, for those whom it is no secret, that Augustine believed that original sin was a genetic material stuff that was propagated in and among the human mass through the lust of sexual intercourse. Indeed, some of this, no doubt, was developed in the context of his Manichean background; but also, Augustine believed that the passions themselves were ultimately representative of the very base of sin, or what he identified as concupiscence (self-love). He wasn’t the only one who believed this, there were many others, following, like Ambrose, and later Peter Lombard, who affirmed the same in…