Procreo: Theology, Philosophy, and Life

Emotion: A Short Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Wed, 6 Oct 2021 16:01:00 -0700

It is somewhat paradoxical that emotion is one of the most beloved and one of the most underappreciated aspects of our nature. In popular culture emotion is appealed to in order to move us to action. Churches often foster an environment where emotion motivates you to repent or worship. Advertisements leverage emotion in order to move you buy something. Popular talent shows explicitly tell their singing contestants that their emotional involvement in the performance is as important if not more important than technical accuracy.

However, while popular culture regularly encourages us to have emotions and follow our passions, it doesn’t do much to help us understand what emotions are or how they are appropriately employed. We rarely hear questions like: What are emotions? Are emotional responses morally praiseworthy or blameworthy? Do emotions hinder reason? How do we become emotionally mature? Should we repress our emotions? What role do emotions play in the formation of moral beliefs?

Until we start looking at questions like this, our understanding of emotion will remain superficial. And a superficial understanding of our selves inevitably leads to practical problems.

In this article, I want to begin with the question “What is an emotion”? Philosophers and psychologists have offered various definitions over the centuries. However, discerning which view adequately describes the nature of emotion can be daunting. Since ancient views on the nature of emotion are more abstract and require more explanation, this article will start with more modern views of emotion. That is not to say that ancient and medieval views are not worth exploring. They are worth exploring, but in this article, we will focus on views that are more current.

One of the earliest modern views of emotion comes from William James and Carl Lange (late 19^th century). According to this view, an emotion is the recognition of a certain set of physiological responses. Those physiological responses are generated by some external stimuli. If, for example, you were to see a mountain lion running towards you, your heart would start to beat harder and you would start to perspire. The emotion, on this view, is your recognition of this set of physiological responses. Some external stimuli cause some physiological reaction in you and your autonomic system generates a “feeling” of emotion. Hence emotions are non-cognitive occurrences that “happen” to you.

One possible implication of this view is that you are not responsible for your emotions. Saying that you are responsible for your emotions would be like saying you are responsible for your heart beating or for how your body digests food. While there is something intuitively satisfying to the notion that emotions arise automatically, this view is not widely accepted among professional philosophers these days.

One reason for this has to do with the intentional nature of emotion. When we are angry, we are usually angry about something. For example, we might be angry with our friend for not telling us the truth. This “aboutness” seems to imply that emotions are not simply recognitions of physiological states, but cognitions that have an object. When your arm gets cut, you feel pain, but the physical pain is not “about” something even if it indicates that something is the case. Emotions, on the other hand are “about” something.

Furthermore, emotions tend to have a narrative structure. Our emotional states seem to be related to a narrative about our situational context. A dishonest friend makes us mad because we have certain expectations about friendship and morality that prompt or foster the emotional reaction that we have. We might think to ourselves “Joe was supposed to be my friend, his lying to me means X and Y and this upsets me”. Hence emotions seem to at least involve interpretive and evaluative aspects as well. If correct, this implies that emotions are cognitive rather than non-cognitive autonomic responses. There is a good deal of background “thought” going on during an emotional experience.

There are a number of cognitivist theories of emotion. One view is that emotions are concern based construal’s. In other words, they are ways of perceiving a situation where that perception is grounded in a concern. For example, consider your love for your children. The concern you have for your children sets you up for a variety of emotions. If they are threatened, you are worried or scared or angry. If they do something noble, you are proud of them. If they succeed in something, you are joyful. Your concern for your children is what philosopher Robert Roberts calls an “emotion disposition”.

If you perceive a situation as threatening and that perception is linked (in a single organic experience) to your emotional disposition, the result is an emotion. If this view is true, then there are several implications.

First, you have some measure of control over how you frame a narrative. These narratives aren’t easy to change since they are lower level cognitions, but you can reflect on them and modify them. In doing so, you have a kind of indirect path to gaining some control and responsibility for your emotional states.

Second, if emotions are cognitive, then they may be more related to other cognitive states that are usually associated with them. Moral and aesthetic experiences come to mind. Morals and emotions are sometimes so closely associated, that there is an entire meta-ethical school of thought that reduces morals to emotions.

Finally, this view offers a path for emotional maturity. If emotions are concern-based construal’s, we can extrapolate that our path to emotional maturity includes properly ordered concerns and accurately formed construal’s. And since we have some control over these things, we need not relegate emotions to thing’s that merely happen to us. As Robert Solomon says, emotions are things that humans do, not just things that happen to humans.

Aristotle's Lasting Influcence

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Wed, 6 Oct 2021 15:55:00 -0700

In his book Process and Reality, philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” To be sure, the west is indebted to Plato for his momentous intellectual achievements. But the western emphasis on systematic empirical observation and interpretation comes from Plato’s disciple. Like the brilliant Sir Isaac Newton, Plato’s student Aristotle didn’t just learn various disciplines, he created them. Aristotle invented the disciplines of logic, biology, and ethics and he was considered the expert on these topics well into the middle ages.

Aristotle was born in Stagira Macedonia in 384 BC and was sent to Plato’s academy in Athens around the age of seventeen. After the death of Plato, Aristotle went to Assos for roughly 3 years and then moved again to the island of Lesbos. During this period, it is thought that Aristotle developed biology, with a focus on marine biology. His biological notes were so detailed that some of his observations were not confirmed until the development of higher-powered magnification. In 343 BC the king of Macedon asked Aristotle to tutor his son. Thus, Aristotle became the tutor of one of the most famous men in the ancient world – Alexander the Great.

Alexander the Great conquered the then known ancient world and in doing so, he spread the ideas of the Greeks to the furthest reaches of his empire. This political and military expansion had, in no small measure, solidified the prominence of Aristotle in the west. This expansion set the stage for the Greco-Roman world that existed during the time of Christ.

During the early formation of the church, Christian thinkers drew upon the thought of the Greeks in their apologetic and polemical writings. Augustine, for example, was particularly prone to using the thought and categories of the Neo-Platonists. In fact, many early Christian creeds framed their language about God and the incarnation in terms that were familiar to the Greeks. Terms like substance, essence, consubstantial are all terms that comport with and are likely derived from Greek thought.

While some of our earliest church fathers were influenced by Platonism and Neo-Platonism, later Islamic and western Christian thinkers were primarily influenced by Aristotle. During the 12^th and 13^th centuries, Aristotle’s works were translated into Latin, making them accessible to the Christian west. One of the first major Christian advocates of Aristotle was Albert the Great. He worked to use the categories of Aristotelian thought to elucidate doctrines of the Christian faith. But it was Albert’s student, Thomas Aquinas, who thoroughly incorporated Aristotle’s thinking into the church.

In the Protestant church, Martin Luther rejected Aquinas’ underlying commitment to Aristotelian realism. But thinkers like Jacob Arminius and some from the Reformed scholastic tradition took Aquinas seriously and hence the influence of Aristotle carried on into the Protestant world.

One of the largest contributions Aristotle gave to the west, and to the western church, was his emphasis on the observable world. Plato tended to emphasize the reality and primacy of the world of forms. For Plato the unobserved world of forms was more durable, lasting, and in a sense “real” than the changing material world. Aristotle placed greater importance on learning about the world through observation and systematic reasoning about what we observe.

In a very important way, Aristotle helped usher in what we now know as modern science. He created a way to meaningfully divide the sciences according to the object studied and the way in which the object is to be studied. Thus, he gave us a principled way to talk about different scientific disciplines.

But one of the more fascinating aspects of Aristotle’s thought, for Christian thinkers, is that he placed great emphasis on the sensible world without reducing the world to the stuff we detect with our senses. Contrary to contemporary naturalists, Aristotle believed that we could get at the underlying metaphysical principles that make sense of the material world and that the world was composed of at least two irreducible realities – matter and form. This was appealing to Christian thinkers who wanted to affirm, along with Genesis, that the material world is good, but it is not reducible to matter.

It is difficult to overstate the impact Aristotle has had on the western world. But in our admiration of him, we must also note that some of his thinking has been shown to be wrong. His physics, for example, is outdated. Additionally, his view of women and foreigners left much to be desired. So, while his ethics serves as the groundwork for later natural law theories, some of the ideas he espoused should be corrected and or rejected.

Does that Bible Teach That We Have Free Will?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Tue, 4 Jun 2019 21:12:00 -0700

Photo by William White on Unsplash

The Bible has lot of things to say about lots of topics. It doesn't speak specifically about how much screen time kids in middle school should have, but it speaks to what we should put our time and energy into. Sometimes the Bible implies certain things about a topic. For example, when it says that we shouldn't murder, we can infer that if something is murder, we shouldn't do it (i.e. abortion).

Other times the Bible assumes that you already have some prerequisite knowledge that doesn't need to be elaborated on. It's assumed that you have enough understanding to sufficiently grasp the main teaching point of the text.

I think the nature of free will is something like the last option. The Biblical authors assume that you have some concept of free will that you are bringing with you when you read the text. That's not to say that the Scriptures can't set the parameters for your view of free will. It just means that the Bible doesn't offer a treatise on the subject. So when we try to determine "what the Bible says about free will" we shouldn't expect it to directly address contemporary philosophical debates on the subject.

Often what happens is we look to specific passages where commands are given to do something or to make a choice:

Gen 4:7 Is it not true that if you do what is right, you will be fine? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it.”

Deu 30:19 Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live!

Proverbs 3:31 Do not envy a violent man, and do not choose any of his ways.

But these kinds of verses are usually unnecessary as the debate isn't usually about whether or not people have free will. Even a staunch 5 point Calvinist believes that people have free will. In our unregenerate state, we can choose among a variety of evil actions. And once our will is freed (regenerate), we have the God empowered ability to make good choices.

So there may be very extreme cases where a believer says the Bible teaches that we don't have free will, but those individuals are not speaking from within mainstream Christianity. Only very fringe groups say that we don't have free will.

The real question is "what do we mean by free will?" Additional questions among Bible believing Christians include:

What kinds of things can we chose?
What is the difference between the "unregerate" and "regerate" will?
What does grace do to the will?

These are the sorts of questions that Christians ask about free will.

The philosophical discussion behind these theological questions has to do with whether or not free will is compatible with determinism. Determinism is the view that all things are determined. One can maintain that all things are determined by the laws of nature or one can believe that all things are determined by God.

If you think that determinism is compatible with free will, then you hold to a philosophical position called compatibilism. Essentially affirmed that free will and determinism are compatible. If you maintain that free will is not compatible with determinism, then you are an incompatibilist. Those who emphasize God's sovereignty are generally compatibilists and they generally adhere to some form of Calvinism (in Protestant circles). Those who emphasize God's working with human free will in a way that doesn't necessitate the will are generally incompatibilists and they generally adhere to some form of Arminianism (again in Protestant circles).

In summary, almost everyone in mainstream Christianity believes that the Bible teaches that we have free will. What we disagree about is what free will means, what it entails, how it is affected by grace, etc. If you haven't already run into the Calvinist / Arminian debate, then it's likely you haven't read much theology. It's one of the first major in-house debates that people learn about when they get into theology.

Resources For Those New To Apologetics

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 12:49:00 -0800

This post is for the purpose of giving people who are new to apologetics resources for developing their skill in apologetics. I'll probably add to this list as I have time.

In general, I don't like giving people popular level books. Part of it is because if people aren't willing to read the more scholarly articles, I think they probably need to not be doing apologetics. The other part is that many popular level books / articles on apologetics can be confusing. Here are some articles / sites / books that I recommend to get started in apologetics. I am including resources that are not specifically apologetics books because the task of apologetics requires you to have knowledge of a variety of topics.

Here are some apologists to avoid:

Alex McFarland
Josh McDowell
Ken Ham
Kent Hovind
Hank Hanegraaff
Ray Comfort

Books

Developing the Christian Mind

Love Your God with All Your Mind - Introduction to the Christian life of the mind. I recommend if this if you don't know how the life of the mind fits into your Christian life.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind - Exploration of the roots of evangelical anti-intellectualism and response.

Apologetics

Reasonable Faith - Introduction to Christian Apologetics. Craig has an easier version of this book that is geared to high school students. I recommend that you man up and read this one.

Scaling the Secular City - Another introduction to Christian Apologetics. Moreland is a better philosopher than Craig and Craig is probably better with the evidence for the resurrection.

Handbook of Christian Apologetics - Peter Kreeft's intro to apologetics. I am more in agreement with his philosophical background than with Craig and Moreland.

Building Belief - Apologetics text my friend recommends. He used to used it when teaching his seminary apologetics courses. I have not read it.

Mere Christianity - Overview of core christian tenants along with a prose defense of those tenants. Fun read that is insightful.

The Last Superstition - A good response to the New Atheism. Almost anything by Edward Feser is good.

Tactics - This book explains HOW to do apologetics effectively. I highly recommend this book as a supplement to other books listed above.

The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus - Great introduction to the evidences for the resurrection of Christ. Habermas and Licona take what's called the minimal facts approach in that they try to use the most widely agreed upon facts and base their argument off or those facts.

The Historical Reliability of the New Testament - Classic defense of the New Testament

Specific Issues

The Unaborted Socrates - Entertaining book that teaches you the arguments for the pro-life position. It is formatted like a Socratic dialogue. The "Socrates Meets" books by Kreeft are worth your time and are usually quick reads. See this link for more.

Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid Air - A good response to relativism. Super practical for on the street conversations.

Money, Greed, and God - Defense of Capitalism

Neighboring Faiths: A Christian Introduction to World Religions - This is from the professor who taught our world religion class in seminary. Great guy! He's thoughtful and offers a fair presentation.

Philosophy

Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview - Introduction to the main issues in contemporary philosophy. I personally don't agree with many of the positions defended in this book, but it does introduce readers to the main issues people should be aware of in a way that is accessible to the thoughtful reader.

Philosophy of Religion - Introduction to philosophy of religion. This is another series that offers some good material on Christianity and philosophy. Click this link to see more in this series.

Christianity and the Nature of Science - Very good introduction to the philosophy of science from a Christian philosopher.

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Animate Nature - Excellent book if you are interested in Aristotle's views on animate nature and you can afford it!

Websites

Biblical Training - https://www.biblicaltraining.org
Closer to Truth - https://www.closertotruth.com
Institute of Catholic Culture - https://instituteofcatholicculture.org
University of Oxford - https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/open
Reasonable Faith - https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media
Veritas Forum - http://www.veritas.org/
Lumen Christi - https://www.youtube.com/user/LumenChristiInt/videos
Orthodox Christian Network - http://myocn.net/the-rudder/
Apologetics 315 (has good and some not so good stuff) - https://apologetics315.com
Library of Historical Apologetics - http://historicalapologetics.org/
Moral Apologetics - https://www.moralapologetics.com/

Blogs

Alexander Pruss's Blog
Edward Feser Blog
Maverick Philosopher
Uncommon Descent

Intelligent Design

These days there are more online resources than you have time for. I have tried to include a reasonable set of resources.

Documentary Hypothesis

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Thu, 8 Mar 2018 15:26:00 -0800

Introduction

A careful reading of the first five books of the Old Testament (Pentateuch) reveals peculiar literary, stylistic, and ideological characteristics. Some of these characteristics are more immediately noticeable, while others require some knowledge of the Hebrew language. More importantly, a large number of biblical scholars claim that the Pentateuch contains diverging literary, stylistic, and ideological characteristics which, they claim, imply different source material throughout the Pentateuch. In modern times, these “divergences” are taken as evidence that the books of Moses were written long after the death of Moses. The theory that adheres to multiple non-Mosaic authors of the Pentateuch is known as the Documentary Hypothesis.

From Astruc to Hupfeld

The individual credited with planting the seeds for the documentary hypothesis is Jean Astruc. In his book Conjectures Concerning the Original Memoranda Which It Appears Moses Used to Compose the Book of Genesis, he observes that the first chapter of Genesis refers to God as Elohim, while the second chapter mainly refers to God as Jehovah or Yahweh. While this observation had been made long before Astruc, those who hold the documentary view continue to give credit to Astruc for the discovery.

Astruc’s book, written in 1753, did not question the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; rather, it questioned the sources Moses used to compile the book of Genesis. Astruc speculated that the different names of God could be an indicator of different written sources that Moses used to write Genesis. He supposed that the criterion of divine names could be used to determine which written sources Moses used when writing various sections of Genesis. He thought that the book of Genesis had two primary sources and as many as ten other sources.

A few decades later Johann Gottfried Eichhorn wrote an influential book titled, Introduction to the Old Testament. His work was far more influential than Astruc’s book. Eichhorn presented three arguments in support of the notion that Genesis had been compiled from several sources:

1. Argument from Style
a. Argument from Divine Names
2. Argument from Continuous Narrative
3. Argument from Parallel Passages

The argument from style starts with the idea that authors are consistent in their use of style throughout a given document or book. For example, authors typically use similar phrases, vocabulary, idioms, and allusions throughout the entire literary work. If an ancient work contains a significant degree of variation in style, it may indicate a variety of sources or possibly a plurality of authors.

Eichhorn took variations in style, particularly the alternating use of divine names, to mean that Moses used different written sources to compile the book of Genesis. He reasoned that the best explanation for the alternating use of Jehovah and Elohim was that Moses actually copied from two written documents. Rather than Moses simply reading ancient documents and putting them into his own words, Eichhorn took this literary feature to imply that Moses simply copied from two separate documents.

The argument from continuous narrative is perhaps more compelling than the argument from style. If all of the passages of Genesis that refer to God as Elohim are extracted and put into a continuous narrative, the result appears to be a complete story. Similarly, if the passages that refer to God as Jehovah are extracted, a separate continuous narrative may be discovered. This strengthened Eichhorn’s belief that Moses simply copied from at least two ancient documents.

The third argument begins with the observation of parallel accounts of a given story. For example, Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are retellings of a single story: namely, the account of creation. It may be argued that a single author would not compose a narrative containing double accounts of the same story. It would be redundant and distract the reader from the overall story. According to Eichhorn, the best explanation of this literary feature is that Moses pieced together the creation account using pre-existing documents.

Some observations should be made. First, both Astruc and Eichhorn were primarily concerned with the source material for the book of Genesis and the first few chapters of Exodus. The multiple source hypotheses, at this stage, had not been applied to the rest of the Pentateuch. Second, at this point, only two main sources had been delineated. Several possible unknown sources were posited, but they were considered to be speculative. The two main sources were known as the J and E sources.

In 1805, a man by the name of Willem Martin Lebrecht De Wette proposed an additional source. Although he was from the school of “Fragmentary Theorists”, he contributed to what would eventually be the standard documentary view. De Wette’s contribution comes from 22nd chapter of 2 Kings, where King Josiah finds the book of the law and institutes his reforms in accordance with it. De Wette theorizes that Josiah and the local priests conspired together in order to bring the worship centers of Israel to Jerusalem. To accomplish this, they would need a divine edict. God Himself would have to reveal to the people His laws and expectations for worship. De Wette concludes that Josiah and the priests concocted a book of the law in order to give divine authority to their desired reforms.

As evidence of this theory, De Wette points out the correlation that exists between the content of the book of Deuteronomy and King Josiah’s implemented policies. Interestingly enough, Josiah’s reforms reflected the commands given in that book. De Wette supposes that Josiah and the local priests, who were interested in gaining wealth, wrote the book of Deuteronomy. While this theory is not currently accepted in its entirety, the conclusion that Deuteronomy was written during the reign of King Josiah is orthodoxy within higher critical circles. De Wette’s contribution was the addition of a D document to the existing J and E documents.

Finally, in 1853, one of the largest contributions to the current documentary theory was made by Hermann Hupfeld. Hupfeld wrote a book entitled The Sources of Genesis. In that book he recognized the J, E and D sources that had been formulated prior to his work. However, he divided the E document into two different sources. Hupfeld observed that some sections of the E document resembled the J document in style, vocabulary and subject matter. However, the use of the name Elohim barred Hupfeld from concluding that J and E were actually the same source.

Hupfeld, therefore, divided the E document into E1 and E2. He ordered the writings of the documents to be E1, E2, J, and then D. Hupfeld worked from the notion that E1 was the groundwork document that other documents built upon. This groundwork would eventually be supplemented by later documents E2 and J. At some point a redactor, or a string of redactors, compiled these writings to form the Pentateuch.

Hupfeld’s reasons for this division are based primarily on style. He compares the style of Genesis 1 to that of later portions of the Pentateuch where Elohim is used. The style used in the first chapter of Genesis is much more like that found in Leviticus. After Genesis 20, passages that use Elohim are much more similar stylistically to the J source.

The Graf-Wellhausen View

The current documentary hypothesis is largely the result of the writings of Julius Wellhausen. He wrote two very influential books which resulted in the popularization of the documentary view. His writings were, in large part, a restatement of the works of Karl Heinrich Graf and Abraham Kuenen. The work of these three men primarily dealt with the order of the existing source material. The result of their work is currently considered the classical documentary view.

Two philosophical ideas gave rise to the change in priority of the existing source documents. First, the dialectical idealism of G.W.F. Hegel allowed these men to view the history of the world as something guided by a collective will. This will or “Geist” was driven forward by a collective thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Through this process the collective will or spirit of man could evolve until it ultimately reached what Hegel called “Absolute Spirit”. Humanity would, through an ideal evolutionary process, eventually come to know itself.

Second, the theory of biological evolution proposed by Charles Darwin was becoming increasingly popular. Darwin was not the only one to propose the theory of evolution, but there is a correlation between the publication of his book The Origin of Species and the widespread acceptance of the theory. During the 1860’s various thinkers worked out some of the implications that Darwinism had on their respective disciplines. Literary criticism was among the disciplines that utilized the basic evolutionary framework to evaluate its own subject matter.

If science and philosophy could show the spurious nature of the belief in supernatural intervention, then it may be appropriate to find a new approach to biblical studies. If biology could find new ways to explain the origins of life on earth without appealing to the supernatural, perhaps the Old Testament itself could be shown to be the product of known natural causes. In biology Darwin found that life progressed from simple to complex; perhaps religion developed that way as well. In philosophy, Hegel thought that the collective soul of man progressed from a primitive understanding of itself to a well-developed understanding of itself. These new paradigms shaped newly formed sciences into machines that turned out naturalistic explanations of everything!

All of the ideas necessary to formulate a well-developed documentary view were now in place. Four “well-established” primary source divisions had been made. The philosophy supporting a historical process of development from simple ideas to complex ideas began to take root in the scientific community. All that remained was to apply this framework to the discipline of source criticism. The only problem was that the existing order of the source documents did not fit with the new philosophy. The E1 document was supposed to be the groundwork for the remaining three documents. This document was renamed P, because of its apparent priestly origin, and re-dated to some post-exilic time.

The classical formulation of the documentary hypothesis thought that the J source was first because of its anthropomorphic view of God. That source had an earthy quality in that it talked about God walking in the garden and smelling sacrifices offered to Him. The E document tends to make God more distant. The D document is complex in its formulation of laws and ceremonies. It shows a well-developed set of religious beliefs and practices. It is the P document, however, that reveals the most complexity. Allan A. MacRae elaborates on this development in his book, JEDP: Lectures on the Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch:

According to [the Wellhausen theory], the regulations become more and more strict. In the J document, a man can make an altar anywhere. When Abraham comes into the land he makes an altar at one place after another. Wherever he is, he sets up an altar and sacrifices. Deuteronomy, however, says that there is only one place where sacrifices can be offered. The P document does not repeat the restriction so emphasized in Deuteronomy, but assumes it. Thus the critics claim that there is development from simple laws to complicated regulations… The critics claim that there is a great increase in complexity between the J and P documents.

The development of the Pentateuch goes from an anthropomorphic view of God to transcendent view of God, from simple rules to complex regulations, and from general rules to specific legal codes. All of this was consistent with Wellhausen’s evolutionary view of religion. By the time of Wellhausen, people began to doubt the historicity of the Pentateuch. Wellhausen himself considered the Pentateuch to be a response to the cults during the postexilic times. Shortly after Wellhausen, a large amount of criticism came from biblical scholars and archeologists. Criticisms ranged from slight modifications to the dating of various source documents to the outright rejection of the methods and conclusions of the documentary theory.

Contemporary Higher Critical Thought

Wellhausen laid the foundation for higher critics who would come after him. His fundamental contentions, however, are not observations derived from the text; rather, they are higher critical theories arrived at by methods generated by Darwinian and Hegelian philosophy. Nonetheless, the following ideas are the assumptions from which modern critical scholars work:

1. Religion evolved from simple animism, to polytheism, to monotheism.
2. Religion progressed from a nature/fertility stage, to a spiritual/ethical stage, to a priestly/legal stage.
3. The Pentateuch contains contradictions.
4. The Pentateuch was written by rival priestly circles.
5. Much of the Pentateuch was written in response to political problems taking place long after the death of Moses.

An example of a contemporary higher critic is that of Richard Elliott Friedman. In his book Who Wrote the Bible, Friedman attempts to defend the documentary hypothesis on a popular level. He starts by describing and questioning the tradition which ascribes Mosaic authorship to the Pentateuch. He writes, “There are traditions concerning who wrote each of the biblical books – the Five Books of Moses are supposed to be by Moses, the book of Lamentations by the prophet Jeremiah, half of the Psalms by King David – but how is one to know if these traditional ascriptions are correct?”

Friedman then goes on to explain why he thinks the tradition is not correct. His reasons for denying the traditional authorship of the Pentateuch are birthed from the arguments already discussed in this paper. He, of course, goes into much more detail and gives numerous examples, but the reasoning is similar. For Friedman and most other contemporary biblical scholars, the documentary view is the standard view. In his book Who Wrote the Bible, Friedman describes the current intellectual climate:
At present, however, there is hardly a biblical scholar in the world actively working on the problem who would claim that the Five Books of Moses were written by Moses – or by any one person.

Scholars argue about the number of different authors who wrote any given biblical book. They argue about when the various documents were written and about whether a particular verse belongs to this or that document. They express varying degrees of satisfaction or historical purposes. But the hypothesis itself continues to be the starting point of research, no serious student of the Bible can fail to study it, and no other explanation of the evidence has come close to challenging it.

According to Friedman, the current academic scene fosters research that presupposes the Graf-Wellhausen framework. During the time of Astruc, Eichhorn and DeWette, an individual could be punished for criticizing the traditional view. Today, a biblical professor who holds to the traditional view, or even attempts to defend the traditional view, is not taken seriously.

Example Reasoning for the Documentary View

A lengthy explanation of the reasoning of higher critical thought is beyond the scope of this paper and beyond the expertise of the author of this paper. However, some examples must be given to show the basic reasoning process of the higher critic. Arguments for the documentary view stem from a variety of observations. These observations are interpreted in light of the higher critics naturalistic / evolutionary assumptions. Friedman points out several potential problems for those who hold to the traditional Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch:

1. Contradictions exist between parallel accounts throughout the books supposedly written by Moses.
2. The Pentateuch includes things that Moses could not have known.
3. The Pentateuch records things that Moses would not have said.
4. The Books of Moses refers to Moses in the third person.
5. The Pentateuch describes places where Moses had never been, and uses language that reflects another time and location.
6. If Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch, he must have written about his death. The style of writing used to write about the death of Moses is consistent with the previous writings in Deuteronomy.
7. The text uses phases like “to this day”.

These observations are the starting point for the critical scholar. While all scholars admit that literary parallels exist, critical scholars take these parallel accounts as evidence of a variety of authors. A few examples of parallelisms may be given from the book of Genesis:

Table 1. Genesis Parallelisms
Story Chapters
Creation 1 and 2
Abraham claims Sarah is his sister 12:10-20 and 20:1-17
God changes Jacob’s name to Israel 32:28 and 35:10

It appears that the creation accounts in chapters one and two of Genesis are contradictory accounts of the same event. In these are parallel accounts, the order of creation is different. In the first chapter, man is last to be created. In the second chapter, man is created before the plants and trees. Surely Moses would not contradict himself this blatantly. It would seem, to a higher critic, that a better explanation of this problem is that a later author or redactor pieced together this material.

In the third parallel, God names Jacob two times. In the second account, God says to Jacob, “You will no longer be called Jacob.” However, a few chapters prior to this account, Jacob had already been named Israel. If God had already given Jacob the name Israel, then there is no reason to name him Israel again. The higher critic may conclude from this that a competing school or a redactor unfamiliar with the other account added this account of God’s renaming of Jacob.

In addition to the problematic parallelisms, the Book of Moses records things that Moses would not have said or would not have known. For example, if Moses was the most humble man in all of the earth, he would not have claimed to be the most humble man in all the earth. It also seems unlikely that Moses would he write about his own death. Chapter thirty-four of Deuteronomy says that the LORD buried Moses and that “to this day” no one knows where his grave “is”. The fact that the author wrote “to this day” shows that someone after Moses wrote that section of the book.

Furthermore, the fact that the style used in the last portion of Deuteronomy is identical to the rest of the book. If Moses did not write the last portion, and the style of the last portion is just like the style used throughout the book, it would seem that whoever wrote the last portion of the book also wrote the rest of the book. Indeed, according to the higher critic, Moses never claimed to write this book, and he is always referred to in the third person. Accordingly, the higher critic thinks there is no reason to think that Moses wrote the book of Deuteronomy.

Evidence for Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch

Consequences of Denying Mosaic Authorship

While higher critics may not see the theological implications of their theoretical speculations, it is important for Christians to understand the consequences of denying Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Later authors of the Old and New Testaments ascribe Mosaic authorship to the Pentateuch. If Moses did not write it, then these “inspired” authors are mistaken. If the documentary hypothesis is correct, it would mean that whoever wrote the Bible mislead its intended readers concerning the authorship of the Pentateuch. This would utterly destroy the authority of Scripture and undermine the Christian faith.

Old Testaments Claims about the Pentateuch

It is important then to look at what the Old Testament says about the Pentateuch and what is says about Moses. In Exodus 17:14 the LORD told Moses, “Write for me a memorial in a book… that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek.” Later, chapter 24:4 says, “And Moses wrote all the words of Yahweh”. Verse seven of that same chapter says that Moses read the book of the covenant in the hearing of all the people. It is clear from these passages that Moses wrote something! If Moses read something, it implies that he had something to read. If the composer of the source document or some redactor wrote this, it would have been misleading at best and outright deceptive at worst.

Several Old Testament references exist to confirm that Moses wrote down the events of the Exodus and subsequent wanderings in the desert. The following are only a few examples of this:

Table 2. Old Testament Allusions to Mosaic Authorship

Exodus 34:27-28 27Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28bAnd he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant – the Ten Commandments.

Numbers 33:1-2 1Here are the stages in the journey of the Israelites when they came out of Egypt by divisions under the leadership of Moses and Aaron. 2At the LORD’s command Moses recorded the stages in their journey.

Deuteronomy 31:9,11 9 So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel. 11 when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God at the place he will choose, you shall read this law before them in their hearing.

1 Kings 2:3 3 and observe what the LORD your God requires: Walk in his ways, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws, and requirements, as written in the Law of Moses.

2 Kings 14:6 6 Yet he did not put the sons of the assassins to death, in accordance with what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses where the LORD commanded: “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers: each is to die for his own sins.”

2 Kings 21:8 8 I will not again make the feet of Israelites wander from the land I gave their forefathers, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them and will keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them.

Ezra 6:18 18 And they installed the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their groups for the service of God at Jerusalem, according to what is written in the Book of Moses.

Nehemiah13:11 On the day the Book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people…

Daniel 9:11-13 11 Therefore the curses and sworn judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us, because we have sinned against you. 13 Just as it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us.
Malachi 4:44 Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.

From this table it is clear that there are at least some, during the writing of the Old Testament, who ascribed Mosaic authorship to the Pentateuch. However, these references do not appear to impress the higher critic. They may respond by suggesting that, at best, this shows that Moses wrote parts of the Pentateuch. In fact, they may say, the first cited Scripture passage tells you what Moses wrote down. Exodus 34:28b says that Moses wrote down the Ten Commandments. By no means does that imply that he wrote the rest of the Pentateuch. Nor does it prove that the documents used by later redactor(s) were documents penned by Moses.

However, this objection misses the point. A well-established tradition had been established early on in the history of Israel. Even liberal scholars admit that converging traditions pointed to Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. Those who hold to the documentary hypothesis must adopt two very cynical assumptions in order to maintain their view:

The tradition of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch was concocted.
Later redactors and compilers of the Pentateuch intentionally mislead the people of Israel.

This, however, is a kind of a priori rejection of the textual and historical evidence. In his book A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, Gleason Archer points out that Wellhausen simply “passes over in silence” verses that conflict with his theory. Wellhausen does not deal with the passages cited in table 2. His evolutionary model of the origin and development of religion trumps biblical evidence and historical tradition.

New Testament Claims about the Pentateuch

The tradition of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch carries into the New Testament as well. In the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ declares, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how can you believe my words?” Jesus affirmed the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, but the current documentary school holds that Jesus was wrong about the authorship of the Pentateuch.

Jesus, however, was not the only New Testament figure to affirm Mosaic authorship. As the following table shows, several New Testament authors affirmed this:

Table 3. New Testament Allusions to Mosaic Authorship
NT Reference Scripture Person Speaking

John 7:19 19Has Moses not given you the law? Jesus

Acts 3:22 22 For Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people.’ Peter – in reference to Dt. 18:15

Acts chapter 7 Stephan recounts the life of Moses Stephan recounts the life of Moses

Romans 10:5 5 Moses describes in this way the righteousness that is by the law: “The man who does these things will live by them.” Paul – in reference to Lev. 18:5

1 Corinthians 9:9 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Paul – in reference to Dt. 25:4

2 Corinthians 3:15 15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. Paul

Again, the above examples are a small sample of testimonies to the authorship of the Pentateuch. The authors of the New Testament considered Moses to be a historical person who led the Hebrew people out of Egypt. There are no New Testament passages that deny Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and there are plenty that suggest he did write it. What is more, the tradition that Moses wrote the Pentateuch extends beyond the New Testament.

The Ante-Nicene Fathers continued this tradition. In The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, Clement refers to Moses as the one who “noted down in the sacred books all the injunctions which were given him.” Ignatius also testifies in favor of Mosaic authorship in The Epistle of Ignatius to the Antiochians. He writes, “For Moses, the faithful servant of God, when he said, ‘The Lord thy God is one Lord,’ and thus proclaimed that there was only one God, did yet forthwith confess also our Lord when he said, ‘The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone from the Lord.’ And again, ‘And God said, Let Us make man after our image: and so God made man, after the image of God made He him.’ And further ‘In the image of God made He man.’” Clearly these men affirmed the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Several books of the Pentateuch are cited in the above two quotes and many more could be given.

Internal Evidences of Mosaic Authorship

Another way to determine who wrote an ancient text is to examine the internal evidence. If the text in question makes reference to historical events, current issues, geographical or climatic conditions that are consistent with a certain time period, it would make sense that the text would have originated from that time period. A summary of Gleason Archer’s internal evidences are given below:

1. Eyewitness details appear in the Exodus account.
a. Ex. 15:27 records the exact number of fountains and palm trees at Elim.
2. The author of Genesis and Exodus shows a thorough acquaintance with Egypt.
a. The author is familiar with Egyptian names such as Ōn as the native name for Heliopolis.
b. The author uses a greater percentage of Egyptian words than elsewhere in the Old Testament.
3. The author shows a consistently foreign or extra-Palestinian view-point so far as Canaan is concerned.
a. The references to crop sequence in connection with the plague of hail are consistent with an Egyptian weather pattern.
b. The flora and fauna referred to are Egyptian or Sinaitic, and are never distinctively Palestinian.
c. The narrative of the Exodus route is filled with authentic local references which have been verified by modern archaeology.
4. The atmosphere of Exodus through Numbers is unmistakably that of the desert, not of an agricultural people settled in their ancestral possessions.
5. There are references to archaic customs which are demonstrable for the second millennium B.C., but which did not continue during the first millennium.
6. There are significant archaisms in the language of the Pentateuch.
a. The pronoun “she” is frequently spelled HW’ instead of the regular HY’. There are only three occurrences of this spelling in the rest of the Old Testament.
7. There is a most remarkable unity of arrangement which underlies the entire Pentateuch and links it together into a progressive whole, even though successive stages in revelation (during Moses’ writing career of four decades) result in a certain amount of overlapping and restatement.

There are many internal evidences that the Book of Moses was written during the time of Moses. If someone wrote the Book of Moses hundreds of years after Moses, they would have had to meticulously reconstruct these historical, geographical, and literary features. It would have required a calculated attempt to deceive the readers of the Book of Moses.

Criticisms of the Documentary Hypothesis

While the above evidences are not exhaustive, they show that there is a basis for claiming that Moses wrote the Book of Moses. It is not a mere guessing about the author of these books. There are textual, literary, historical and archeological reasons for claiming Mosaic authorship of these books. This is in sharp contrast to the methods and conclusions of the documentary view. While the traditional view has been supported by tradition, archeological evidence and literary unity, the documentary hypothesis requires little more than the observation of stylistic diversity and a keen imagination.

For example, there are no objective reasons to infer a plurality of authors on the basis of the alternating use of divine names. It is an interesting speculation, but to turn speculation into fact without evidence is not scientific. Gleason Archer points out that alternating names was a common literary device that was employed was Homer’s epics. Yet there are no objective reasons to suppose that Homer used Z (Zeus) and K (Kroniōn) documents to piece together his epics. If this was a common literary feature of works of that time, then the need to infer different sources based on divine names disappears.

Further, the criterion of divine names was broken up by Hupfeld into E1 and E2 documents. This division weakens the original source criterion because E no longer serves as the sole criterion for source division. Hupfeld saw stylistic commonalities between certain portions of E1 and J. He then complicated the original source division. However, this complication may actually call into question the original source division based on divine names. Dramatic changes in the criteria for source division may reveal the subjective nature of the documentary method. It is very difficult, if not impossible; to be sure that a given stylistic feature is an objective basis for a source division.

A similar problem exists with the arguments from parallel passages and continuous narratives. It is not only possible, but likely, that the Hebrews had multiple forms of expressing themselves. As Archer says, “The Documentarians have also assumed without proof that ancient Hebrew authors were incapable of variety in their modes of expressions.” Perhaps parallelisms were intentional literary devices to convey a particular thought. Archer comments, “Part of the answer to the theory of doublets may be found in the nature of Hebrew literary style… Careful examination of the alleged doublets and parallel accounts… tends to show that these phenomena are capable of a far more natural and unforced explanation of the basis of single authorship than is possible on the theory of multiple sources.” There is no reason to reject the idea that Moses used repetition and literary variety to accomplish his literary task.

The Potter's Freedom: The Vital Issue

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 18:45:00 -0800

Prior to starting my studies at Southern Evangelical Seminary, I read a book by Norman Geisler titled "Chosen but Free". I was intrigued by the book as it purported to be a balanced view of the doctrine of election. At that time I was debating the topic quite regularly with my friends and this book was one of the few books available on the topic from a non-Calvinist perspective.

Not long after CBF came out, the reformed apologist James White wrote a book titled "The Potter's Freedom". This book echoed some of the more widely held criticisms of Geisler's position and capitalized on the "strangeness" of the views presented in CBF. In this series of blog posts, I will not be responding to Geisler. This is not because I necessarily agree with him on every point; it's simply that I want to focus on White's work.

In this blog post, I want to focus on what White calls "The Vital Issue." According to White, there is a criterion that serves to delineate between the "supernatural religion of Christianity" and the "man-centered religions that surround us." This delineation has to do with whether or not you think the work of salvation is "perfectly accomplished by God for His own glory" or it "is dependent upon man's cooperation and assistance."

In short, the delineation is between monergism and synergism along with "The truth of predestination (God's freedom) and man's depravity (his will in bondage)." White claims that you cannot truly be reformed apart from upholding sola fide AND the truth of God's absolute freedom AND man's bondage in sin. He spends a good deal of time juxtaposing Calvinism with what he calls man centered religions. The implication here is that Geisler's position (along with pretty much anyone who is not in line with his brand of Calvinism) is not truly Calvinistic and is therefore a man-centered religion.

This seems to be fairly standard rhetoric for James White. He is a professional polemicist for the reformed faith and he does it with gusto. However, in doing so, he ends up using a lot of rhetoric that is uncharitable to his opposition.

What I would like to do here is discuss two of these uncharitable renderings.

#1 Non-Calvinists think that God requires man's permission to act in the world.

James White says,

"So many are quick to say, 'Oh yes, I believe in the sovereignty of God.' Yet, when pressed to believe consistently that God truly can do as He pleases without getting permission from anyone, including man, we discover that many who in fact confess such a belief in practice deny it."

However, even charismatic and Pentecostal churches, that believe God doesn't act unless we ask Him to, would not agree with this characterization of them. They don't deny that God could act unilaterally. In fact, a good number of them would say that God can perform logical contradictions if He wanted to. For all of their talk of "You have to allow God work in your life", they don't think that this implies a limitation on God's part. They see this as the way that God chooses to operate, not the way that He must operate.

Furthermore, this is not a valid characterization of the classical arminian. Classical arminians uphold that God can do whatever He desires and that the will of sinful man is in bondage to sin. They maintain that God must give a person prevenient grace before a person can receive (not demand) salvation. No classical arminian would audaciously claim (as White seems to say) that man sits on his throne and allows a servile and wimpy God to grant him salvation. Yet these are the kind of word pictures that White uses to portray non-Calvinists.

Nor is it an accurate portrayal of Roman Catholics. The Reformers themselves inherited their view of God and His nature from Roman Catholic theology despite their claim that it is derived strictly from Scripture.

Nor is it an accurate characterization of Eastern Orthodox believers. Even though the Eastern Orthodox don't uphold the Augustinian teachings about original sin (and are expressly synergistic), they don't characterize God in this way either. If anything, their view of God is the most transcendent in that they believe that God transcends being itself!

So for the vast majority of Christendom, this characterization is simply vacuous.

I understand that my experience is limited, but I really don't know a single person (laity / pastor / professor) who thinks that God needs man's permission to act. They think that God has chosen (in some way) to include the wills of men in the process of salvation. How that is worked out varies, but people who deny Calvinism don't think of God as some wimpy being who can't act unless creatures allow Him to. They see Him as a God who respects the faculty (human will) that He created.

# 2 Non-Calvinists think that it must either be God causing human actions OR man causing human actions.

White seems to think that non-Calvinists don't have a way of dealing with passages that talk about God causing some act that is also caused by a human.

White brings up Isaiah 10:5-7 to show how God used the Assyrians as an instrument to punish Israel. He follows this up with a discussion on how God would then punish the Assyrians for what they did, even though God caused them to do it.

10:5 Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead,
a [rod] with which I angrily punish.
10:6 I sent him against a godless nation,
I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry,
to take plunder and to carry away loot,
to trample them down like dirt in the streets.
10:7 But he does not agree with this,
his mind does not reason this way,
for his goal is to destroy,
and to eliminate many nations.

White goes on to say that "Assyria is not a willing party to the punishment of Israel". He also points out the story in Genesis where Joseph says to his older brothers "As for you, you meant to harm me, but God intended it for a good purpose, so he could preserve the lives of many people, as you can see this day. Thus God had one intention for in the selling of Joseph and Josephs brothers had a different intention.

These text supposedly show the following:

That God has wisely and perfectly decreed whatsoever comes to pass in this universe.
Nothing is outside His control
Nothing is without purpose
Nothing in the universe (including the actions of men) is beyond the positive decree of God.

While I agree with White on some of these points, these texts do not teach what he says they teach.

We can conclude, from these texts, that God can use people to achieve His purposes. However, the text does not say how He does this, simply that He does. We can see from the text that the Assyrian's had one intention in the destruction of Israel and that God had a different intention for the same action. But we can't conclude from the text that God caused the Assyrians to have the intentions they had. What we know from the text is that God used the Assyrians to carry out His will. White and others fill in the gaps here with reformed theology.

In the story of Joseph we see that God intended the selling of Joseph for some good end while his brothers sold Joseph for some bad end. However, nothing in these passages demand a reading like the following:

God caused the brothers to sin by performing an evil action with evil intentions.
God brought about evil desires in the brothers so that Joseph would one day save many lives.
God positively decreed that Joseph's brothers sell Joseph so that one day it would save many lives.

Even if you maintain something like the above, it isn't something the text explicitly teaches, you must bring your theology to bear on the texts to read them that way.

The text tells you that there is some (unspecified) way in which the brothers of Joseph and God brought about the same action of selling Joseph to the Ishmaelites. The text affirms that the brothers had one set of intentions and God had a different intention. But this is true even among the brothers. Each of the brothers have a causal role in what happens to Joseph.

Both Reuben and Judah work to mitigate the evil intentions of Josephs other brothers. The rest of them wanted to kill Joseph, but Reuben and Judah work to stop the killing of Joseph. They don't do so deterministically, but they are able to bring about the result of selling Joseph. It makes sense of the text to think of it in the following way:

Joseph's brother seek to kill him. But God, through the compassion of Reuben and Judah, works to save Joseph both for Joseph's sake and for the sake of many lives.

Non-Calvinists do have ways of understanding God's providential governance of the world that involve God being the cause of human actions in a way that doesn't necessitate the will. In fact, in their book "Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace" Stanglin and McCall argue that Arminius himself maintained that God caused the actions of human agents.

"[Arminius] readily agrees that there is a sense in which God is the cause of all things, but he denies that this removes freedom or replaces contingency with necessity. God 'acts through second causes, either with them or in them, and he does not take away their own divinely imparted proper mode of acting'. Instead, God allows secondary causes to produce their own effects -'necessary things necessarily, contingent things contingently, and free things freely."

Thus Arminius himself granted that God and man can be the cause of the same action, albeit in different ways. Likewise philosopher Robert Koons offers an account of dual agent causality in his Philosophia Christi article, "Dual Agency: A Thomistic Account of Providence and Human Freedom."

That being said, I grant that there are contemporary arminians who think that it must either be God who causes the action or man must be the cause of the action. But Geisler does not think this way, nor does Arminius. Both of them think in terms of primary and secondary causes where God is the primary cause and man is the secondary cause of a free action. Both of them think of God as acting with and through a created beings nature.

So while there are non-Calvinists that think that two agents can't be the cause of the same action, there are some who think God causes human actions. I am unclear about Geisler's position here. He says that God causes the fact of freedom, but man is responsible for the acts of freedom. In a conversation I had with him, he said that he was trying to convey Aquinas' view that God is the primary efficient cause of human actions and man is the secondary efficient cause of his own actions. If that is so, then even Geisler doesn't take man's free actions to be specified wholly apart from God's causal power. That being said, Arminius is pretty clear on the matter. The free actions of men are not specified apart from God's causal power.

About this series
In this series of blog posts, I will be giving responses to "The Potter's Freedom" chapter by chapter. There are more things that could be said about their first chapter, but as there are reoccurring points in the book, I'll bring the up as I respond to other chapters that are more directly related to my responses.

Also, while I am Protestant, I do not think this limits our theological discussions to the texts of Scripture. I take it that philosophy is very helpful in helping us think about our theology. Likewise I think our theology should set limits on where we go philosophically. This may disappoint those of you who think that in order to have a "Biblical Theology" you must avoid introducing philosophical notions into your theology. I maintain that those who think this way are still using philosophy when they interpret Scripture, but they do so naively.

Some other links:

http://jacobarminius.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-potters-freedom-sovereignty-vital.html

Christianity and Mythology with Allan Di Donato

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Sat, 20 Sep 2014 06:01:00 -0700

Wanted to post a really great lecture by Allan Di Donato on the topic of Christianity and Mythology. In this lecture he talks about what myth is and has some really interesting conclusions. I especially like his appeal to Jungian psychology as a possible explanation for common mythological themes.

Allan Di Donato is an instructor at Central Piedmont Community College where he teaches the classics. Please check out this lecture and comment!

2011-04-03 EH (Missions - Week 8) from Community Fellowship Church on Vimeo.

A defense of the cessation of the apostolic sign gifts - sort of...

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 21:36:00 -0700

Introduction

While I don't agree that the case for the cessation of the apostolic sign gifts is air tight, I do find it helpful to set forth the case for the position in order to make sure the position is adequately understood. In this article, I hope to put forward the case in a meaningful and charitable way.

Before Jesus Christ went to be with the Father, He spoke of the coming of the promised Holy Spirit. To His apostles He said, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8). When Jesus came, He “drew heaven with Him.” When He went back to heaven, He did not leave His apostles to their own natural abilities. Rather, He graciously sent the Holy Spirit to give them supernatural gifts for the purpose of establishing the church.

In this article it will be argued that certain gifts of the Spirit have ceased with the passing of the original apostolic church. This article will give most of its attention to the connection between the apostles and the sign gifts. First, a general introduction to the gifts of the Spirit will be given. Next, a connection between the sign gifts and the apostles will be made. Possible objections to the connection between the apostles and the sign gifts will be discussed during the course of the article. After this, a summary of an argument for Cessationism will be given. Finally, some practical implications will be drawn.

Spiritual Gifts in General

When the Bible talks about the gifts of the Spirit, what is it talking about? Clearly everything we have is a gift given to us by God. He holds everything in the created order into existence every moment of every day. We are completely dependent on Him for our continued existence. All of our natural talents and abilities are gifts from our Creator. However, the spiritual gifts spoken of in Acts, 1 Corinthians and Ephesians differ from the everyday talents and abilities with which God has blessed us. They are special gifts from God for the purpose of edifying and establishing the church.

What then is a spiritual gift? In his book The Holy Spirit, Charles Ryrie defines a spiritual gift as “a God-given ability for service”. The special gifting of the Holy Spirit is an ability given to whomever He wills. These special abilities are distinct from any natural talent or ability. This definition holds even if, practically speaking, we cannot discern between a natural ability and a spiritual gifting. Some of the gifts are difficult to recognize as special abilities given by the Holy Spirit. In particular, Ryrie confesses to have difficulty discerning between “a naturally talented teacher, a teacher who has been well trained, and one who has been given the spiritual gift of teaching.”

There is no need to be alarmed about this. The Bible does not teach that we should be able to distinguish clearly between those who have the spiritual gift of teaching and those who naturally learned how to teach. When it comes to certain gifts, it is not necessary to know whether or not someone has a spiritual gifting or a natural talent that has been developed. In many cases we may simply hold to what we know from Scripture concerning the nature and purpose of the spiritual gifts. For example, we may know with certainty that spiritual gifts are given by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4-11) according to His will (1 Cor. 12:11) for the profit of the church (1 Cor. 12:6). This will be true even if there are gifts given in the church that we do not recognize as spiritual gifts.

On the other hand, there are some spiritual gifts which are easily distinguishable from natural talents and abilities. The existence of these gifts cannot adequately be explained apart from the supernatural empowerment of God. These gifts are those which Paul called the “signs of an apostle” (2 Cor. 12:12). They acted as signs of an apostle precisely because they were distinguishable from natural talents and abilities. In fact, they were so wonderful that people from all walks of life recognized them as supernatural in origin.
Special Sign Gifts of an Apostle

These extra-ordinary “sign gifts” are primarily associated with the apostles. The book of Acts repeatedly refers to the mighty signs and wonders performed by those who started the church. In Acts 2:43 Luke writes, “Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.” Acts 4:32 says, “And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.” Acts 5:12 says, “And through the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were done among the people.” Luke goes on to describe how the people viewed the apostles. He said that, “none of the rest dared to join them [the apostles], but the people esteemed them highly” (Acts 5:13).

It is clear then that the apostles were unique in their power and authority. Matthew 10:1 records the power given by Christ to the twelve disciples. In this passage, Jesus gives them the power over unclean spirits, the power to cast out demons, and the power to heal all kinds of sickness and diseases. Later, in the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit gifts them with the ability to speak in tongues, to pronounce judgment, to heal people, to cast out demons and to prophecy.

Agreement on the number and nature of the sign gifts is not unanimous, but generally speaking the gifts that are extra-ordinary and revelatory are taken to be sign gifts. Sometime the New Testament author distinctly says that a gift is a sign, as in the case in 1 Cor. 14:22. In this passage, Paul speaks of tongues as a “sign”. Some point out that the apostles performed great signs and wonders, and all gifts that appear to fit in that category are taken to be the sign gifts.

These gifts are taken as “sign” gifts in that they are a sign of the authenticity of the ministry and message of the apostles. The fact that these gifts are special sign gifts is presupposed by Paul in one of his arguments to the Corinthians. In defending his apostolic authority Paul refers to the “signs of an apostle” performed in their midst. (2 Cor.12:12) Paul relied on the ability of his audience to recognize “signs and wonders and mighty deeds” as the authenticating witnesses to his apostolic authority. If these gifts were not unique to the apostles, it is difficult to see how they could have been used to authenticate Paul’s special apostolic ministry.

Continuing this thought, Professor B.B. Warfield notes that the sign gifts “were part of the credentials of the Apostles as the authoritative agents of God in founding the church.” Additionally, in his book Signs and Wonders, Dr. Norman Geisler says, “Since being an apostle was a special God-ordained task, it necessitated special divinely bestowed gifts.” The apostles were given the monumental task of establishing the church. It makes sense to think that God would put His fingerprints all over His work. Gifting the apostles with unmistakable sign gifts ensured that people would be able to recognize the work of God through His apostles.

The Apostles and the Sign Gifts

Since the special sign gifts were uniquely tied to the ministry of the apostles, and since they were given for the establishing of the church, it follows that the absence of the apostles along with the completed work of the apostles would bring about the rescinding of the sign gifts. For once the purpose of the gifts was fulfilled, they were no longer needed. B.B. Warfield intimately ties the sign gifts to the Apostolic Church. He says that the sign gifts were confined to “the Apostolic Church, and they necessarily passed away with it.”

By “Apostolic Church” Warfield does not refer to those churches who follow the teaching of the apostles. Many today still try to devote themselves to the teaching of the apostles as it is written in Scripture. Rather Warfield is speaking of the Church during the time of the apostles. The conviction that the sign gifts are limited to the times of the apostles is at the very heart of most Cessationist positions.

It should be noted here that Warfield confines the sign gifts to the “Apostolic Church” rather than to the apostles. Why would he speak of the sign gifts passing with the passing of the “Apostolic Church” rather than the passing of the apostles? As noted earlier, the book of Acts primarily associates the sign gifts with the apostles. The word “primarily” here is used because there are others who are said to perform signs and wonders. For example, Acts 6:8 speaks of Stephen as one who was “full of faith and power” and he “did great wonders and signs among the people”. Stephen was not an apostle; rather, he was chosen by the multitude of disciples at the behest of the twelve apostles. From this passage and others, we see various individuals performing signs and wonders like the apostles but who were not themselves apostles.

Why Were Sign Gifts Given to Non-Apostles?

At first glance, this appears to be a problem for the Cessationist’s position. The argument for the cessation of the sign gifts relies on at least two key points. First, the sign gifts must be so uniquely tied to the original apostles that the removal of the apostles necessitates the removal of the sign gifts. Second, the office of the apostle must not continue beyond the original apostles, for the sign gifts are the “signs of an apostle”. If the apostolic office no longer exists, then the signs that verify their ministry should no longer exist. God would not use the sign’s of an apostle to authenticate the ministry of an office that no longer exists.

Furthermore, if the sign gifts were given to establish the authenticity and authority of an apostle, why would God give these gifts to people who are not apostles? It seems that if these gifts were specially designed to function as the authenticating signs of the apostolic office, then giving these gifts to other people would appear to diminish their function as the signs of an apostle. Furthermore, if there were other individuals performing signs and wonders like the apostles, then why insist that these gifts passed with the passing of the apostles or the Apostolic Church? At first glance, it appears reasonable to hold that those who received gifts could themselves continue to give those gifts to yet other individuals. The above concerns will be taken one at a time.

The Uniqueness of the Apostles Gifts

The first question deals with the uniqueness of the gifting of the original apostles. If God gave the sign gifts to authenticate the ministry of the apostles, then why would He give these gifts to others? The first step in responding to this question is to rebut the notion that individuals outside of the apostolic circle received these gifts directly from God. As Dr. Norman Geisler says, “The apostles themselves had power to grant [the miraculous gifts]”. Only the apostles were given sign gifts directly from God. Others were given these gifts through the apostles.

The fact that the Holy Spirit came first on the apostles and gifted them with sign gifts may be seen by looking at the first few chapters of Acts. If one were to follow the language in the first two chapters of Acts, rather than seeing the Holy Spirit come upon the 120 present at Pentecost, one would find that Jesus promised to give the Holy Spirit to His apostles. Geisler argues for this with the following reasoning:

Only the apostles were promised before Pentecost that “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5). It is clear from the context that “you” refers only to “the apostles” (v.2).
The “they” (Acts 2:1) on whom the Holy Spirit fell refers back to the previous verse, namely, the “apostles” (1:26).
Likewise “they” and “them” (v.3) on whom tongues of fire fell refers to the same “apostles.”
Further, the crowd heard “them” (the same “apostles”) speak in tongues (v.6).
Also, those who spoke in tongues were “all … Galileans” (2:7), as the apostles were. Even the angel called them “men of Galilee” (1:11). But the others present in the Upper Room were not all Galileans; some were from Jerusalem and Judea (1:12-14).

So the progression of the first couple of chapters of the book of Acts shows that the promised Holy Spirit was given to the apostles. They were Christ’s special delegates to the world. Christ sent the Holy Spirit to them, and they in turn gave gifts to others through the laying on of hands. That the apostles bestowed the Holy Spirit on others by the laying on of hands is evidenced throughout the book of Acts. One poignant example of this is found in Acts 8:17-18. The former sorcerer, named Simon, is rebuked for trying to purchase this gift of God. For Simon saw that “through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Spirit was given”. (emphasis mine)

Therefore, in response to the original question, it must be concluded that God did not give sign gifts directly to people other than the apostles. Other servants of God, who were themselves trustworthy, were given gifts by the apostles for the advancement of the church. The New Testament does not show God giving the sign gifts to everyone. From looking at the New Testament Warfield concludes that “In the entire New Testament we meet with no instance of the gifts showing themselves – after the initial instances of Pentecost and Cornelius – where an Apostle had not conveyed them.” He continues, “The connection of the supernatural gifts with the Apostles is so obvious that one wonders that so many students have missed it, and have sought an account of them in some other quarter.”

Showing that God gave the sign gifts to the apostles and that the apostles then gave them to others explains all the relevant biblical data. It accounts for the fact that Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to His apostles only. It also accounts for the fact that others, who were associated with the apostles, exercised supernatural gifts. The sign gifts were given to the apostles as authenticating sign gifts, but they were dealt out to others so that the early church would grow and become established. As Warfield notes, “[The miraculous powers] were therefore needed throughout the period of the church’s weak infancy.” So the fact that other individuals exercised miraculous gifts does not negate the strong tie between the sign gifts and the apostles. Rather it shows the expansion of the work of the apostles.

What about the second question? If the sign gifts were specially designed to function as the authenticating signs of the apostolic office, then would giving these gifts to other people diminish their function as sign gifts? On the contrary, rather than diminishing their function as sign gifts, the giving of these gifts to non-apostles served to show which individuals had been gifted by the ministry of the apostles. Knowing who the apostles approved of would have been very helpful for the establishment of the church.

It is important to note that during the infancy of the church, the canon of Scripture had not been put together. Several decades transpired between the events of Pentecost and the writing of the New Testament. During these early years of the church, the gifts of the Spirit were the mark of a true church. That the apostles gifted others for ministry was their way of putting their seal of approval on a particular ministry. It was their way of helping people distinguish between those who remained in the teachings of the apostles and those who did not.

It is reasonable to hold that those performing signs and wonders would have backed the teachings and authority of the apostles. Those who received the gifts from the apostles could redirect the thinking of those who saw them perform great signs. They could remind their audience that they received these miraculous gifts from the apostles. So whether it was the apostles or those who received gifts from the apostles, the sign gifts remained the “signs of an apostle”.

The Uniqueness of the Original Apostles

The next question bears directly on the overall point of this article. If there were other individuals performing signs and wonders like the apostles, then why insist that these gifts passed with the passing of the apostles or of the Apostolic Church? If the apostles gave these gifts to others, then perhaps the recipients of these gifts gave them to other people too. If that is the case, then perhaps these gifts spread and continued rather than diminished and faded away.

This view fails, however, because it was the prerogative of the apostles alone to pass gifts on to the church. Since the number of apostles was limited to the original twelve plus Paul, the gifts could not continue beyond the lives of those who were solely responsible for the giving of those gifts. As was mentioned earlier, the apostles gave these gifts to others through the laying on of hands. The New Testament does not give any examples of non-apostles giving gifts to other people.

Further, it simply does not follow that because the apostles gave miraculous gifts to others that those who received the gifts from the apostles could then pass those gifts on to others. It is clear that the apostles were unique in many ways. As Abraham Kuyper says in his book The Work of the Holy Spirit, “In the history of the Church and the world [the apostles] occupy a unique position and have a peculiar significance.”

As mentioned above, one of the ways in which the apostles were unique is found in the fact that there was a limited number of them. The Bible limits the number of apostles to those within the apostolic circle of the first century. Abraham Kuyper explains why the circle of apostles is closed:

That the apostolate was a closed circle … is evident from Acts i. 25: “Lord, show of these two, the one whom Thou hast chosen to take the place of this ministry and apostleship”; and again from St. Paul’s word (Rom. i. 5): “By whom we have received grace and apostleship”; and again (1 Cor. ix. 2): “For the seal of my apostleship are ye in the Lord”; … And again it is evident from the fact that the apostles always appear as the twelve; and from their being specially appointed and installed by Jesus breathing upon them the official gift of the Holy Spirit; and from the exceptional power and gifts that were connected with the apostolate.

And it is especially from its conspicuous place in the coming Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ that the apostolate obtains its definite character. For the Holy Scripture teaches that the apostles shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and also that the New Jerusalem has “twelve foundations upon which are written the twelve names of the apostles of the Lamb.”

Again, their significance is seen by the fact that there were only twelve original apostles, plus Paul, who added as “one born out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:8). The number of apostles was important, otherwise why would they find it necessary to replace Judas? It is clear that Jesus chose twelve men to be His disciples. With the exception of Paul, the apostles found it to be within the will of God to neither add to nor detract from this number. Additionally, an eschatological claim of Christ is dependant on there being twelve apostles.

For Christ claims that “in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28). (emphasis mine) So the number of apostles is important because Christ declares that, in the end, there will be exactly twelve disciples who will serve as judges over the twelve tribes of Israel.

If the number of apostles was so important, and Christ appointed twelve to be his apostles, then how are we to deal with Paul? Various people have sought different ways to resolve this tension. Some suggest that Matthias was not really one of the twelve. Baxter quotes W.A. Criswell’s position as stating, “In the first chapter of Acts the disciples chose Matthias to be the apostle to take the place of the fallen Judas, but in the ninth chapter of Acts, God chose Saul of Tarsus.” According to this position, Matthias was chosen by the apostles, but they were wrong in trying to appoint an apostle in place of Judas. Accordingly, while the apostles wrongly appointed Matthias to replace Judas, God chose Paul to be the twelfth apostle.

Abraham Kuyper answers this question by claiming that it is “not the name of Matthias, but that of St. Paul [which] is written upon the foundations of the New Jerusalem with the others; and that not Matthias, but St. Paul shall sit down to judge the twelve tribes of Israel.” Kuyper does not deny that Matthias was an apostle; rather, he thinks that both Matthias and Paul replaced Judas. Kuyper claims, “As one of the tribes of Israel was replaced by two others, so in regard to the apostolate; for Simeon, who fell out, Manasseh and Ephraim were substituted, and Judas was replaced by Matthias and Paul.”

This view appears to be more tenable than the former view. Kuyper deals with the fact that there were thirteen apostles, yet only twelve will sit in thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. According to Kuyper, Paul is included in Christ’s eschatological promise. Matthias, on the other hand, is a true apostle, but his apostleship is a temporary, earthly apostleship. He was an apostle, but he will not serve as one of the twelve foundations of the church.

Even if neither of these explanations worked, the matter of there being thirteen apostles does not detract from the overall argument. The fact remains that there were a limited number of apostles. While it is true that Paul was the thirteenth apostle, he was a special addition to the apostles. He was added to the twelve as a special messenger to the Gentiles. In fact, Paul refers to himself as an oddity in this regard. When speaking of the risen Christ, he explains how Christ was seen by the Twelve, by the crowds and by James (1 Cor. 15). After this Paul says, “Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:8). This verse should not be taken to mean that Paul considered himself a mere associate of the apostles. In 2 Cor. 11:5 he says, “For I consider that I am not at all inferior to the most eminent apostles.” Rather, he is to be understood as a special addition to the original twelve.

The limited number of apostles does bring up another apparent problem for the Cessationist position. If there were only twelve original apostles and Paul, then how are we to take the fact that the Bible speaks of “apostles” outside of the original group? The existence of other apostles would appear to negate the claim that the apostolic circle was limited to thirteen apostles. Furthermore, if there were more than the original thirteen, it would become very difficult to maintain that the apostolic office extinguished with the passing of the original thirteen.

Other Apostles

Cessationists recognize that there are individuals outside of the thirteen who are called apostles. Geisler points to eleven such figures that could be considered apostles in some sense. These include, but are not limited to: Timothy, Titus, Luke, Silas, John Mark, Tychicus, Clement, Epaphras, Trophimus, Demas and Apollos. They are taken to be apostles because, in some cases, the Greek word apostolos is used of them. However, there is good reason for thinking that these people were apostles in a lesser sense.

First, they derived their “apostleship” from the original apostles. Many of Paul’s letters begin by emphasizing the divine origin of his calling. This is in contrast to the calling of the lesser apostles who were sent by the original apostles. Geisler calls these people the “associates” of the apostles. They were those individuals who where sent out by the apostles to further the work of the church. They were fellow laborers in Christ, but they were not on par with the original apostles.

Second, it is clear from the book of Acts is that the original twelve and Paul are unique ministers of Christ. The associates of the apostles did not meet the requirements of that high office. Charles Hodge lays out the requirements of that office in his Systematic Theology:

To qualify [the apostles] for this office of authoritative witnesses, it was necessary:

That they should have independent plenary knowledge of the gospel.
That they should have seen Christ after his resurrection.
That they should be inspired, i.e., that they should be individually and severally so guided by the Spirit as to be infallible in all their instructions.
That they should be authenticated as the messengers of Christ, by adherence to the true gospel, by success in preaching (Paul said to the Corinthians that they were the seal of his apostleship, 1 Cor. ix. 2); and by signs and wonders and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost. Such were the gifts and qualifications and credentials of the original Apostles.

Since the associates of the apostles did not meet these requirements, it is necessary to make a distinction between the two different senses or referents of the term “apostle”. In the narrow sense the term “apostle” applies only to the twelve plus Paul. In the general sense the term applies to those sent by the apostles. By distinguishing between these two senses of the term apostle, the uniqueness of the original apostles is maintained.

The Basic Argument

At this point a sketch of the argument for the cessation of the sign gifts will be given. The argument may be summarized as follows:

1. Only the apostles received the sign gifts directly from God,

and,

2. Others (non-apostles) who had the sign gifts received them from the apostles,

and,

3. Those individuals could not give those gifts to anyone else,

so it follows that,

4. When the apostles and those to whom the apostles gave the sign gifts died, the sign gifts ceased to be.

This then, is the general flow of the argument for the cessation of the sign gifts. While there are various arguments given for this position, all Cessationists maintain that there is a unique tie between the sign gifts and the original apostles. Further, most Cessationists hold that the sign gifts are so bound up with the apostles that the removal of the apostles entails the removal of the sign gifts.

As was shown in this article, the sign gifts were signs of an apostle. They were given to authenticate their ministry and message. The original thirteen apostles delegated various gifts, which included some sign gifts, to others as a means of advancing and establishing the church during its infancy. Since those who received the gifts from the apostles could not give those gifts to others, the gifts could not continue beyond the life of those who had them during the apostolic era. Additionally, the purposes of those gifts were fulfilled during the time of the apostle; making the further use of the sign gifts unnecessary.

Practical Implications

In a culture of sensationalism, the issue of whether or not the sign gifts are for today is a very big issue to be sure. Examples of failed “prophecies” throughout the evangelical church are numerous. Sometimes it is falsely claimed that people have been healed of cancer. Television evangelists regularly claim to have received new revelations from God. Hank Hanegraaff and John MacArthur give a great deal of examples of this sort of lunacy. Unfortunately, this sort of nonsense is not confined to small groups of religious crazies.

Dr. Norman Geisler gives an example of a well-known author who gave a false prophecy: “In April 1973 David Wilkerson prophesied on the basis of a vision he had, warning that ‘more than one-third of the United States will be designated a disaster area within the next few years’”. Geisler goes on to point out that Wilkerson had “no doubt in [his] mind about this forthcoming massive earthquake” that would result in one third of the United States becoming a disaster area. Geisler remarks that after fifteen years, the event has never come to pass.

Example upon example may be given of people claiming to perform miracles and give prophecies. Further, example upon example may be given of fraudulent and failed signs and wonders. However, despite the numerous examples of shams and pranks, much of the evangelical world still appears to embrace the notion that the sign gifts are for today. A large number of Christians respond to these criticisms with an overly dismissive posture.

Apologetics

There is an apologetic issue at hand here as well. If the sign gifts are normative for the church, apologists would have to investigate each event to determine whether or not it was a miracle. They would then have to see if that miracle was confirming a message from God. If it was a true miracle and that miracle was accompanied by some message, then the canon of Scripture would not be closed. Apologists and theologians would be running around trying to figure out what revelations should be added to the Bible.

The fact that the miracles have ceased makes the task of the apologist much easier. Contemporary criticisms of the cults stand on firm ground. If a cult claims that its “prophet” said such and such, that claim may be dismissed on the grounds that prophecy is no longer given. If a church claims to have an “apostle,” then that claim may be dismissed on the grounds that the apostles were entirely unique to the first century. The notion of an apostle today does not even need to be entertained because the Bible rules it out as a possibility.

Psychological Comfort

One of the largest problems with the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements is that it manipulates its members by appealing to whether or not they have certain spiritual gifts. For example, Pentecostal churches sometimes deny that a person has truly been baptized in the Holy Spirit if she does not speak in tongues. This leave people feeling like they are spiritually immature if they don’t speak in tongues. In turn, these individuals may seek a further experience to increase their level of spirituality rather than seeking the Word of God.

This sort of thinking about Christian spirituality has lead to a weakened church. The church often measures spiritual maturity in terms of “spiritual experiences”. The Bible, however, measures Christians by their conformity to Christ, and He is already made known through His word. So not only is the seeking of “spiritual experiences” misguided, it is also counterproductive. Conformity to Christ comes about through an accurate understanding of Bible and a submission to its teachings. Those who don’t understand this should read what Paul said to Timothy concerning the Scriptures: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

Conclusion

This article has given a brief argument for the cessation of the sign gifts. While several arguments are given for this position, this article focused on an argument from the nature of the sign gifts and their relation to the apostles. It was argued that the sign gifts were given directly to the apostles and that others who displayed these gifts had them because they received them from the apostles. Since those who received these gifts could not give them to anyone else, it follows that the sign gifts ceased shortly after the death of the apostles.

WORKS CONSULTED

Baxter, Ronald. Gifts of the Spirit. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1983.

Chafer, Lewis Sperry. He That is Spiritual. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing
House, 1967.

Geisler, Norman. Signs and Wonders. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1988.

________. Systematic Theology vol.4: Church Last Things. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany
House Publishers, 2005.

Grudem, Wayne. edited by. Are Miraculous Gifts for Today: Four Views. Grand Rapids,
MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996.

Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology vol.1: Theology. U.S.A.: Hendrickson Publishers,
2001.

Kuyper, Abraham. The Work of the Holy Spirit. Grand Rapids, MI: WM. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1941.

Pache, Rene. The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit. Chicago: Moody Press, 1954.

Ryrie, Charles. The Holy Spirit. Chicago: Moody Press, 1965.

Sanders, J. Oswald. The Holy Spirit and His Gifts. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan
Publishing House, 1970.

Schmithals, Walter. trans. Steely, John. The Office of Apostle in the Early Church.
Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1969.

Svendsen, Eric. Evangelical Answers: A Critique of Current Roman Catholic Apologists.
Lindenhurst, NY: Reformation Press, 1999.

Warfield, B.B.. Counterfeit Miracles. Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1972.

You’re Just Being Judgmental

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 21:29:00 -0700

I am not entirely sure what most people, especially liberals, are thinking when they say that you are being judgmental. Perhaps they mean that you are looking upon another human being with disdain. Or perhaps they mean that you are calling someone’s actions morally reprehensible. That kind of a claim is often accompanied by a negative emotion aimed at the person you are condemning.

The most puzzling use of the term “judgmental” is when it is used to describe a person who is simply affirming something as true. For example, if I simply say “I think Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven” I find it mind boggling that I would be called judgmental for simply stating my position. In these cases, “judgmental” simply means, “you disagree with me, thus you are judgmental”. If that was a legitimate use of the term “judgmental” then everyone is judgmental about something as we all disagree about lots of things.

I think these uses of the term “judgmental” are spurious ways of using the term. I am not sure how these uses became fashionable. To be sure, Christ forbids us from being judgmental. He says, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Obviously he does not mean “Do not affirm something as true”. If he meant that, his own statement would be self-referentially incoherent. Since I don’t think that Jesus Christ is making a self-defeating claim here, he must be referring to something else when he commands his followers not to judge.

However, before I say what I think judgmentalism is, let me make a few more clarifications about what judgmentalism is NOT:

1. Making a moral appraisal of a situation is not necessarily judgmental.

I am not being judgmental if I say, “You know what, I think Jim was morally wrong when he decided cut Bob open with a knife for no reason”. In this case, I am offering a moral appraisal of the situation. To say that it is morally wrong to offer moral appraisals is self-defeating. It is itself a moral appraisal that morally condemns all moral appraisals.

2. Being angry at what is morally evil is not judgmental.

It seems to me that it is natural and good for us to be angry at evil actions. How can someone tell me not to be angry at the man who kills one of my family members? Or how can someone call me evil for being angry at the woman who makes slanderous accusations about my wife in public? I haven’t met anyone who consistently lives this kind of viewpoint out. Even the most ardent “non-judgmentalist” gets angry at the person he thinks is being judgmental. He gets angry because he thinks being judgmental is wrong. Thus he does, in fact, get angry at what he thinks is evil.

3. Confronting a friend because he or she is doing something wrong is not judgmental.

Confronting someone when they are doing something wrong is a way of bringing correction to your friend. It is a way of setting him or her on the right course. In fact, correcting someone may be the most loving thing to do.

4. Making hasty or rash judgments is not the same as being judgmental.

While I agree that you should not make rash judgments, I don’t think this is what Christ means when he says “judge not”. You can be judgmental when you make statements that are true and well thought out.

What Judgmentalism Is

True judgmentalism that is biblically condemned has to do with a lack of charity. It has to do with intentions that are not aimed at redemptive ends. The person who says “It is morally wrong for you to sleep with that person until you are married” may be telling you this out of love. Perhaps they understand this because they were sexually active prior to marriage and it was destructive to their relationship. However, this moral claim is not judgmental because it is a means of bringing about a good in the other person.

However, a person may say “It is morally wrong for you to sleep with that person until you are married” AND be judgmental in saying it. This occurs when the moral affirmation is said out of arrogance or spite or with other nefarious intentions.

So it is not the statement itself that is judgmental, but the intention that drives the statement.

Are you making the statement to bring about some good, or are you saying it to make yourself look good and to make the other person look bad? In other words, are you using your statement as a tool of destruction or as a tool for good?

In conclusion, being judgmental is not properly located in any statement that you make. It is found in the way you use your statements. Are you trying to help or hurt the other person? Are your statements tools for justifying your own selfishness, arrogance, etc. or are your statements tools you use to edify others?

If you truly love others as you love yourself, then you will not be judgmental. Even your criticisms will be constructive because your aim is to build up others.

Clement of Rome

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Sat, 26 May 2012 08:20:00 -0700

Life (approximate): AD 30 - 100
Bishop of Rome (approximate): AD 90 / 91 - 100
Writings: Letter to the Corinthians

Early Sources Concerning Clement of Rome: (not a comprehensive list)
Paul - Philippians 4:3 (Eusebius claims that Paul is speaking about Clement here)
Irenaeus - Against Heresies: Book 3, Chapter 3
Eusebius - Church History: Book 3
Tertullian - Prescription Against Heretics

Timeline with Roman Emperors:

Introduction:

Clement of Rome, who according to the Roman Church is the fourth pope, is grouped among what are called the Apostolic Fathers. Apostolic church fathers are early church fathers who had dealings with the apostles. In the case of Clement, he is said to have been ordained by the Apostle Peter. There isn't a single book that tells about his life and thought, rather we have glimpses of the man through various sources. The only legitimate letter we have from him is his letter to the Corinthians which was read in many churches along with Scripture for several centuries.

"There is extant an epistle of this Clement which is acknowledged to be genuine and is of considerable length and of remarkable merit. He wrote it in the name of the church of Rome to the church of Corinth, when a sedition had arisen in the latter church. We know that this epistle also has been publicly used in a great many churches both in former times and in our own. And of the fact that a sedition did take place in the church of Corinth at the time referred to Hegesippus is a trustworthy witness." -Eusebius: Church History

Epistle to the Corinthians

In this letter, Clement responds to a sedition or rebellion that was going on at the church of Corinth. He addresses this when he writes:

"...the worthless rose up against the honoured, those of no reputation against such as were renowned, the foolish against the wise, the young against those advanced in years." -Chapter 3

In the following several chapters, Clement offers examples from the Old Testament and from the apostles. For example, he offers Cain and Able, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Moses and the Pharoh, etc. as examples of what happens when envy creeps in.

"You see, brethren, how envy and jealousy led to the murder of a brother. Through envy, also, our father Jacob fled from the face of Esau his brother. Envy made Joseph be persecuted unto death, and to come into bondage..." -Chapter 4 emphasis mine

From these examples he moves to exhortation. He writes to them to admonish them of their duty. The twofold duty to which he calls them is that of repentance and obedience. The admonishment here is for the Corinthians to repent and to obey God. As Clement writes,

"Let us attend to what is good, pleasing, and acceptable in the sight of Him who formed us... Let us turn to every age that has passed, and learn that, from generation to generation, the Lord has granted a place of repentance to all such as would be converted unto Him." -Chapter 7

Clement then continues to give numerous examples from nature and Scripture to show the church at Corinth that God has setup order in the cosmos and in His church. He exhorts them to give up envy and to embrace godly love. He warns them, again from examples in Scripture, of the fate of those who would rise up against God's ministers. Finally, he admonishes them to obey their leaders and to put away their jealousy. Essentially, the letter is a call to be united "through our High Priest and Protector, Jesus Christ".

Brief Response to Bryan Cross

In an article on Clement of Rome, the Catholic apologist Bryan Cross argues that Clements point is not primarily that the Corinthians be obedient to God directly, but that they be obedient to God by means of their obedience to the authorities that God has placed over them.

"The argument that St. Clement is constructing over the course of the entire epistle is that we follow God by following those authorities whom God has appointed, not those who rise up in sedition." -Bryan Cross

While this claim is not objectionable, it seems to me that Cross overstates his case. In his article, he is trying to show a continuity between the ecclesiology of Clement of Rome and the ecclesiology of the Roman Catholic Church. This is where his understanding of Clement's letter seems strained. Again, most of what Cross says is not objectionable to a Protestant or an Eastern Orthodox believer. For example, I wouldn't disagree when Cross says the following:

"There is an intimate connection between esteeming those who have rule over us, and reverencing Jesus Christ." -Bryan Cross

The Protestant Reformers themselves wouldn't disagree with this statement in and of itself. Where Cross seems to go beyond Clement is in his affirmation that Clement is clearly affirming "a three-fold distinction in Holy Orders". According to Cross, Clement is affirming the orders of bishop, priest, and deacon by drawing a parallel between the Levitical priesthood and the priesthood under the new covenant. Cross says the following:

"Christ established in His New Covenant three different Holy Orders: new high priests, new priests, and new Levites. And these clearly are referring to the three-fold division of bishop, priest, and deacon, with the bishop being the high priest of the Church in his city." -Bryan Cross

To be sure, Clement is concerned about the schism taking place in Corinth. He also teaches that God sets the universe, nature, and the church in proper order. There is no doubt that Clement desires the church to be unified and to conduct themselves in an orderly way. Additionally, Clement clearly wants the church laity to submit to their presbyters.

But I do not see how Clement is advocating the "three-fold distinction" to which Cross refers. Clement refers to "high priests" of the Old Testament (chapters 40 and 41) in an effort to drive home the point that God sets up orderly administration over the people of God. But this in itself doesn't admit of the distinction mentioned above. Protestants also admit of hierarchy in the church. Admittedly, those offices vary from denomination to denomination, but they very often entail deacons and elders as leaders or ministers of the church. So an admission of hierarchy and order in the church doesn't necessary yield the Roman Catholic Holy Orders.

As a Protestant, what I find interesting is that all other references to "high priests" in this letter speak of "the" high priest, not "high priests" in the plural. The High Priest is specifically named in the letter. When speaking of the current ecclesiastical structure, Clement only refers to Jesus Christ as the High Priest. (see chapter 36, 61, and 64)

I would be interested in getting responses back on this to further the discussion.

My Elevating Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Sun, 6 May 2012 18:23:00 -0700

I began my search for the church that best exemplifies the life and teaching of Jesus Christ at Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC. Elevation is one of the largest churches in the Charlotte area and is supposedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. When I arrived this morning, I was asked "How did you hear about Elevation?" My answer: "You can't live in Charlotte without knowing about Elevation". I can be in any part of the city or surrounding area and I will see an Elevation bumper sticker. If I do a Google search that includes the word "church", Elevation is the first site that pops up.

So I decided to check out this mega-church to see what it was like. To be completely honest, I am not a big fan of mega-churches. I tend to lump them all together into the category of "seeker-sensitive churches that have lots of people but very little depth". Be that as it may, I did my best to set aside my prejudices so that I could learn what this church was about. In my search, I want to do my best to see the good in each church that I attend. To be sure, I will be noting things that I disagree with or that I find problematic, but these things will not constitute the substance of my blog posts. At this point, I am more concerned about what it is that draws people to one church or another.

Description of My Experience

If I could used one word to describe my experience at elevation it would be "professionalism". As soon as I arrived in the parking lot, I felt as if I were attending a basketball game or a concert. In many ways I felt like I was showing up to meet a celebrity. The main difference being that I am not usually met by a small army of greeters at a basketball game or concert. I was informed by one of the greeters that pastor Steve would be at our campus today. I would be able to see him live and in person!

For those of you who do not know, Elevation Church has several campuses and services and the services are streamed live to all campuses. The lead pastor, Steven Furtick, rotates between campuses and you never know which campus he will be preaching from until you arrive. So to have him at your campus is considered quite a treat.

As I stood in line to get into the building (you have to wait outside until the previous service lets out), someone blurted out "Steve can help you!". More than half the line of people quickly turned their heads thinking that they might catch a glimpse of pastor Steve. But sadly for them, it was one of the greeters whose name also happened to be Steve. By this time, even I was beginning to get stoked about seeing him. I thought "you have to give the guy credit for creating such a fan base."

Eventually, we were let in the church and someone saw me looking a bit out of place. She quickly asked me if I needed help. I was immediately whisked away to where I needed to bring my son and given clear instructions on what I need to do! What excellent customer service!

After dropping off my son, I found my way into the auditorium. I walked through a hallway lit by blue lights on either side directing me to an energy filled room. Before I entered, I could hear the thundering base drum and the contemporary melodies of the Elevation band. As far as I knew, I could have been walking into a Green Day concert.

I stepped into an auditorium filled with a thin haze which was lit up by stadium grade lighting. I took my seat and began to watch the pre-sermon video. The video was perfectly timed with the service and its content had to do with the lofty achievements of Elevation Church. Prisons were being transformed by joining the congregation via broadcast. People all over the country were being transformed by the ministry via satellite campuses. I watched the congregation to see their response to the video and they were very moved. They clapped as person after person described the changes in their lives due to the ministry of Elevation Church.

As expected, the worship band was excellent. Everything was planned and coordinated with the other satellite campuses. The whole set was seamlessly executed. During the worship set, a small narrative was even worked into a song. One of the ladies in the congregation had a miscarriage, but placed her faith in God and prayed for another pregnancy. Being woven into the song, the testimony of her faith in God was very moving.

One of the things I noticed had to do with the sparsity of symbols. Historically, churches have used Christian symbols to draw the soul to that which is spiritual. The church did have what looked like tubular steel structures. The "construction" theme may have some symbolism for the church that I don't know about, but other than that Christian symbols were absent. That being said, they had many screens that could be used for displaying videos and other graphics that might help illustrate the sermon.

Towards the end of the worship set, pastor Steven (again seamlessly) appeared on stage. There he was, right in front of us! Even with my mildly cynical attitude, I was geared up and ready to hear what he had to say. I didn't expect anything too terribly deep, but I was really curious as to what it was that drew people to him. It didn't take long for me to find out.

Steven Furtick is a very dynamic speaker. He is funny, he engages the audience, he makes a few simple points and offers generous illustrations, and he is very good at recasting criticisms into material that actually extol the highlights of his ministry. In fact, as he was preaching, one girl was so moved that she started crying and had to dismiss herself from the auditorium. These are not skills you simply pickup at seminary. Many speakers work for decades on their rhetorical skills without achieving this kind of persuasiveness. He is clearly gifted in this area.

Next, I asked myself about the content of his sermon. Is he advancing any heresies? Does he appear to have a grasp of basic Christian theology? Is he merely offering a kind of "pop-psychology" or "self-help" theology?

I was pleasantly surprised to find the following: he didn't espouse any heresy, he seemed to have a handle on basic theological matters (even bringing up God's eternality), and he appealed to theological virtues (primarily faith) in order to prod believers onto living life as Christ intended. I am not saying that he delved into any theological topics in depth; I am merely saying that the presentation today didn't display the problems that I had heard from his critics. Additionally, his points displayed a deeper knowledge of Scripture than someone like Joel Osteen.

Evaluation

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by Elevation. I didn't get the overly sensitive "we want to please you at all costs" which was nice. In fact, on their website, they have a section dedicated to saying "We need your seat", basically saying that if you don't like it here, by all means find another church.

I also appreciate their dedication to doing things well. It is refreshing to see Christians who want to be excellent at what they do. They are not content with mediocre talent when it comes to worship, welcoming staff, media and production staff, etc. They obviously have very talented people working at Elevation. The logistics side alone would be a nightmare for most event coordinators.

On that note, however, it does appear that training for leadership in the E-Groups is on the light side. This is my understanding based on people involved in E-Groups at Elevation. My understanding, and it could be wrong, is that leaders of these small groups are usually not very Biblically literate. Additionally, this appears to be where people are getting the bulk of their spiritual formation. On the one hand, if this is true, then that is a problem. On the other hand, I have only been to two churches in my lifetime that do have Biblically literal individuals leading the small groups (and I have been to a LOT of churches). So if I am going to criticize them for this, I should equally criticize 98% of the churches I have attended.

In addition to my concerns about Protestant churches in general, I do have a few concerns about Elevation Church:

The church seems to be very centered around a specific personality, namely that of Steven Furtick. I don't know that this is always a problem as there are other churches I like that are centered around a specific person. (for example: Living Way Ministries, Insight for Living, etc.) However, my concern in these kinds of churches is that if the leader falls, the consequences have a larger impact on the spiritual well being of the congregants.
The church is curiously focused on its own achievements. I find this to be true in a lot of large churches.
Pastor Steven (judging from watching many sermons online) has a tendency to be overly defensive. He is a young pastor who is very successful. Naturally there is would be a desire there to defend himself and his ministry, but it seems to me to be a bit excessive as every sermon I hear has that element in it.
I have some reason to question the effectiveness their discipleship programs. I know of many "elevators" whose thinking and living are blatantly secular (living with people before being married, thinking that sex outside of marriage is ok, lacking in the ability to discern virtues from vices in general, etc.) I don't mean to say that pastor Steven would agree with these congregants, as I heard him denounce some of these things this morning. I only mean to say that the message may not be working it's way down through some of the small groups. This may be a problem with the small group leaders, it may simply be disobedient and immoral individuals, or something like that. Either way, once it is known it should be addressed by the leadership.
The church seems to be ok with the teaching of T.D. Jakes. I don't know the extent of which they are ok with his teachings, but their affiliation with him is a concern.

Ultimately, it's my hope that God continues to use Elevation Church for whatever purpose He has for it. I was glad to be able to attend one of their services this morning and I look forward to seeing the work there continue and deepen. We should pray for the leadership of the church and for our own growth as we serve our common Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Classical Arminianism and Total Depravity

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 19:24:00 -0800

In this post, I would like to explore similarities and differences in how classical Arminians and Calvinists view the doctrine of total depravity. I say "classical Arminianism" because many people who claim to be Arminian do not understand Arminianism as it was stated by Arminius himself. For example, the following website does NOT speak for the classical Arminian:

http://thegracecommunity.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/what-is-arminianism/

Free-will or human ability. ...Each sinner possesses a free will, and his eternal destiny depends on how he uses it. Man’s freedom consists in his ability to choose good over evil in spiritual matters; his will is not enslaved to his sinful nature. The sinner has the power to either cooperate with God’s Spirit and be regenerated or resist God’s grace and perish. The lost sinner needs the Spirit’s assistance but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, for faith is man’s act and precedes the new birth. Faith is the sinner’s gift to God; it is man’s contribution to salvation. (emphasis mine)

I understand why Calvinists react so strongly to these portrayals of Arminian theology. Contrary to the quote above Arminius did not believe that faith is the sinner's gift to God. Nor did he maintain that man's will, in his fallen state, is free from enslavement to sin. In his book Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities, Roger Olson writes the following:

Arminius could not have made clearer his belief that human beings are utterly helpless and totally dependent on grace for their salvation.

Roger E. Olson. Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (p. 142). Kindle Edition.

The classical Arminian does not believe that a man has the ability to respond to God apart from a special act of grace. Man cannot, by means of his natural free will, please God. Man cannot, by means of common grace, choose to accept God's offer of salvation. Arminius held that a special act of grace is required in order to free man's will from enslavement to sin. Thus, contrary to popular opinion, Arminius did not think that man could save himself by means of his autonomous choice. In fact, Arminius believed that even after regeneration a man must be carried by grace in order to do any good in the sight of God. Olson quotes Arminius in the following passage:

I ascribe to grace THE COMMENCEMENT, THE CONTINUANCE AND THE CONSUMMATION OF ALL GOOD,-and to such an extent do I carry its influence, that a man, though already regenerate, can neither conceive, will nor do any good at all, nor resist any evil temptation, without this preventing and exciting, this following and co-operating grace-From this statement it will clearly appear, that I am by no means injurious or unjust to grace, by attributing, as it is reported of me, too much to man's free-will...

Roger E. Olson. Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (pp. 143-144). Kindle Edition.

Or again concerning free will Arminius writes:

Free will is unable to begin or to perfect any true and spiritual good, without Grace. That I may not be said, like Pelagius, to practice delusion with regard to the word "Grace," I mean by it that which is the Grace of Christ and which belongs to regeneration.... I confess that the mind of [animalis] a natural and carnal man is obscure and dark, that his affections are corrupt and inordinate, that his will is stubborn and disobedient, and that the man himself is dead in sins.

Roger E. Olson. Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (p. 144). Kindle Edition.

Suffice it to say that Arminius did not think that man, in his fallen state apart from grace, could accept God's offer of salvation.

Additionally, the classical Arminian notion of total depravity is very close to the Calvinist notion. One Calvinist website writes the following description of total depravity:

http://www.reformed.org/calvinism/index.html?mainframe=/calvinism/index_calv.html

When Calvinists speak of humans as "totally depraved," they are making an extensive, rather than an intensive statement. The effect of the fall upon man is that sin has extended to every part of his personality -- his thinking, his emotions, and his will. Not necessarily that he is intensely sinful, but that sin has extended to his entire being. The unregenerate (unsaved) man is dead in his sins (Romans 5:12). Without the power of the Holy Spirit, the natural man is blind and deaf to the message of the gospel (Mark 4:11f). This is why Total Depravity has also been called "Total Inability."

A classical Arminian would not disagree with this description of total depravity. In fact, the Society of Evangelical Arminians describes it in nearly the same way. Arminians believe in original sin and that sin extends to every part of man. These are not the points of disagreement between the two views of the nature of fallen man.

Where the two views diverge are as follows:

While grace is necessary for salvation, grace is not irresistible. Man can resist the prevenient grace of God.
While man does not have the ability to respond to God, once enabled by prevenient grace his will is freed (but not necessitated) to accept God's offer of salvation.
The act of regeneration is synergistic in that there are two agents involved. Arminians don't believe that man can earn his salvation via good works, but that he may agree with God (and accept God's gracious gift) once his will has been freed by grace.
Despite claims made by Calvinists, the acceptance of God's offer (enabled by God's grace) is not a meritorious act.

Arminianism is decidedly synergistic, but the picture painted by Calvinists often misses the mark of what Classical Arminians affirm when they affirm synergy. In an article by John Hendryx, synergism is defined in the following way:

Synergism is the doctrine that the act of being born again is achieved through a combination of human will and divine grace.

This appears to be a minimal definition of synergism. However, Calvinists often imply much more about synergism than what is found in this "minimal" definition. In the same article, John Hendryx writes,

In other words, synergists believe that faith itself, a principle standing independent and autonomous of God's action of grace, is something the natural man must add or contribute toward the price of his salvation. Unregenerate man, in this scheme, is left to his freewill and natural ability to believe or reject God. Synergists teach that God's grace takes us part of the way to salvation but that the [fallen, rebellious] human will must determine the final outcome. It does this by reaching down into an autonomous principle within in its fallen unrenewed nature in order to either produce a right thought or create a right volition toward God. ...In this system, then, grace is merely an offer or a help but does not do anything to change man's heart of stone or natural hostility to God. This means that God will only look favorably upon and reward those natural men who are able to produce or contribute faith, independent of God's inward gracious call or spiritual renewal. (emphasis his).

While this characterization may reflect the views of some synergists, it does NOT reflect the view of Arminius himself or those who are faithful to his teachings. Additionally, synergism as such, does not necessitate that God and man contribute equally to salvation. What is more, a syergistic view as such does not necessitate that man contribute anything towards the "price of his salvation". Minimally it simply means that two agents are involved in the process of salvation. Even if one of the agents is almost entirely passive, synergism is minimally the claim that there are two agents involved as opposed to one agent.

Hendryx's characterization of Arminians fails in at least the following ways:

For classical Arminians,

Faith is not independent of God's grace, but entirely dependent on and enabled by God's grace.
Natural man does not contribute or add anything towards the "price of his salvation".
Unregenerate man, in this scheme, is NOT left to his freewill and natural ability to believe or reject God. Unregenerate man, apart from grace, cannot believe God.
Grace is NOT merely an offer of salvation. Prevenient grace is precisely that special act of grace that enables man to agree with God.
God does NOT look favorably upon and reward those natural men who are able to produce or contribute faith, independent of God's inward gracious call or spiritual renewal. Faith does not come apart from God's grace, nor is faith a contribution on the part of man. Rather faith is a gift from God that man (under the enabling power of grace) either resists or does not resist.

The narrative of personal salvation that the Arminian has in mind goes something like this. Man left to himself will follow his sinful nature. He is a slave to his own sinful nature and does not have the ability to know God or please God. God in His goodness enables a man, by means of a special act of grace called prevenient grace, to see the goodness of God for what it is. In so doing, God makes it possible for man to respond to God. However, man can resist this prevenient grace and so condemn himself to death.

Thus, for the classical Arminian, man is depraved. He cannot respond to God on his own. Every part of his being is marked by falleness. However, the classical Arminian rejects the narrative of personal salvation given by the Calvinist because he thinks that the deterministic claims of the Calvinists are unnecessary for explaining the goodness and sovereignty of God. In fact, the Arminian thinks that the Calvinist narrative of salvation unnecessarily diminishes the goodness of God. It is this concern, primarily, that draws the Arminian to the thought of Arminius.

Introduction to Robert C. Roberts View of Emotions

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 17:28:00 -0700

Robert C. Roberts is a philosopher who engages in the contemporary discussion concerning the nature of emotions. His scholarly work defending his position may be found in his book Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology. He has also written a work titled Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues which elaborates on how his view of emotions assists the Christian in his or her spiritual walk. In this post, I simply want to offer a sketch of his view. However, before I sketch his view I want to give a little background on the way in which Roberts approaches the study of emotions.

In ancient and medieval philosophy, emotions were usually spoken of within the context of a broader philosophical anthropology. Aquinas, for example, differentiates the various types of souls into the natural (vegetative) soul, the sensitive soul, and the rational soul. Rational souls have the powers of the lower sensitive and natural soul; however, in addition to those powers the rational soul also has the power of reason. Aquinas locates emotions in the sensitive part of the soul. In particular, he situates them in the sensitive appetite. (Note: At this point, I do not think that the modern term “emotions” is the equivalent of Aquinas’ terms “passiones” or “affectiones”.)

By contrast, the contemporary debate makes use of neuroscience, experimental psychology, evolutionary biology, etc... Some researchers believe they have found interesting results as they study brain states and their corresponding emotional states. Others think that experimental psychology is more helpful in arriving at the nature of emotions. Anthropologists might draw their conclusions about emotion by comparing those emotions that seem to cross cultural boundaries with those that seem to be unique to a particular culture.

Roberts believes that the while the sciences may be helpful in understanding the nature of emotions, they are not sufficient for that task. Thus Roberts approach is that of a conceptual analysis. By conceptual analysis, he means “an approach to the investigation of emotions that takes major clues about them from the ways people talk about the emotions in the contexts of their life.” (Roberts 2003, p.4) That is not to say that he is simply trying to determine the nature of emotions by looking for the semantic root of the word or by a comprehensive study of the various usages of the term. His approach starts with common usage of the terms, but it seeks to interpret those usages in conjunction with reported and personal experiences of emotion.

The contemporary discussion of emotions consists largely of two main views: the cognitivist and the non-cognitivist. The James-Lange theory is an example of a non-cognitivist theory. It maintains that emotions are not cognitions but feelings which are caused by physiological states and identified by a particular set of physiological happenings. So, for example, when you see a bear you perceive danger and that cognitive perception sets off a series of biochemical processes. According to this theory, the resulting “fear” is to be identified with our awareness of the non-cognitive physiological state.

Cognitivist theories identify emotions with some kind of cognition. Robert Solomon and Martha Nussbaum are examples of cognitivists. They view emotions as a species of judgments.

Roberts is also a cognitivist. However, rather than identifying emotions as a type of judgment, he identifies emotions as a type of perception. He defines an emotion as a concern-based construal. Thus in order to have an emotion, one must be concerned about something and one must construe (perceive) a situation as either aligning with or conflicting with that concern.

For example, let’s say you just bought a new Mercedes. Let’s also say that you have been wanting one for years and as such you do not want your new car to be scratched or damaged in any way. Now let’s say that you just pulled your new SLS AMG into you drive way and you see a bunch of thug teen-agers walking down the street. You notice that they have a set of keys and as they walk down the street they are “pretending” to scratch cars with their keys. From this distance you aren’t sure if they are really scratching cars or if they are just pretending.

In this situation, your concern is for the condition of your new car. That concern disposes you to having certain emotions about your car. When you are driving your pristine vehicle down a back country road on a beautiful Saturday morning, it’s handling, it’s comfort, and the prestige you feel as others look at your amazing SLS AMG brings you joy. But now that you perceive a situation in which your car might be threatened your concern for your car, coupled with your perception of impending danger, produces a very different emotion. It might be anxiety or anger.

What this means for Roberts is that your concern acts as an emotional disposition. In other words, it disposes you to a range of emotions. So the concern, by itself, is not an emotion. It is the concern along with how you perceive the situation.

Imagine the same situation except imagine that the SLS AMG is your ex-wife’s new car. She has spent the last two years trying to make your life a living hell. She has tried to take all your money, take the children, she has done everything she can to ruin your reputation, AND she loves her new SLS AMG. You know that if these teenage thugs key her car, she would be devastated. In that case, the approaching teenagers might bring you joy even though you perceive the situation in the same way, namely that they pose a threat to the car. However, in this case your concern is not for the car, but for the inflicting grief on your ex-wife.

Thus Roberts claims that an emotion is “a way of “seeing” things, when this “seeing” is grounded in a concern”. (Roberts 2007, p.12) So there are two parts to an emotion. First, one must have a concern about something, and then one must perceive a situation in a certain way. In order to illustrate what Roberts means here by “a way of seeing” see the gestalt below.

When you see this gestalt picture, you can see either a young woman looking away or an old woman with a cloth covering her head. Visually, you are seeing the exact same thing. However, when you see the old woman, you perceive the visual stimuli differently than when you perceive the young woman looking away. The difference then is not one of sight but of perception. The difference is how you construe the visual stimuli.

Similarly, when you construe the teenagers as a threat to something you care about, namely your brand new Mercedes, that way of perceiving or construing the situation specifies the type of emotion that you will have. Additionally, the degree to which you are concerned about your vehicle will usually be reflected in your emotional response to the impending danger.

Roberts goes on to say that emotions are states in which “the subject grasps, with a kind of perceptual immediacy, a significance of his or her situation.” (Roberts 2007, p.11) To have an emotion is more than a mere recognition of the facts of some situation. It attaches significance to a situation. It is a perception of some set of events conjoined with a response that reveals how those events relate to my desires and concerns. Thus emotions, more than any other human activity, impresses upon us the significance of the events of our lives.

This view, in contrast with a non-cognitive view, allows for emotions to be appropriate or inappropriate. Pop-psychologists sometimes say things like “feelings are neither right nor wrong, they just happen”. While emotions may not be, properly speaking, moral or immoral they are certainly open to evaluation. If you doubt this, ask yourself what you would think of a grown man who has a temper tantrum on the floor because a waitress gave him lemonade instead of sweet tea. I don’t know of anyone who would find this sort of behavior acceptable.

But on what grounds do we find this behavior unacceptable? We do so on grounds that there are objective standards that should guide our levels of concerned for various objects. Since there are appropriate levels of concern for various objects, we can judge whether or not someone is unduly concerned about something. If a man is more concerned about getting his sweet tea in a timely manner than about the well being of a waitress, then we can say that his concerns are misaligned. He is not appropriately concerned about the right things.

Additionally, since our perceptions of a given situation are interpretive perceptions, we have grounds for being upset with the man who throws temper tantrums over trivial issues. As is the case with the gestalt above, our will is involved in how we perceive things. I can, by force of will, decide to construe the gestalt as a young woman or as an old woman. Likewise, I can construe someone’s comments as an insult, as a compliment, or in some other way. I can choose to construe events in a cynical way or I can, on the whole, be optimistic in my appraisal of a situation.

This short post is meant only as a brief overview of Dr. Robert’s position. His view is much more elaborate than what I have presented, and you should not take this as an authoritative source on his view. I am mainly posting this to distill my thoughts on the view of emotions as concern-based construals. If you want to know more about his views, please read the books that I listed above.

Aquinas on Impassibility: SCG (Q.89-90)

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:09:00 -0700

I have been meaning to read, and understand, Aquinas’ reasons for his doctrine of impassibility for a while now. To that end, I want to offer my thoughts on questions 89 and 90 of book 1 of Aquinas’ work Summa Contra Gentiles. I am aware that these are not the only passages that speak to this doctrine. I am just biting off this small chuck for this post.

In SCG question 89, (sections 1 – 7) Aquinas argues that passions are excluded from God by reason of their genus. Ultimately, passions are excluded because they are passive potencies. Since God has no passive potency, it follows that God has no passions.

In that same question (sections 8 – 15) Aquinas argues that some passions are excluded, not merely because their genus, but on account of their species as well. His first example is sorrow and pain. They can’t be found in God because “its subject is the already present evil”. So the nature of certain passions themselves implies some evil or some lack in the subject, which for Aquinas, means that they are not befitting the nature of God.

Aquinas offers additional reasons for judging specific passions to be repugnant to the divine nature. The following reasons rule out (by reason of their species) a passion from existing in God: (section 10) that a subject can be disposed to the object of a passion in way that is not already possessed [hope excluded] (section 12) certain passions imply a change of will [repentance excluded] (section 13) certain passions require a error in judgment concerning the good [envy excluded] and (section 14) certain passions are saddened over a good [anger excluded].

Essentially, Aquinas has said that there can be NO passions in God. Passions, in virtue of what they are, are precluded from being part of the nature of God because they are passive potencies.

He then goes on to explain that specific passions like hope, envy, and anger cannot be found in God because the nature of those specific passions are inconsistent with particular features of the divine nature.

With these things in place, it is very striking that Aquinas would follow this section with an argument for why joy and delight are part of the divine nature. Joy is listed among the passions of the sensitive appetite and as such it is a passive potency. So this presents a paradox. If joy is a passive potency, then how can Aquinas attribute this to God?

This paradox prompts the following questions:

1.) Why does Aquinas give arguments against certain passions by reason of their species when he just ruled out all the passions by reason of their genus? Why not just say (1) All passions are passive potencies (2) there are no passive potencies in God (3) therefore there are no passions in God.

2.) Why does Aquinas say that joy is properly in God if joy is listed among the passions of the sensitive appetite and all the passions of the sensitive appetite are excluded from God by reason of their genus?

To answer #1 above, it seems to me that Aquinas’ arguments from species in question 89 set up the perquisites for understanding question 90. Aquinas is doing at least two things with his arguments from species:

1.) He is offering a list of passions that are not found in God.

And more importantly...

2.) He is offering examples of how we can determine whether or not a particular passion is repugnant to the divine nature.

If Aquinas simply ruled out all passions from God on the basis that they are passive potencies, and then went on to include joy in the divine nature, he would be contradicting himself. The specific reasons given in the argument from species nuance the argument in a way that makes it possible to include joy and delight in the divine nature.

He begins question 90 by saying:

“There are certain passions which, though they do not befit God as passions, do not signify anything by the nature of their species that is repugnant to the divine perfection. Among these passions are joy and delight.”

However, if joy is part of the sensitive appetite, how can it befit God? How can a passive potency be found in God and why would Aquinas argue for joy being in God by reason of its species?

His response:

“Delight is of a present good.”

But so what? If joy and delight are of a present good, how does that mean that it is present in God? This doesn’t answer the question of how joy or delight can be found in God given that they are passions.

Aquinas goes on:

“Neither, therefore, by reason of its object, which is a good, nor by reason of its disposition towards its object, which is possessed in act, is joy, according to the nature of its species, repugnant to the divine perfection.”

Aquinas points out that joy is not ruled out from being in the divine nature by reason of its species. However, even if I grant that there is nothing according to the species of joy that is repugnant to the divine nature, why isn’t joy ruled out based on its genus? After all, it is a passion of the sensitive appetite and as such it is a passive potency!

Aquinas goes on:

“From this it is manifest that joy or delight is properly in God. For just as the apprehended good and evil are the object of the sensible appetite, so, too, are they of the intellective appetite.”

At this point, Aquinas begins to give an answer to my concern listed above. There is nothing in the nature of joy itself that makes it repugnant to the divine nature. But neither is joy a passion in God.

How can this be? How can joy be joy without being a passion?

It is because Aquinas sees something analogous to joy in the intellective appetite. Aquinas is not saying that God can have passions of the sensitive appetite (i.e. joy). Rather, he is saying that the kind of joy that God has is something that is found in the intellective appetite. Aquinas says that there is something in the intellective appetite that is similar to what is in the sensitive appetite. Thus joy in the sensitive appetite bears a resemblance to joy in the intellective appetite.

This simple operation, while it is in the will, is not simply a volitional act. Aquinas says “joy and delight are a certain resting of the will in its object.” So while the kind of joy that God has is found in the intellective appetite (will), it is a kind of resting in the good. Resting in the good is not the same as choosing. If, as Aquinas says, this resting is similar to what we experience in the sensitive appetite as joy, then perhaps God does have something like an emotion. And yet, the doctrine of impassibility still stands because the kind of joy that God has is not a passion.

1 Corinthians 12 - Sermon

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 13:59:00 -0700

If you want to watch the video of this sermon, click here.

This morning, we will be looking at the book of 1 Corinthians. In addition to being one of the most quoted books by the early church fathers, the book of 1 Corinthians also happens to be one of my favorite books in the New Testament. This morning we will be focusing primarily on chapter 12.

Initially, I liked the book because it’s the largest available treatise on spiritual gifts. Being raised in the Charismatic / Pentecostal church, I tended to focus almost entirely on chapters 12 through 14. I remember being both delighted and frustrated at Paul’s comments that we should “desire spiritual gifts…” After all, during that time of my life, one of the most important things for me was the obtaining of the gifts of the Spirit. I wanted to be able to prophecy or perform miracles. Many of you might find this desire to be odd; however, given my goals and circumstances, this desire was a natural one.

As a teenager, I remember having a very strong desire to be “the best Christian I can be”. Since I, and those around me, thought that the pinnacle of one’s spiritual life is to obtain spiritual gifts, naturally I sought them so that I could be spiritually fulfilled. The logic was simple

I desire to be as spiritual as possible.
Obtaining the gifts of the Spirit is the mark of someone who is advanced in his or her spirituality.
Therefore, I desire to obtain the gifts of the Spirit.

There was one time when I thought I witnessed a genuine miracle. We were in the middle of a worship service and a guy with a broken leg started running around the church. He finally stopped running in the front of the church and started jumping up and down. At the time, I thought to myself, “Wow, a genuine miracle; this confirms what I thought about the gifts!”

Unfortunately, the very next day I saw the guy with the broken leg. He was in a lot of pain. When someone asked my class instructor why he didn’t get healed, she told us that “He didn’t have enough faith.” Now to a non-charismatic, this might seem like an absurd explanation. But to an optimistic 15 year old, it was a perfectly reasonable explanation. If the Bible teaches that if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, that you can move mountains, then it isn’t that hard to accept the explanation my instructor gave the class. In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says,

“It was because of your little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you.”

Jesus said things very much like my instructor. It all made sense to me at the time.

Now even though I accepted the “he didn’t have enough faith” explanation, this event still disturbed to me. For a charismatic, the essence of being a Christian has a lot to do with maintaining a living, breathing relationship with God. This kind of relationship requires that I be able to talk to God, and that God sometimes talks to me. The closer I get to God, the more gifted and holy I should be. The more spiritual I get, the more I should be able to manifest the characteristics of God. And in my thinking at that time that meant that I should be able to obtain the gifts of the Spirit.

I often asked myself, “The guy who is prophesying over there, how much faith did he have to have in order to get that gift?” I thought to myself “Jesus said that all we need is faith as large as a mustard seed and we should be able to move mountains.” I didn’t know anyone who had faith as large as a mustard seed because none of the people I knew could move mountains. The guy who threw his crutches down and ran around the room probably had more faith than I did, but even his faith didn’t heal his broken leg.

Fortunately my mind didn’t take the next step when I was younger, but it very well could have. I easily could have asked myself, “If we are saved by faith, how much faith do I need to have in order to be saved?” If the guy with the broken leg didn’t even have enough faith to be healed from a broken leg, how could I be sure that I had enough faith to be saved from the wrath of God?

Later in life, the importance of seeking the gifts seemed to fade. This was partly because of my theological studies and partly because I never seemed to get any of the gifts. No matter how hard I sought after the gift of healing, I was never able to heal anyone. No matter how many times I tried to prophecy, it always seemed like it was just me conjuring something up in order to be as spiritual as the next guy. Additionally, the people who said that they could perform miracles, like Benny Hinn, I deemed to be scam artists.

So the conclusion that I should desire to obtain spiritual gifts faded as well. I no longer believed that my growing closer to God required that I be able to perform miracles, or give prophecies, or cast out demons. However, my giving up on that notion didn’t make my Christian life easier. It made it harder. I wanted to be spiritual! If getting the gifts of the Spirit is not what makes me spiritual, then what does?

If you have a strong desire to grow in the LORD, you must have some idea of what it means to be spiritual. If you don’t, you will have a good desire, but no way to fulfill that desire. You will find yourself asking things like, “Lord, what should I do with my life?” or “Lord, what do you want me to be?” or “How do I grow closer to you?” And while these questions are good questions, if you never get an answer to your questions, you tend to stagnate.

Church at Corinth

You might ask, what does any of this have to do with 1 Corinthians? Well, I think that the church at Corinth had a genuine desire to be spiritual. However, since they had some problems in their congregation, Paul had to adjust the course of the church there.

The letter to the Corinthians is a corrective letter. Those who understand this sometimes beat up on the Corinthians because they had so many problems. But I think behind these problems stood a genuine desire to be “spiritual”. The Corinthians were misguided and many of them were arrogant. But despite these facts, Paul speaks to them as his children in the Lord. 1 Cor. 4:14-15 says,

I am not writing these things to shame you, but to correct you as my dear children. For though you may have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers because I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

So Paul corrects them, not as he would Gnostics or other heretics who are trying to steal away people from the church, but as a parent would correct his child who has gone down the wrong path. Paul loves these people very much and he is primarily concerned with correcting their notions of what it means to be truly spiritual, and more importantly, what it means to be a Christian.

To be sure, there are some things that Paul has to squash, but Paul is primarily concerned about redirecting them. D.A. Carson notes that Paul uses a “yes that is true, but…” line of reasoning throughout the book of 1 Corinthians. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part he is saying, “Yes, you are right about that, but I have more to say on this.”

On the corrective side Paul says the following things to them:

First of all, you need to stop being divided. Christ is not divided so you ought not to be divided.

Second, you should not trust in worldly wisdom, but in the power of God. For too long you have been swayed by convincing speeches and the appearance of wisdom. I want your faith to rest in the power of God so that you may obtain a wisdom that is from God.

Third, you need to take immorality seriously. You have someone in your congregation that is sleeping with his own step-mother and you have not done anything about it! Your laxity concerning this man is dangerous to the entire congregation.

Fourth, you need to use your Christian liberty for good and not for evil. Yes, you are not under obligation to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, but if doing that harms your brother… don’t do it. Use your freedom in Christ for good.

Fifth, you need to understand that all good things come from the Spirit of God, and love is the primary fruit that comes from Him.

Finally, you need to look forward to the hope that we have, namely, that we will be bodily raised from the dead, and then we will rule and reign with Christ.

One of the main problems that Paul is addressing throughout all of this has to do with the Corinthian notion of what it means to be spiritual. I think the church at Corinth thought they knew what it meant to be spiritual. The problem for them, however, was that they brought in their pagan notions of spirituality.

The city of Corinth was well known for its immorality. The term “to Corinthianize” came to be a euphemism for prostitution. The city had a reputation for over-indulgence. As Edmond Hiebert notes, “In the Greek plays Corinthians were usually represented as drunkards.”

What was worse is that their religious lives were intimately tied to their immorality. They worshiped Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In the ancient Greek days, there were 1000 female prostitutes at her temple. Visitors of the temple could have free sex there.

This form of worship was probably introduced for more than drawing lots of people to the temple. I suppose that some people may have had that intention. However, I think that there is more to the connection between spirituality and sex. Peter Kreeft says that if you don’t have true spirituality, the closest you can get to it is sex. Sex probably acted as a surrogate for true spirituality.

Another religious practice included the use of ecstatic speech which was often done in a context where the person was “out of control” and under the influence of another personality or spirit. Greece and Rome had plenty of time to develop their pagan notions of what it meant to be in contact with the spirit world. It was this contact with the spirit world that was often identified as what it meant to be spiritual.

This mindset shouldn’t be all that foreign to us. It continues to this day. You see this kind of thing a lot in the occult and the new age. They seek out their spirit guides. They have other worldly experiences like astral-projection, out of body experiences, satanic rituals and a whole host of means of contacting the spirit world.

In Christian churches, it is common for people to identify spirituality with some kind of spiritual experience. It could be as simple as “God spoke to me” or “I was slain in the Spirit” or “I got drunk in the Spirit”. What is common to these notions of spirituality is a common means of getting at and engaging in spiritual encounters. I am not saying that these types of behaviors are of the occult or new age. I think there are subtle, yet meaningful, distinctions between the experiences of Christians and the experiences of the occult and new age.

In addition to pagan practices, the Corinthians were not that far from Athens, the center of philosophy. The Corinthians didn’t have the reputation of being the center of rigorous philosophical thought, but they did consider themselves to be the wise, forward-thinking, cosmopolitan types. They may have been very much like our modern day liberals who think they are wise because they keep up with the latest literature and political trends - not to mention the latest moral trends.

It’s likely that this is the reason why Paul says to them in the 1 Cor. 2:1-5:

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come with superior eloquence or wisdom as I proclaimed the testimony of God. For I decided to be concerned about nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and with much trembling. My conversation and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on the power of God.

Paul did not want Christianity to simply become the latest fad or ideology in Corinth. He wanted them to know that Christianity was the truth and that its truth was backed up by the reality and power of the Spirit of God.

Ironically, this is the very thing which the Christians at Corinth end up misunderstanding. The very means by which God, through Paul, used to establish their faith may have contributed to their thinking that the kingdom of God had fully come. It appears that many of them thought that Jesus had established the kingdom of God and that kingdom was a spiritual kingdom that called for a type of worship that resembled their own previous pagan spirituality.

With all of these things in mind, let’s turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and get started with what is being said there. Verses 1 - 3

With regard to spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were often led astray by speechless idols, however you were led. So I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

Paul begins this section by telling the Corinthians that he didn’t want them to be uninformed or ignorant concerning “spiritual gifts”. There are some people who think that “spiritual gifts” should be translated “spiritual things” or “spiritual persons”. However, since most translations seem to think that “spiritual gifts” is appropriate here and because I don’t think that either rendering here changes the main teaching points in the following passages, I am going to stick with “spiritual gifts” here.

So Paul is saying to them, I don’t want you to be ignorant about spiritual gifts. His first imparting of knowledge to them sets the stage for the rest of what he has to say about spiritual gifts. He contrasts their previous pagan spirituality with true Christian teaching.

Essentially, I think he is saying to them, unlike your old ways where you conjured up mysterious sayings and engaged in frenzied activities to impress dumb idols and your fellow men, Christianity is grounded in the activity of a living God. It is not birthed out of your human efforts; rather it comes about by the sovereign work of the Spirit of God.

In verse 2, Paul is offering a contrast between what pagan worship looked like vs. what Christian worship should look like. In pagan worship, man worships a statue and tries to bring about his own sense of spirituality. But statues don’t cause man to be righteous. They don’t offer any real guidance. So as a pagan you are left to speculate and be lead astray by any vain idea that surrounded the worship of that idol.

In verse 3, when Paul says that “no one speaking by the Spirit of God says that Jesus is cursed”, some people think that he is offering a criterion for telling true Christians from false ones. That may be true, but if that is the primary thing he is trying to do, it doesn’t seem to be a very helpful criterion. People say all sorts of things that they don’t really mean. Is Paul saying that unbelievers cannot utter the words “Jesus is Lord”? Obviously they can. Is Paul saying that Christians cannot utter the words “Jesus is cursed?” Obviously they can utter those words.

You could take this criterion to mean that no one speaking by the Spirit can say and mean the words “Jesus is cursed.” And no one can say and mean “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. This also seems true, but I don’t think that this is what Paul is primarily getting at here. I think his primary goal in this passage is to inform his audience of a spiritual reality.

So while I think this passage does provide a broad means of determining if someone is speaking by the Holy Spirit, I think Paul is primarily concerned about informing his readers of a particular truth about the nature of relationship between God and His creation. That truth is this: that when someone proclaims that Jesus Christ is Lord, they are not doing so on their own. In order for that proclamation to be genuine, it must come from the Holy Spirit.

The emphasis here is not so much the genuine confessions of men, but the absolute necessity of the Holy Spirit for those genuine confessions. So it is not so much about the confessions of men as about the God who makes those confessions genuine.

This seems to be more in keeping with the context for a couple reasons:

1. As I said before, if the passage is primarily about setting a criterion for knowing true and false confessions, then it doesn’t appear to be a very helpful criterion.

2. Overall, Paul seems most concerned about the unity of the church at this point. His emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the Person who unifies the church suggests that he is more interested in setting up the ontological basis for that unity.

Understood this way, these verses give grounding to what Paul is about to say. Now Paul appears to be applying this truth to the gifts and their use in the body of Christ.

Verses 4 - 11

Now there are different gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are different ministries, but the same Lord. And there are different results (activities), but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. To each person the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the benefit of all. For one person is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, and another the message of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another performance of miracles, to another prophecy, and to another discernment of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. It is one and the same Spirit, distributing as he decides to each person, who produces all these things.

After reminding the Corinthians of their very real reliance upon the Holy Spirit, Paul goes on to explain that the same Spirit gives a variety of gifts to His church for the benefit of the church. One stylistic element that is very obvious throughout this section is the repeating of the theme: there is a diversity of gifts, but the same Spirit.

In verses 4 – 6 Paul does not say that the Spirit gives different gifts to different people. He says that later, but here he just says “there are different gifts, but the same Spirit, there are different ministries, but the same Lord, there are different activities, but the same God.” He could just be saying that the diversity of gifts comes from the same source. However, if he is saying that, it seems somewhat repetitive since that is the very next thing he talks about in verses 7 – 11.

I think what Paul is doing here is setting up the distribution of gifts, ministries, and activities within the context of a Triune God.

Let me read these again:

· v.4 – there are different gifts, but the same Spirit

· v.5 – there are different ministries, but the same Lord

· v.6 – there are different activities, but the same God.

Found within the theme of a diversity of gifts being empowered by the same God, we see what looks like Paul’s Trinitarian views being made manifest here. The use of Spirit, Lord, and God appear to correlate to Holy Spirit, Son, and Father respectively. Paul is not necessarily saying that the Spirit gives gifts, Jesus gives ministries, and the Father gives activities. There doesn’t appear to be a consistent use of Spirit, Lord, and God with regard to what kinds of things they give to the church. The Spirit, the Lord, and God are all the same being from which all things flow. But the Source of the gifts is a Triune God.

I should mention that it would be difficult to establish the doctrine of the Trinity from this passage alone. If we didn’t have a doctrine of the Trinity, which comes from looking at many different places in Scripture, we might not pick up on this reference to the Trinity. Be that as it may, we do recognize the Trinity and it appears that these verses are manifestations of Paul’s doctrine of God.

In verse 7, Paul gives the reason for the Spirit’s distribution of the gifts. Simply put, it is for the benefit of all. God gives gifts to the church in order to benefit the church. I think that Paul has a very organic view of the church here. In Paul’s view, each member of the church exists within the context of the whole. The church is not merely an aggregation of separate parts. Instead, it is an organic whole that, like a living organism, is more than simply the sum of its parts. This theme becomes more obvious in the last half of chapter 12.

In verses 8 – 11 we are given a list of the spiritual gifts. Here he lists wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues. Let me make a few comments about the list and then about the nature of the gifts.

First, D.A. Carson, Gordon Fee, and other Biblical scholars like them seem pretty convinced that this is not a comprehensive list of gifts. One reason for this is that other lists are given and they include gifts which are not in this list. So even though there are several lists of spiritual gifts in the New Testament, they are not identical lists.

Also, it does not appear, in this case anyway, that the gifts are ordered by their level of importance. Other lists contain these gifts in different orders. So we can’t say that one gift is more important because it came first in the list.

As an aside, let me emphasize that I don’t think these verses imply that all gifts have the same level of importance. As a matter of fact, I do think that some gifts are more important than others, and I think Paul says as much. In verse 31, within the same chapter we are discussing, Paul says to earnestly desire the best gifts. What Paul means here by “best gifts” is a matter of debate, but that there are better or more profitable gifts does appear to be the case. All I mean to say is that we shouldn’t take this list to mean that the first mentioned gifts are more important than those gifts at the end of the list simply because of the order in which they are mentioned.

Finally, notice that in this list of gifts Paul doesn’t divide them up and say “these are the supernatural gifts and these are the ones where God just augments a person’s natural talents.” He doesn’t say you can work up wisdom on your own, but the Holy Spirit has to give you the gift of miracles. He doesn’t say that the gift of discerning of spirits is something given to you at birth and the gift of healing is given to you when you reach a certain level of maturity.

My sense is that there are two main roads people go down when talking about the gifts. One road is that all the gifts are supernatural empowerments and have nothing to do with natural gifting and talent. The other road is that all the gifts are natural talents that God has given you and you simply develop them, with the help of the Spirit. I think both of these approaches lead to the wrong place.

For example, I have always found “spiritual gift inventories” to be odd and misguided. Who would take one of those inventories and then conclude, “Oh, I have the gift of healing so I’ll go clear out CMC hospital tomorrow.” It’s usually something like this, “Oh, it looks like I would be a good administrator so maybe I’ll go get that Masters in Business Administration after all.”

If you have charismatic / Pentecostal leanings and you think you have the gift of healing, you might try to become the next Benny Hinn. You might try to go to healing workshops and pray really hard the God would empower you to heal people during tent revivals.

If you are a spiritual gift inventory enthusiast and you think you have the gift of healing, you might be inclined to go to medical school so that you can “develop” your gift of healing.

I think these approaches to “finding your spiritual gifts” are misguided. The apostles with the gift of miracles didn’t throw coats at people in an opulent display of showmanship. Nor did they have a 3% success rate of healing people. On the other hand, the apostles didn’t go to medical school in order to heal the sick. They didn’t take their miraculous gifts to be the mere development of natural talents that God had given them at birth.

Both groups seek the gifts of the Spirit in vain as both of them attempt to produce the gifts of the Spirit on their own. One group attempts to get the gifts through the proper amount of faith, and the other group develops the gifts through human effort along with a little help from God. Both views have some truth, but both are (in my opinion) equally mistaken.

Paul very clearly says in verse 11 that “It is one and the same Spirit, distributing as he decides to each person, who produces all these things.” The faith healers see God as a force that can be manipulated by means of their personal faith. They do this under the pious pretense of “if someone isn’t healed, it’s because I didn’t have enough faith or because they didn’t have enough faith.” So morally they think they are off the hook because they attribute the failure of the healing to themselves and their own lack of faith. But for them to think that the gift of healing is something that they can obtain by having enough faith or by being sincere or holy enough is a misunderstanding of the nature of God.

The spiritual gifts inventory enthusiast also wants to ascribe failure to himself when he doesn’t obtain the gifts of the Spirit. But I think he too misunderstands God and how we relate to Him. If the charismatic / Pentecostal is too otherworldly, the spiritual gift inventory enthusiast is too this-worldly. In a way, they can be practical deists. A deist is someone who doesn’t believe that God intervenes in the world. Even if he doesn’t theoretically misunderstand Paul’s statement in verse 11, he doesn’t understand the correct application of it.

On the one hand, the Spirit is not a force that is just a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. On the other hand, the Spirit is not far from us, He is in us. He is always present.

The corrective to the charismatic / Pentecostal is this: The third person of the Trinity is a Person, not a force. You don’t need to perform the right rituals, you don’t need to spend your whole life trying to conjure up enough faith, and you shouldn’t ever try to manipulate God into giving you the gifts by trying to attain a certain measure of holiness. When you approach God, you do so as a servant would approach a King to petition Him. You should ask God, “Lord I seek to be gifted in whatever way you see fit. I really enjoy doing X, please give me more so that I may give to others.” If God says “No”, then you act accordingly. Acting accordingly will vary depending on the circumstance, but it always involves humility before God.

The corrective to the spiritual gift inventory enthusiast is this: To be sure, God has given you natural talents and abilities, but that is not what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 12 – 14. You don’t develop the ability to prophecy or to perform miracles. Even those more “ordinary” gifts like wisdom and knowledge are distributed by the Spirit. I believe they are special acts of grace. God is intimately involved in the affairs of your life at all times. He is not someone who just steps in here and there to help you in your desperate time of need. It is usually just the case that you recognize the presence of God more in your desperate times of need. When you pray, pray something like this: “Lord I seek to be gifted in whatever way you see fit. I really enjoy doing X and I pray that you would bless me in that for your glory.” If God says “No”, then act accordingly. Again, acting accordingly will vary depending on the circumstance, but it always involves humility before God and submission to God.

The Holy Spirit gives gifts to individual people according to His will. The same Spirit who worked through the apostles to perform mighty miracles works in you to be a good administrator. The same Spirit who prohibited Paul from preaching in Asia (Acts 16:6) works in you to give you a special amount of wisdom. These gifts are to be sought, but they are not to be sought presumptuously. Being a Person, God can say “No” any time that He wishes.

Perhaps it is the influence of the cessationists around the turn of the century that has caused us to not seek gifts from God. Cessationists are those who maintain that the “sign gifts” ceased with the death of the apostles or with the end of the “apostolic era”. While their arguments are specifically against what they call the “sign gifts,” I think their mindset has had much broader implications for us. Their views have made large sectors of the church wary of seeking anything from God. I think this is unfortunate.

Since 1 Corinthians is a corrective letter, this would have been the perfect opportunity for Paul to say the church at Corinth, “The gifts of the Spirit aren’t for you guys. God gave them to the apostles to inaugurate the new covenant.” But rather than doing that, he encourages the Corinthians, of all people, to eagerly pursue the gifts (see verse 31). These are the people who are abusing the gifts. These are the people who, at many points, seem to confuse pagan spirituality with the worship of the one true God. And yet to these people, he offers a “yes, you are gifted of the Spirit, but you need to be corrected on some matters concerning those gifts.” In chapter 12, Paul’s primary correction has to do with correcting divisiveness and pride.

To me, this is a wonderful example of the type of largeness of soul that we need to have as believers. As apologists we are very prone to reductionism. We have a penchant for seeking neat and tidy answers that we can hand to people. This mindset, I think, is foreign to the apostles. It’s not that they don’t have strong convictions. It’s not that they don’t have definite views on things. It’s that they realize that God is bigger than we are. They understand that mystery is always involved in the worship of an infinite God. And they are keenly aware of the fact that they don’t always know how God is going to work out his plan on the earth. This is not anti-intellectual in the least. It is simply the basis for humility.

Getting back to the text, I mentioned that Paul doesn’t distinguish between natural talents and supernatural empowerments here. He simply gives a list of gifts. This flattening out of the gifts appears to imply that Paul is not concerned here with elaborating on the nature of the different gifts or how those gifts are given. Instead he seems most concerned with WHO is giving the gifts. He wants to make sure that the Corinthians understand that ALL gifts are given by the Spirit, and more specifically by the same Spirit. Whether He gives them to us at birth or through some fantastic mystical experience is irrelevant here.

In fact, what I find most fascinating is that Paul speaks of things like wisdom, knowledge, and faith as being gifts of God. The fact that it isn’t just the mighty sign gifts, like miracles and healings that are given by God suggests something about the extent of our dependence on Him.

In the next section, I think Paul makes some of the most profound statements about how Christians should relate to one another.

Verses 12 – 13

For just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body– though many – are one body, so too is Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. Whether Jews or Greeks or slaves or free, we were all made to drink of the one Spirit.

Paul has just informed his readers that the same Spirit produces a diversity of gifts. But in order for the Corinthians to properly use the gifts, they need to understand some things. Paul uses a physical illustration to point out a profound spiritual truth.

Paul tells them that though you have many gifts, you are one body! What does he mean when he says to them that they are one body? We throw that term around a lot when we talk about the body of Christ. When Paul says that “you are one body, so too is Christ”, he is, at a minimum, referring to the church. We know this from v.27 of this chapter. So we can read this verse something like “Just as a body has many parts and is still one body, so God has made the church to be one body which is composed of many parts.”

It’s very important that we don’t over spiritualize this illustration. The power of this point comes when you picture a living, breathing human body. He says, look at the human body. Do you not see that it is composed of many diverse parts and yet it functions as a single unified organism? In fact, among the things in nature, living bodies are the most unified types of beings.

In one of our education hours, we talked about the differences between living and nonliving bodies. Generally, nonliving bodies are united by mere proximity to each other. A collection of rocks in a jar, for example, is just an aggregation of a bunch of chunks of matter.

What is more unified is something like an automobile. It is unified by design. It has many different parts: an engine, wheels, an alternator, etc. and all of those parts work together to perform a function. This is what is called a functional unity. If the engine dies, the car does not repair itself. Someone other than the car has to fix it, or it will cease performing its function.

The most unified type of being is a living being. Living creatures are different from non-living objects in two ways: (1) they have the power of self-locomotion and (2) their activities originate in them and they act to perfect them. This kind of unity is what is called a substantial unity.

The human body is a great example of this. Your various parts work together for the good of the whole. When you get cut, a whole series of biochemical processes are kicked off. Almost immediately a protein mesh is formed to stop the bleeding. During that process over a dozen different proteins are involved. Some of those proteins are used in the mesh itself while others regulate the clot formation. Once the clot is no longer needed, other proteins regulate the removing of the clot.

All sorts of examples from science could be given: the process of digestion and nutrition, the processes of the immune system, etc. In short, the different parts of our body serve the whole so that the whole is preserved and perfected.

Paul didn’t have today’s science to inform him of the intricate systems of the human body. But that really isn’t necessary to get the point across. It’s just kind of nice that we have those examples as they can contribute to our sense of awe in God’s creation. Today we can see, all the more, how many different parts are required in order to make the body function properly.

What is important here is to keep in mind the type of unity and diversity involved in a human body. All the different parts work together for the good of the whole. Paul goes on to say that all men and women who are members of the church, whether they are Jews or Greeks, slave or free, are members of the same body. This really is an amazing picture of the church. Imagine God taking different parts from all nations and from all socio-economic classes to make a single unified body where all the parts contribute to the whole!

Another interesting thing about this illustration is that as a unified self, a person’s hand doesn’t have a different

political agenda from his ear. The foot doesn’t get angry at the nose for taking a liberal view of Scripture. Why not? It is because the body and soul form a single unit.

They are in agreement with one another. The hand feeds the mouth so that the stomach and intestines can provide nutrition to the lungs, heart, brain, and so on.

From this, you shouldn’t infer that we must be cookie-cutter Christians. We should be a unified whole, but the main point Paul is trying to get across is that unity and diversity are part of the very plan of God and God’s plan is good.

I should say something briefly about a couple puzzling phrases in verse 13. The phrases “we were all baptized into one body” and “we were all made to drink of the one Spirit”, have been interpreted in various ways. Historically, these have been taken to be referring to the sacrament of baptism and of the Eucharist. D.A. Carson thinks that these verses were taken that way because theologians tended to read their ecclesiology into the text. Gordon Fee takes these two phrases to be a type of Semitic parallelism. He thinks that they refer to the common reception of the Spirit at the conversion of every believer. I don’t know that I am qualified to make a call as to what these phrases refer to, so I won’t offer my position. But I did want to at least mention two prevailing views.

Verses 14 - 21

For in fact the body is not a single member, but many. If the foot says, “Since I am not a hand, I am not part of the body,” it does not lose its membership in the body because of that. And if the ear says, “Since I am not an eye, I am not part of the body,” it does not lose its membership in the body because of that. If the whole body were an eye, what part would do the hearing? If the whole were an ear, what part would exercise the sense of smell? But as a matter of fact, God has placed each of the members in the body just as he decided. If they were all the same member, where would the body be? So now there are many members, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you,” nor in turn can the head say to the foot, “I do not need you.”

One thing I really like about this section is that it shows the absurdity of the person who is unable to appreciate the diversity of gifts in the church. How absurd is it to think that if some member of the church is not an outstanding apologist that they are somehow not a part of the church? It’s as silly as the foot saying, “since I am not a hand I am not part of the body”. What an obviously foolish thing to say. Or if we were to say something like “Being a good Christian essentially means being a good theologian” how absurd would that be? It would be as absurd as saying the whole body should be an eye. But if the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?

In this chapter, I think the main point is something like this: You should not think that because someone isn’t gifted in some particular way that they are not part of the body. I don’t think Paul is saying this here, but I think the following is true: Just because you have gifts that someone else doesn’t have it doesn’t follow that that you are more spiritual than they are. Mother Theresa was not the most gifted teacher, but I defy any teacher to claim that he is more spiritual than her because he is a good teacher and she is not!

In verses 29 and 30 Paul asks a set of rhetorical questions. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? His clear answer to these questions is “No”. But the fact that all are not apostles or prophets or teachers does not exclude any of the other people from being members of the body of Christ.

What are some of the implications of this teaching? I think one of the more obvious implications has to do with how you treat other members of the body of Christ. You don’t cut your finger off when it gets stung by a bee. You nurse it to health. You don’t just let a broken arm flop around, you go to the doctor to get it set and then you take care of it until it is better. You only cut off your leg if it get’s gangrene and you have no way of fighting the infection. You only cut off a limb under very drastic circumstances.

This is such an amazing picture of the church. The implications and applications are enormous. With this view of the church in mind, ask yourself “How easy is it for us to cut off all relations with a member of the church?” Would I disassociate with my brother in the Lord because he offended me? Would I slander my sister in Christ because she tends to be annoying? Then ask yourself, would I hit my thumb with a hammer out of anger because it was causing me mild pain? Would I hammer nails into my nose to keep my sun glasses from slipping off when I go to the beach?

More commonly, we should be mindful of how we might be poisoning our brothers and sisters in Christ in subtle ways. We can harm them with bad teaching or with a cynical attitude. We can talk about people behind their back and paint pictures of them that are false so that we make ourselves look better. We can act as though all our ideas are superior to everyone else’s and not recognize the value of what others bring to the table.

Now before I go on to the next passage I want to say that we can overdo this as well. Some people do feel the weight of our obligation to the church and go to extremes in trying to meet all of the needs of the church. This mindset needs to be tempered. Many times we are pulled in a thousand directions by our many responsibilities. While I do think that Paul is teaching the Corinthians that the church is a body, I don’t think that he would have all of us quit our jobs or have us worry ourselves to death about the well being of every other member in the church.

The key to tempering our overzealous notions about singlehandedly upholding the church is found in the truth that God is the one who creates and preserves the body. Each of us has a part that we play within God’s greater scheme. But we shouldn’t think that any one of us needs to bear the burden of holding the entire body together. Again, that is God’s job. We don’t need to be the hand and the foot and the ear. We are called to be faithful to the part that we are.

As Paul says in v.18, “God has placed each of the members in the body just as He decided”. It’s too easy to miss the strong sense of divine sovereignty here. Something that is quite plain to Paul is not always plain to us. The church is not a creation of man, but a creation of God. He sets the stage, He makes the actors, and He writes the script. If we play our parts well, then God is pleased and the whole play ends up being beautiful.

Sometimes we end up being practical deists. The doctrine of providence should always remind us that God is intimately involved with the created order at all times. God knows that no one person can do it all. In fact, God knows that not just one local congregation or even one denomination can do all that needs to be done. God places us in our times and places for a reason. Our role in God’s plan is to place ourselves at God’s disposal and to discipline ourselves to be faithful even though we recognize that our hard work is done by the grace of God.

Finally, in v.21 Paul writes, “The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you,” nor in turn can the head say to the foot, “I do not need you.”” This probably speaks to the condescending attitude of some in that church. There are many references to people at the church in Corinth thinking that they are better or more spiritual than others. This type of pride has no place in the body of Christ. In fact, the amount of pride in a church is a key indicator of the health or of the sickness of a church.

Do the different parts of a body contribute to each other or compete with each other? Eyes don’t compete with hands, because they aren’t supposed to do the same things that hands do. Hands don’t see things, they take hold of things. Eyes are better at seeing than hands are, but hands are much better at grasping things than eyes are.

So again, Paul points to a spiritual deficiency in the church at Corinth by means of a physical illustration. How absurd would it be for the eye to say to the hand “I have no need of you”? It would be as absurd as a prophet telling a good administrator that the church has no need of an administrator. It would be as absurd as a deacon telling a worship leader that the church has no need of a worship leader.

In this way Paul is telling them that they need to appreciate the diversity of gifts given to the church.

This line of thinking is continued in v.22 – 26

On the contrary, those members that seem to be weaker are essential, and those members we consider less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our unpresentable members are clothed with dignity, but our presentable members do not need this. Instead, God has blended together the body, giving greater honor to the lesser member, so that there may be no division in the body, but the members may have mutual concern for one another. If one member suffers, everyone suffers with it. If a member is honored, all rejoice with it.

Here Paul brings up how we should treat those members who we consider less honorable. In keeping with the analogy of the body, he says that upon the members which we consider to be less honorable, we should bestow greater honor. Why do we do this? Verse 25 says that we do it “so that there may be no division in the body”. How is that accomplished? Verse 25b tells us that the various members should have mutual concern for one another.

Picture here a woman preparing herself to go to a fancy ball. She spends hours getting ready. She takes a shower, puts on her best dress, then goes to the store and buys a different dress, puts on that dress, arranges it is different ways, puts on makeup, looks in the mirror at every crevasse of her face, etc. etc… What she is doing is showing meticulous concern for every aspect of how she looks. She doesn’t say “Well my face looks really good, so I think I’ll wear a short skirt even though I haven’t shaved my legs for 5 months.” No, she is concerned about looking her best and that includes every part of her. Hence she takes care of herself down to the minutest detail.

The picture of a woman preparing for a glamorous evening out is actually a good picture of the church. We are the bride of Christ. When we become what God has intended us to be, we are doing just that. We are preparing ourselves for our bridegroom. We are making ourselves beautiful for him. When we care for those who are weak, it’s like we are picking out the perfect dress. When we tolerate the annoyances of other members of the body for the sake of helping them, it’s like we are meticulously making ourselves beautiful for the bridegroom.

Keep in mind too that Paul’s concern is for individual spiritual growth, but he is even more concerned about the spiritual growth of the whole church. So while we are growing personally by learning patience and self-control, we must consider part of our spiritual growth to consist in our involvement with other believers.

In verse 22 Paul says that those members of the body which seem weaker are necessary. If they are necessary, then who are we to belittle that which God has placed in the body? I think we all know the answer to this question.

In verse 23 we are given instructions on how to treat those members of the body that are less presentable. We don’t look down on them proudly as if we were better than them. We bestow greater honor on them. Over and over again, Paul contrasts the mindset of the world with the mindset of the Christian. In the economy of the world, those with power and privilege use their positions to exploit those beneath them. In God’s economy, those who have more are required to take care of and build up those who are weaker.

In verse 26 we see that there should even be an emotional investment with one another. He says “If one member suffers, everyone suffers with it. If a member is honored, all rejoice with it.” During times of persecution, those who were not suffering would suffer vicariously through those who were being martyred. Love is not primarily an emotion, but if we do not suffer emotionally with those who are members of our own body, then it is likely that we really do not will the good of our brothers and sisters. Our lack of emotional investment is very often a sign of our calloused hearts. I believe the suffering and rejoicing here has to do with an emotional “coming along side” of our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Why do I think this? Well, if one of our friends loses an eye, we don’t feel what they feel physically. We don’t suffer with them by plucking out our eye. We suffer with them as we come along side them emotionally to say, “That is terrible that your eye was gouged out! I am so sorry for your loss.” And contrary to the pagan notions of spirituality, this is the kind of thing that characterizes a truly spiritual person.

While “suffering with” and “rejoicing with” may entail an intellectual assent to the same facts as the person you are suffering with, what is more substantial in helping your brother or sister is coming along side them emotionally. How comforting would it be for your friend to try to help you by saying “I agree with the proposition that your eye has been gouged out.”? That’s not comforting or edifying. If someone sees mere intellectual assent to your problem as a “coming along side of” that is spoken of in verse 26, then there is something psychologically wrong with that person. That person doesn’t need a course on exegesis, he needs a therapist.

Verses 27 – 31

Now you are Christ’s body, and each of you is a member of it. And God has placed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, gifts of healing, helps, gifts of leadership, different kinds of tongues. Not all are apostles, are they? Not all are prophets, are they? Not all are teachers, are they? Not all perform miracles, do they? Not all have gifts of healing, do they? Not all speak in tongues, do they? Not all interpret, do they? But you should be eager for the greater gifts. And now I will show you a way that is beyond comparison.

In this section, Paul wraps up his teaching on unity and diversity with regard to the gifts of the Spirit. First he concludes by saying that each member of the body is part of the body of Christ. He is telling them that they are part of something larger than themselves and he tells them this both as a warning and an encouragement.

Paul gives another list of ministries and gifts here. In verse 28 he says that God has placed in the church “first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, gifts of healing, helps, gifts of leadership, and different kinds of tongues.” If you notice, the first three in the list have a first, second, and third heading and they refer to offices rather than to gifts. After that he then gives an abbreviated list of the gifts that God has given to the church.

So unlike the previous list, this list contains some ranking. Apostles are first, prophets second, and teachers are third. The question has to do is what type of ranking it is? Are apostles the most important? Did they just come first chronologically? Do they have the most authority?

Gordon Fee believes that these rankings are rankings of function and in this context the function is edification. So he thinks that apostles are first with regard to the edification or the building up of the church. In part, he takes this section to be a response to the prophets in that congregation. Given the division there, Paul was asserting, in some sense, his function over and above those giving prophecy in the congregation. To me it seems like there is a ranking of authority going on here.

After the list is given, he then offers several rhetorical questions. “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all perform miracles? Do all have the gift of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret tongues?” Again, the answer to all of these questions is “no.” Paul again reinforces the notion that the body is composed of many members and that all of them are needed. Additionally, all of them are part of the body of Christ.

This chapter ends with the following: “But you should be eager for the greater gifts. And now I will show you a way that is beyond comparison.” The New King James version reads, “But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way.”

After looking at my commentary on 1 Corinthians, the study notes in my Bible, and the notes from the NET Bible, there is a consensus that Paul is not drawing a negative comparison between spiritual gifts and love. Different reasons were given for this conclusion, but they all seemed to agree that this was the case. This verse appears to act as a transition which continues the thought into chapter 13.

Chapter 13 seems to serve as a context for chapters 12 and 14. The basis for caring for those who are considered less honorable, the basis for preferring prophecy to tongues in the worship setting, and the basis for the desire to be unified must be love. Of course there is an ontological reality, namely the church, which God wants to preserve. But He wants to preserve it because He created her and He loves her. He wills antecedently that His church be whole but it will never be whole as long as the members of the body do not love one another.

To tie this back to my original issue concerning true spirituality, I think we need to look at how Paul corrects the Corinthians. When he addresses the issue of spiritual gifts, you would think that he would spend a lot of time comparing and contrasting pagan spirituality with Christian spirituality.

You would think he would say something like “The pagans use ecstatic speech, but tongues aren’t ecstatic speech, they are actual foreign languages. Also, prophecy has two different senses, one sense it foretelling and the other is forth telling the will of God.” And to some degree, Paul does this (especially in chapter 14). But the thrust of what he is saying to them has to do with how they should treat each other as the engage in the using of the gifts.

If Paul is teaching them about Christian spirituality, then his voice speaks much more clearly about how they ought to love one another. And ultimately, I think this is the essence of what it means for a Christian to be spiritual. It involved the building of your character. It involves your every day interactions with people. And most importantly, it is characterized by love.

If God chooses to gift you the gift of prophecy, that is His prerogative. But you should not be under the impression that Christianity is about the obtaining of spiritual gifts. It is much more about displaying the fruits of the Spirit.

What should govern the use of any gift or talent that you have is love. If you are given a talent or gift from God, then He has given that gift to you because somehow it fits within His divine plan. It is our job to be faithful with whatever He gives us.

God wants to see His church as a beautiful bride. When we sin, when we are divided, when we are arrogant, we present to Him a scraggly bride with buck teeth and harry legs. This may be a funny picture, but it is actually very serious. Picture a look of disappointment on the face of the bridegroom. Yes, we will be declared righteous by the blood of Christ, but that does not mean that we can do whatever we want here on earth. What we do here echo’s in eternity. How you live now will affect how you live then.

Collectively we grow together because it is good for our character. We are able to lend emotional and financial support to each other. We learn how to handle difficult personalities which produces patience in us. We also reap the benefits the friendships we develop.

But ultimately, when we act as God intends for us to act, as a unified body that is composed of different parts, we present ourselves collectively to God as the beautiful bride of Christ.

Our individualistic notions of Christianity, our reductionistic view of sanctification, and our poor view of the church has lead us to not care about how we present ourselves to Christ. What most of us don’t understand is that we should labor and struggle today because on that day we do not want to present ourselves to our bridegroom in an unworthy manner.

If we love Christ, we want to please Him. He has made it clear how to please Him. John 14:15 says “If you love me, you will obey my commandments”. We must strive to love Him.

This morning, I want us to break up into groups so that we can pray that God would move us to obedience. Ask that God would give us the grace to continue in love, to bear one another’s burdens, and to be discerning.

Pray that our love for one another would not be superficial and that we will be united in Christ.

Kant and the Theistic Arguments

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Mon, 2 May 2011 16:54:00 -0700

Immanuel Kant thought that arguments for the existence of God fell into one of three categories. Logically speaking, all classical arguments could be reduced to a form of the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, or the teleological argument (physico-theological argument). His rejection of the first two arguments was primarily due to his rejection of the ontological argument. He maintained that the cosmological argument depended on the ontological argument, such that a destruction of the ontological argument entailed the destruction of the cosmological argument.

Kant’s refutation of the ontological argument stemmed primarily from a single criticism. He denied that existence added anything to the essence of a thing. In other words, the concept “exist” does not contribute to one’s knowledge of what that thing is. The defenders of the ontological argument thought that God must have all positive perfections, including the perfection of existence. Kant rejected this because he thought that what a thing is may be properly understood without illicitly adding the property of existence. This meant that, even if the idea of God necessarily entailed the possession of all positive perfections, existence itself could not be listed among those positive perfections.

Kant found the teleological argument to be the most plausible argument, but he rejected this argument as well. Hume had viciously attacked the argument and Kant accepted many of Hume’s criticisms. Moreover, even if the argument were sound, it would not yield the God of the Bible. At best, it would imply a grand organizer, but even then the argument would have to be supplemented with an invalid cosmological argument in order to produce a designer who could cause the existence of the universe.

If it is sound to reject these arguments, then the proposition “God exists” cannot be held as a dogmatic doctrine, but only as a practical postulate. This is, in fact, the route that Kant took. He held that belief in God was necessary for the proper functioning of the practical intellect. In other words, when he turned his attention to the practical intellect, he found it necessary to postulate God in order account for the reasonableness of moral action. In positing God as merely a necessary requirement for objectively right and wrong moral action, he reassigned God’s place in our thinking. In essence, Kant gave philosophical backing to the notion that religion’s primarily usefulness is found in its ability to make people conform to moral standards.

Critique of Kant

Immanuel Kant’s criticisms of the theistic arguments relied on several problematic starting points, only one of which will be presently explored. Kant took the principle of causality to be a category of the pure understanding. As a category of the pure understanding, causality is simply an organizing principle of the mind.

The senses present disorganized sensations to the mind and the pure understanding structures that knowledge in order to produce the object of knowledge: namely the phenomena. If this epistemic account of knowledge is true, then one cannot talk about an infinite regress of causes in the world as it is in itself because causality is not occurring outside of the mind. This is why Kant saw the cosmological argument as misguided. The cosmological argument relied on causality as something that occurred in the world, even apart from our knowledge of it.

However, if causality is something that happens outside the mind and is graspable by the mind, then a question like “What got the chain of causes going?” is an existentially valid question. Kant understood this question to be the result of the mind’s employment of causality beyond all actual or possible human experience. He arrived at the category of causality transcendentally because he thought that it was impossible to arrive at necessary statements like “Every event needs a cause” by empirical means. But he arrived at this method and these conclusions because he saw sensations as disorganized raw data. If Kant is right in thinking that sensation is disorganized, and if our knowledge is presented to us as an organized whole, then it would reasonably follow that the mind contributes organization to the raw data.

However, the moderate realist’s rejection of Kant’s methods and conclusions is due to a rejection of Kant’s view of sensation. Rather than the senses simply presenting disorderly pictures to the mind, the moderate realist insists that organized forms are conveyed to the mind through the senses. If organization may be abstracted from the world, then there is no need to turn inward to the mind to account for the organization of that which is derived empirically. Kant may be correct in thinking that the mind has some organizing potencies, but he went too far in thinking that the world does not contribute anything to our notion of causality.

If the moderate realist is correct, then not only is the cosmological argument back on the table as a viable argument for God’s existence, but the entire collection of theistic arguments are back on the table because they are not all based on the same grounds. If they are to be refuted, they will have to be refuted individually.

Kant was able to reduce all arguments to the ontological argument because he thought the necessity in all theistic arguments was given by the mind. However, if one may know the world as consisting of fully organized objects (both physical and mental), then the grounds for the ontological argument and the cosmological argument become distinct. The ontological argument is now based on the idea of God, and the cosmological argument is based on what is known about the world as it is in itself. Therefore, the rejection of one argument does not entail a rejection of both arguments.

Kant and the Rejection of Reason

One of the more ironic results of Kant’s philosophy is that it naturally leads to the rejection of reason itself. This is ironic because Kant was trying to save reason from the skeptics. He rightly saw that the empirical philosophies of Locke and Hume lead to a pessimistic view of man’s knowledge of the world. Kant’s response to the Hume’s pessimism was to redefine knowledge.

The problem is that Kant’s redefining of knowledge fixed a permanent gulf between the world as it is in itself (the noumena), and the world as it appears to us (the phenomena). He essentially said that what we know is the thing as it appears to us, and that which the mind cannot know is the world as it is in itself. This turned knowledge in general and science in particular into a kind of psychology. What we know is in the mind. How we know is discovered by looking into the mind. How we justify claims is provided by the mind.

Since everything known is in the mind, one must remain an agnostic concerning the true nature of the world. The world cannot stand as an objective arbiter between two disputants because the mind itself regulates what we know. But what if two different minds regulate sensation in different ways? Who is to say that one mind’s way of regulating sensation is right and the other wrong? On what objective grounds may one respond to Kant’s categories of the pure understanding? If there is disagreement concerning the number of categories or concerning the meaning or functions of the categories, how does one objectively settle the matter?

Given Kant’s own system it is difficult, if not impossible, to settle these kinds issues objectively. After Kant, various movements arose from his philosophy. One of the natural offspring of Kant is the phenomenological movement. They recognized that if all that is known is the phenomena, then one is left with subjectivism. For that group, the task of philosophy is no longer one of discovering what is true about the world. Rather the task of philosophy is to examine the contents, states, and abilities of our own cognition. Reason no longer legislates and resolves disputes among parties with different opinions. Reason is reduced to descriptions of how the mind, in fact, processes things.

The Kantian Synthesis

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Mon, 2 May 2011 16:45:00 -0700

Like many of the modern philosophers, Immanuel Kant became disillusioned with the philosophers before him. During his early years he was very sympathetic to the Leibnizian school. Eventually he was exposed to the writings of David Hume, and this helped him to see the weaknesses of rationalism and the importance of the empirical approach to philosophy. Rather than accepting the skeptical conclusions of Hume, Kant sought to save science and philosophy. He did not want to see the entire modern philosophical and scientific projects demolished.

Kant admired the certainty found in mathematics, but he also admired the scientific advances in physics (championed by Sir Isaac Newton). He realized that if he sided with the rationalists, he would have to minimize the importance of the physical sciences and hence the importance of the advancements made by recent scientists. If, on the other hand, he sided with the empiricists, he would have to give up certainty along with God and morality. Rather than siding with one school or the other, Kant created his own Copernican revolution in philosophy.
Problems with the Rationalist

Immanuel Kant’s early philosophical career was dominated by a desire to search out the foundations of metaphysics. He participated in discussions and debates between the Cartesian school and the Leibnizian school concerning the motion of bodies. His contributions to the debate involved a defense of the existence of monads and an exposition on the fundamental laws by which they are governed. However, in seeking a firm foundation for metaphysics, and ultimately for science, he came to realize that the rationalists were not able to prove their own principles of demonstration. The very rules by which they built their elaborate metaphysical systems had been left without justification.

Kant’s main blow to rationalism is found in his criticism of one of their major assumptions, namely that the law of identity can be the basis for the law of causality. Leibniz and Spinoza maintained that all propositions were analytic; that is, they are known to be true by virtue of the predicate being somehow contained in the subject.

Kant argued that the principle of causality could not be reduced to the principle of identity. In essence he was making a distinction that the rationalists had not made. He claimed that the rational is not identical with the real and the real is not identical with the rational.

A major implication of this distinction is that one could not simply deduce all truths about the world from pure reason alone. Even if one were to set forth axioms and carefully use the deductive method to work from those axioms, one is not assured that one’s philosophy will accurately accord with the world. His aim was to humble the dogmatic rationalist by helping him realize the limits of reason. Reason could not produce knowledge apart from the senses. Kant wanted to show the rationalists the necessity of empirical observation.

Problems with the Empiricist

Kant accepted the empiricist notion that we should not entertain ideas that transcend the bounds of human experience. It was from this empiricist principle that he mounted his attacks against rationalism. However, Kant was not satisfied with empiricism either. If dogmatism was the problem that plagued the rationalist, skepticism was the problem that plagued the empiricist. The rationalist thought that reason could solve all philosophical problems.

The empiricists, on the other hand, would eventually fall into skepticism because they had little or no confidence in reason’s ability to yield certain and necessary truths. Kant did not accept the skepticism of David Hume which reduced reason to psychology. He maintained a strong conviction that reason could produce some knowledge. However, nothing in the epistemology of the empiricists allowed for certain and necessary knowledge. The mind simply did not have the faculties for turning the raw data of experience into reliable knowledge. For the empiricist, knowledge was constructed by the mind out of mental atoms or impressions. There were no compelling reasons for thinking that we reliably ordered our impressions into true concepts and judgments. Kant therefore saw empiricism as a failure in that it could not establish the rules for thinking, nor could it provide a basis for certain knowledge.

The Kantian Synthesis

Kant wanted to maintain both the integrity of reason and the validity of empirical observation. However, to do this he would need a new method and a new conception of knowledge. The rationalist relied on deductions, but those deductions naïvely carried empirical content with them. The empiricists relied on the inductive method, but they could never have certainty of general conclusions. This was unacceptable to Kant because he was searching for a solid foundation upon which science could flourish.

The genius of Immanuel Kant was in how he solved this dilemma. He thought that the problem with both the rationalist project and the empiricist project was that they both thought that they could have knowledge of the objective world as it is in itself. Both schools of thought naïvely assumed that the object of their knowledge was the world. Accordingly, he faulted both for not understanding the proper object of knowledge and for not adequately accounting for the mind’s role in knowing.

To correct this problem, he claimed that the proper object of knowledge is the phenomena. The phenomena are the result of the mind’s putting together all the elements of knowing. He maintained that both the mind (pure understanding) and the world (sensation) contribute to the construction of the realm of the phenomena. His task was to elucidate the place of both of these faculties in the formation of concepts and judgments. However, in the process of elucidation, Kant placed reason (pure understanding) in one box and sensation in another box.

This dichotomy was latent in his philosophy before he even began his work because it was latent in the modern philosophers before him. Modern empiricist philosophers viewed sensation as disjointed episodes of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. Since sensations arrive to us in a disorganized fashion, Kant reasoned that there must be something other than sensation that orders sensations. The faculty responsible for producing order from chaos is the pure understanding. In Kant’s philosophy, sensation and understanding are two radically different faculties that come together to produce the proper object of knowledge: namely the phenomena. Ironically, in order to unify the object of knowledge, Kant dichotomized the human faculties that produce knowledge.

Kant became an agnostic as soon as he located the object of knowledge within the mind. Rather than trying to prove that he could know the outside world, he simply redefined knowledge in order to make “knowing” possible again. Kant’s form of agnosticism is not the overly skeptical form held by the modern nihilist. He does not claim that one cannot know anything. Instead, he takes away one’s knowledge of the world and replaces it with “knowledge” of the phenomena. Perhaps it is appropriate to call this kind of agnosticism an optimistic kind of agnosticism because it seeks to replace what it has taken away.

Psychology in the Spirit: A Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Mon, 4 Apr 2011 19:00:00 -0700

This book review can be found in the "Christian Apologetics Journal" as well.

Psychology in the Spirit: Contours of a Transformational Psychology. Coe, John H., & Todd W. Hall. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2010. 446 pages. (Paperback), $30.00. ISBN 978-0-8308-2813-5.

I recall taking Psychology in the Spirit off of the shelf of our seminary library and thinking “Excellent, another work on psychology from Christian thinkers who are well-acquainted with psychology, theology, and philosophy!” I thought that it would be a book that lays out different theoretical models of how to integrate the above mentioned disciplines. Additionally, I expected to see a book that sketches the author’s theoretical ideas and how those ideas are practically worked out in a clinical setting. Psychology in the Spirit does these things, but it wasn’t as technical as I expected. On the contrary, it was surprisingly accessible.

While different views of integration are presented, an in-depth analysis of these models is not the primary thrust of the book. Rather than debating the fine points of each conceptual model, Dr. Coe and Dr. Hall present their breed of a “transformational psychology” in a holistic fashion, emphasizing the person, process, and product of their model of psychology.
Thus the authors divide the content of the book according to three basic questions:

1. What would a person (psychologist) who is transformational look like?

2. What would the process (method) of doing psychology look like for a transformational psychologist?

3. What would the product (content) of a transformation psychology look like?

The authors ordered the book to reflect the most important things first. Dr. Hall and Dr. Coe believe that the most important factor in coming up with a fully orbed psychology is the development of a healthy and godly person. Second in importance is the development of a process or method of doing psychology. Finally, after both of these things are in place, the product or content of a Christian psychology naturally comes together. The authors do not view their method as a formula that simply and easily produces a distinctively Christian psychology. Rather, this work presents the general contours of their thinking about what is required, holistically, for a proper psychology.

First, as the title suggests, the person doing the integration of psychology and theology must be guided by the Holy Spirit. The individual must practice spiritual disciplines that place him in a better epistemic position to embark on his or her intellectual task. However, the task for the integrationist is not simply intellectual. More broadly put, the task of the integrationist is to be a person who is operating in the Spirit on every level of his being (intellectually, volitionally, emotionally, etc.). The point of the authors appears to be that good people produce good methods and good products.

Second, the method of inquiry must (1) not be unduly restrictive and (2) it must work from the basic axioms of a “classical realist” methodology. The authors reject the modernist approach to science which intrinsically restricts the scientific inquiry to that which is quantifiable (see chapter 6). In place of the modernist approach, the authors maintain that “science begins with a causal acquaintance of the object, for the purpose of learning more about the nature of the object, which allows the object of investigation to determine the best way to further investigate it, resulting in the development of a method of study best suited to the object.” In other words, the authors think that the scientist should begin with his normal experience of the world and allow his informed grasp of the object in question to form the way in which he study’s that object. This is a classical realist approach which I am happy to see employed in this context.

Third, the authors offer a glimpse of their psychology by revealing their view of human attachments, psychopathology, sin, the role of the demonic, and the role of parents in the development of the human psyche. The authors present a brief theological anthropology that entails the Christian view of the creation and fall of man.

Finally, the authors offer advice on how to effectively apply their approach in a clinical setting. Example situations are given and instructions, by way of example and commentary, are given on how to deal with a client. The final chapter is a call for Christians to take up the task of bringing about a distinctively Christian psychology. The authors would like to see the church, the universities, and the culture at large transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit and by those who are open to the formation of the Spirit.

I genuinely appreciated the first section of this book. It is good to remind academics (or anyone for that matter) of the importance of godly character in the pursuit of knowledge. The pre-requisites for a sound Christian thinker include: (1) a disposition towards intellectual honesty and (2) an openness to the immaterial realities described in the Scriptures. Additionally, Dr. Coe and Dr. Hall do an exceptional job of emphasizing the importance of the practice of spiritual disciplines.

Also, it was refreshing to see Christian academics, who are versed in the field of psychology, do a proper prolegomena. This had to be done because these thinkers, in many cases, attempted to put themselves behind a veil of ignorance. Rather than explicitly drawing on the principles of traditional secular psychological theoreticians, the authors presented their position from the ground up. This is not to say that they didn’t borrow from other thinkers. I simply mean that they avoided, as much as possible, getting bogged down in the details of specific secular psychologies.

My primary objection to this book has to do with the way it attempts to integrate psychology, philosophy, and theology. The authors present a “classical realist” approach to science; however, I fail to see how their attempt at integration is faithful to that approach. The classical realist delineates the sciences according to a formal and a material object of study. For example, the aesthetician and the mathematician both have the same material object, namely being, but their respective disciplines are distinguished by the way in which they study being. Aesthetics is the study of being insofar as it pleases the observer. Mathematics is the study of being insofar as it is quantifiable.

Dr. Coe and Dr. Hall do very little to delineate between the sciences. As a result, they end up doing a theology of man rather than genuinely integrating knowledge from philosophy, theology, and psychology into a single coherent whole.

The authors speak of their own model in the following way: “This psychology will include the Scriptures as a legitimate datum of science, along with values, sin and our capacity to be indwelt by God as within the boundaries of psychological theory, research and therapy. In that case, the task of the transformational psychology is less about the relationship between two distinct fields of study (science-psychology and theology) and more about doing a science or psychology of these Christian realities.”

We already have a “science” (science in the broad use of the term) which deals with the Christian realities of values, sin, and the indwelling of the Spirit. The discipline of theology typically handles these issues. Knowingly or unknowingly, the authors amalgamate theology, philosophy, and psychology into a single “science”, and then give it the label of “psychology”.

It is one thing to draw from different disciplines in your formulation of a new psychology; it is another thing to put multiple sciences together and then claim that the collection of disciplines is, in fact, a single science. The authors of this book appear to be doing the latter. Thus I think they betray the classical realist approach which they claim to advocate.

On a more positive note, I think this book has some very good contributions. The great strength of Psychology in the Spirit is found in the practical advice it offers practitioners. The chapter on ancient and modern soul care (chapter 17) is a very good summary of the history of Christian spirituality or “soul care”. In that chapter, the authors compare and contrast the Christian tradition with the tradition of secular psychology. The best part of this chapter is found in its attempt to develop clinical techniques that draw from the best of both traditions.

I would recommend this book, especially to undergraduates interested in the topic and to practitioners looking for practical ways to incorporate their Christian beliefs in a clinical setting. I also think this book is a valuable contribution to the discussion of Christian integration, even though I respectfully disagree with how it is done in this book.

Matt Graham
Southern Evangelical Seminary Alumni (M.A.R.)

Augustine on Lying - Sermon

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Sun, 7 Nov 2010 13:39:00 -0800

If you would like to download the audio for this sermon, click here.

I would like to elaborate a bit on what a lie is, on whether or not is it always wrong to lie, and on whether or not we can lie to ourselves. Rather than just giving you my own immature thoughts on the subject, I want to draw on the thoughts of St. Augustine. I don’t know that I fully agree with Augustine, but I think he is a good place to start. Perhaps I can do another sermon where we look at Aquinas’ view, Newman’s view, and Kant’s view.

My interest in this topic was stirred up by a book called “Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity” by Paul J. Griffiths. The Holy Spirit had already been convicting me of my own tendency to be dishonest, but this book helped clarify and sharpen my vision so that I began to see more clearly just how deep and wide my dishonesty is.

All of us know that it is wrong to lie, but few of us see how easy it is to lie and how entrenched we are in our own lies. In fact, if you made it your life’s ambition to never lie, you would probably be one of the most socially awkward people around. Many of our “social graces” rely on our ability distort our true thoughts. Even if we think someone smells funny, we usually shy away from telling them this. Anyone who just blurted out his thoughts without any sort of filter would be considered rude.

Imagine what it would be like if we had no filter and just said the first thing that came to our mind. A conversation might go something like this:

Joe: Matt, do you think I am a good singer?

Me: No. I have been meaning to tell you that I wish you would spare us from having to hear you sing.

Joe: Maybe you just have bad taste.

Me: I guess that’s possible, but it’s more likely that you are just a bad singer.

This conversation would most likely end in hurt feelings, distance in the relationship, and most likely Joe singing louder an in an even more annoying tone out of spite.

What’s more likely is that our conversation would go something like this:

Joe: Matt, do you think I am a good singer?

Me: Joe, you make such a joyful noise to the Lord. It’s wonderful to be singing next to you in church. You have such a great heart for the Lord.

Joe: Thanks Matt. You’re such a good Christian.

The second conversation gives us a win / win situation right? I don’t have to tell Joe that I don’t like his singing. Joe’s feelings are not hurt; in fact, Joe is encouraged to sing more in church. And even if I don’t like Joe’s singing, it’s not a BIG deal for me to listen to him. And finally, Joe and I are friends at the end of the conversation. He was even giving me compliments on my Christian walk. What could possibly be wrong with that?

I think we all know what “might” be wrong with it. What “might” be wrong with it is that it might be a form of lying. I think most of us have wondered about the moral status of our “polite falsehoods” or “white lies”. We need to ask ourselves if the latter conversation entails a form of lying. We regularly “soften” our true thoughts about someone in order to avoid offending them. Today, I want to ask whether or not it is OK to do that. Is it ever OK to mislead people about our true thoughts? Is it OK to channel a conversation away from its original direction in order to avoid hurting someone’s feelings?

Or we could ask more difficult question like “Is it OK to tell a flat out lie in order to protect someone?” Again, I think most of us, at one time or another, have asked ourselves these types of questions. But have we taken the time to really think through these questions in order to come up with a coherent answer?

If we are reflective at all, and if we are honest with ourselves, I think most of us would have to admit that we have used all sorts of tactics to help us avoid telling others what we really think. We might want to hide our thoughts because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. We might distort the truth in order to look better than we really are. We might flat out lie because we don’t want to be pestered by the effects of telling the truth. We have many motives for avoiding an honest reply. As Christians, we should be the first to confess this and work to come into line with what is right and good.

So how do we do this? Do we just muster up enough will power and march through life speaking only plainly honest things? Do we stop caring about how what we say affects other people?

Before we attempt to answer these questions, let’s look more closely at what a lie is and what a lie is not.

First let’s start with three questions:

1. What is a lie?

2. Is it always wrong to lie?

3. Can you lie to yourself?

If we were to ask a person on the street answer these questions, I think they would give answers like this:

1. What is a lie?

a. A lie is when you tell someone else something that isn’t true.

2. Is it always wrong to lie?

a. Usually yes, but there are some cases where it may not be. For example, if Nazi’s ask you if you are hiding Jews in your house and you lie to protect them, then that is a morally permissible lie. Some people might say that white lies are ok too.

3. Can you lie to yourself?

a. Of course you can. People lie to themselves all the time. We tell ourselves that we are virtuous when we are full of vice. We tell ourselves that we know more than others when we are really ignorant.

It might surprise you to know that St. Augustine thinks that none of the above answers are correct. For him, a lie is not to say something that is false. He thinks that people can say untrue things without lying. Also Augustine places a universal ban on lying. Unlike the consequentialist or the graded absolutist, Augustine says that it is never morally permissible to lie. Concerning our ability to lie to ourselves, Augustine’s view is more grand and nuanced than the answer we just gave.

So if lying is not saying something that is false, what does it mean to lie? Before we answer that question, let’s explain why Augustine thinks that you can be truthful even when you say something false. If I tell you that the first president of the United States was Jonny Appleseed, I would be telling you something that is false. But what if I really believed that the first president was Jonny Appleseed? Would I be lying? Augustine would say no. I might be wrong about who the first president was, but I am not lying. Perhaps I am crazy and that is why I think the first president was Jonny Appleseed.

Augustine says that in order for it to by a lie, I would have to know that the first president of the United States was George Washington but say that the first president was Jonny Appleseed. So a lie is when there is a discontinuity between what I think and what I say. It is not merely the saying a falsehood. In fact, you could say something that is completely true, and yet be a liar. If you say that Albert Einstein was a genius, but in your heart you think that he was a moron, you would be affirming something true but you would still be lying. Your statement, that Einstein was a genius, is objectively true, but when you say it, it is a lie because you don’t believe it to be true.

What we can gather from this is that a lie requires us to say something. In order to lie, you must say something that is inconsistent with what you believe to be true. So looking at our above examples, if I tell Joe that he is a good singer when I really think he sounds like a wounded animal, I am lying to Joe. If I tell Brandon that I have read a particular book on natural law, when in fact I know that I haven’t read that book, then I am lying to him.

So the answers to some of our earlier questions appear to be answered.

1. Is it wrong to tell a white lie? YES

2. Is it wrong to tell a lie to protect the life of someone else? YES

3. Is it wrong to divert a conversation from its original course in order to avoid being dishonest with someone? MAYBE, but not because it is a lie.

As long as you say what is what you believe to be true, you’re not lying. However, just because you didn’t “technically” lie, it doesn’t follow that what you say is good. You can say something honestly, and be honestly in the wrong.

If a lie is to say something that is contrary to what you think, and if it is always wrong to lie, then it seems to follows that I am obligated to tell Joe that he is a bad singer when he asks me. But who wants to come to a conclusion like this? Think of all of the socially awkward positions this would put us in. We would constantly be offending people.

Even worse that than, if I have to tell people the truth all the time, people are going to start to see what a despicable person I am. If asked, I’ll have to tell my coworker that I think he is incompetent. I’ll have to tell my son that I would rather watch TV than play with him. I’ll have to admit that most sermons bore me to tears. I’ll have to admit that I find conversation with most people to be almost completely uninteresting.

Since I have an inclination to want people to like me and since I want to be on friendly terms with as many people as possible, I often want keep my own bad thoughts and attitudes to myself. Being completely honest would expose how depraved my inner life really is. Most of us are so used to keeping our thoughts to ourselves that we don’t even think about the process where we sort out which thoughts we want to express to others and which ones we want to keep to ourselves and which ones do we want to lie about. Every conversation we get into, we select some things to say and leave out other things. We usually choose the nice things to say.

Because we usually do this, we start to identify with what we express externally rather than what we think internally. We start to think that we are really very nice and good people. We tell ourselves “Look at all the nice things I said to so and so. I am such a nice person.”

Now granted, I am not saying that we are all holding back this title wave of resentment and ill-will when we talk with people. I am just saying that if we tried really hard to be completely honest with people for a couple weeks straight, I think that all of us would be surprised at what we would find out about ourselves. We might find that we are not as loving as we thought we were. We might find that we are not as patient as we thought we were.

I think it was about 6 months ago that the Holy Spirit began to convict me of my own dishonesty. It started with my being convicted about a “small” lie. I was talking with one of my friends about Natural Law when he asked me if I had read a particular book on natural law. Without batting an eye, I said, “I have read that book. It was great!” But this was a complete fabrication! I had heard of the book, but I hadn’t read it. I don’t think I even read the table of contents. I realized that I had lied and felt bad about it, but I didn’t confess this to the person I just lied to. Instead, I let him go on thinking that I had read the book.

Why would I do something like that? Well, in this case it was pretty clear. I didn’t want my friend to think that I didn’t know what I was talking about or that I was unfamiliar with a standard work in the field of Natural Law. After all, that’s one of MY topics. I explain what natural law is to other people. How could I have not read a major book on the topic?

Ultimately, not only did I lie about reading this particular book. I also gave my friend the impression that I was somewhat knowledgeable in the area of Natural Law. I had also given other people that impression. I may have been more familiar with it that some people, but I have only read a few books on the subject. Only two of them were scholarly works. And I only read one of them in its entirety and I read about 2 chapters of the other book. I have also read some scholarly articles on the subject. But this by no means makes me an authority on the topic.

So at a minimum, I lied about reading the book and deceived my friend about my level of competency. This lie and deception took place because of a felt need that I had (namely I wanted to be accepted, admired, or whatever) thus revealing a further immaturity on my part. It’s not that my wanting to be accepted by others is immature, it’s that I wanted to be accepted by others MORE than I wanted to be a man of integrity.

Most of my lies along these lines are more subtle. Someone might be explaining something to me and then they ask “You understand what I am talking about right?” Of course my response is “Yes. That makes sense” even when it doesn’t make sense to me. I could have been lying so as to not bog down the conversation, or I could have been doing it because I didn’t want to look stupid. Either way, my response to them was a lie.

As a computer guy, it’s easy to lie to people to get out of being accountable for your work. Someone says “I thought you were going to fix my computer yesterday.” In reality I may have forgotten all about the computer, but a typical lying response might go something like this: “Well, I started working on it, but realized that you had a bad part. That part is on order and as soon as it gets here, I’ll install it and get you up and running again.” I have all sorts of computer jargon I could use to manipulate people.

In reality the problem may be completely unrelated to bad hardware, but I replace the hardware, make the real fix to the computer, and show them the working computer, knowing that they think I had to replace hardware to fix the problem. They give me praise for my work (which in reality was negligent) and I go about my business with high customer service ratings.

In the above case, there were several wrongs done in addition to lying. Lying acted as the means to further other bad ends. An unneeded part was ordered, costing the company / taxpayers money. The user had to wait an additional day or more to get her computer up and running which caused other people to have to wait on her. Additionally, I learned that you can get away with being disorganized. I also learned that positing a false problem works, thus it encourages me to lie in the future. Those lies then support and contribute to my habit of being lazy, disorganized, liar.

We all know that lying is bad, but what we don’t often realize is that evil comes in clusters. As I mentioned earlier, there is hardly ever a time when you commit a single evil act. Most, if not all, evil acts are paired with other evil acts or at least result in other evils. I think this is an important point and it would probably be good to do a whole sermon on this. For now, let’s get back to explaining what a lie is and why Augustine thinks that it is always wrong to lie.

We said earlier that a lie consists of saying something that is inconsistent with what you think. At the heart of a lie is a duplicitous soul; a divided soul. For Augustine, a lie is always intentional. We don’t accidentally lie. So lying is an act of the will. Since lying is an act of the will, and it is produces duplicity within our soul, it seems to follow that lying is the intentional dividing of our souls. However this conclusion does not follow. We are dividing our soul when we lie, but it is not our intention to divide our souls when we lie. Our intention is to get out of trouble, or to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, or to appear to be better than we are. But the intention to avoid getting into trouble is not the same thing as the intention to divide our souls. So lying may not be an intentional dividing of our own souls, but it always results in a further division within our soul.

What this shows is that lying cannot strictly be identified with any single intention. Most people think that lying must be accompanied by the intention to deceive. But as I said before, we can have all sorts of reasons for lying, only one of which is to deceive. That being said, we hardly ever lie just for the sake of deceiving someone and we almost always lie for what we think is a “good reason”.

This should make us hesitate when we try to justify our lies by saying “I meant well.” I often hear people say things like this. Some common justifications for lying include:

1. I was just trying to protect you.

2. I didn’t want you to have to worry about it.

3. I didn’t think that you would understand.

4. I didn’t want you to be angry at me.

5. I was embarrassed.

You may rightly say that these were your reasons for lying, but you may not rightly think that these are appropriate justifications for lying.

Why not?

In response to this, someone here might say, surely there are times when a “white lie” is ok. Or surely lying to save the life of another person is permissible. Well, before we make that determination, let’s look at some of the reasons why Augustine places a universal ban on lying.

The first reason is metaphysical and has to do with his view of sin. Sin in general disorders the soul and brings it closer to non-being. This doesn’t mean that if you sin a whole lot that your will start to look like Casper the ghost. Augustine doesn’t think that you can throw a hammer at a really sinful person and the hammer will just pass through them like it would pass through a cloud of smoke.

In order to understand what Augustine is saying here, you have to know something about his view of creation. Augustine views all of reality as being hierarchical. Angels are the highest order of created beings and inanimate matter is the lowest order of created being. As you go from the angels to dirt you find that being has more or less order. The most unified of created beings are the angels. Matter, on the other hand, is the least unified. By its nature, it tends toward chaos and non-being. The implication here is that when man becomes more ordered, by obtaining virtue, he reaches closer to the higher order of reality. When he sin’s in general and lie’s in particular, he becomes more chaotic.

So it is not that you become a cloud of smoke. It’s that your soul disintegrates into chaos. The picture of this would be that your soul starts to look like it’s a leper. Just as the leprous body degenerates and tends towards disorder, so your soul degenerates when you sin.

If you watch horror movies, the evil creatures are almost always hideous looking. Or if they are beautiful, underneath they are ugly. The TV show V is a good example of this. Underneath the beautiful shell of the body lies an ugly creature who wants to harm you. In reality, fallen angels are probably beautiful. We depict them as ugly because it best represents the decayed and ugly state of being.

With this in mind, it becomes easier to see why Augustine would place a universal ban on lying. To lie is to become less, and to speak the truth is to become more. To lie is to tend toward the city of man, to speak the truth is to tend toward the city of God. Ultimately, to lie is to tend toward chaos and non-being.

The second reason for Augustine’s ban has to do with his view of owning your speech vs. disowning your speech. As a created being, it is my duty to conform myself to reality, not to conform reality to me. Augustine see’s truth as a gift from God. God gives us truth and how we handle that truth displays the type of stewards we are. Good stewards take good care of that which has been entrusted to them.

When I give a gift to Wesley this Christmas, he has several ways of responding to that gift. He can open the present and be excited about it. He can take it out of the box and play with it and enjoy it. OR he can open it and throw it to the ground and demand something else. Usually he demands juice when we offer him something that he doesn’t like. As a parent, I want to give Wesley good things. I also want Wesley to use and enjoy those gifts. If he does not do that, I am disappointed.

When it comes to the gifts that God has given us, we don’t have the moral right to refuse them or to be poor stewards of those gifts. We have free will and can refuse the gifts of God, but fact that we can disown the gifts that God has given us doesn’t give us the right to do it.

If God has given us speech to express our inner thoughts, then the proper use of our speech is only found in using it the way that God intended it to be used. According to Augustine, when we lie, we take our speech captive and use it in way that it was not intended. Augustine views the Christian as one who receives good from God and then rewraps that good gift and gives it to others.

So, at this point you might have the following objections:

1. I can understand that sin in general divides the soul and makes it ugly.

2. I can even understand how God would be upset if we misuse the gifts that he gives us.

a. BUT

3. How does it follow that we should never lie?

In fact, it seems like we could give examples that show that it would be ok to lie even given what Augustine believes.

First, even if lying brings harm to our soul, making it ugly, good people sometimes get hurt in the process of doing good. The man who throws himself in front of a bullet harms his own body in order to obtain the higher good of protecting someone else. If you get drunk and ask your friend to shoot you in the belly because it would be kind of fun to watch, then that’s obviously evil; not to mention stupid. But willingly getting shot in the belly in order to save the life of another person is permissible because of the good that it brings about.

Why can’t we liken lying to this? Why can’t we say “Yes, I agree that lying harms my soul, but isn’t it ok for me to allow harm to come to myself if that harm brings about someone else’s good? Isn’t it ok for me to allow a little harm to my soul in order to obtain the good of fellowship with others or the saving of someone else’s life?”

Augustine’s response would be a resounding NO. Unlike the body, it is never ok to allow harm to come to your soul. Harming the body, especially in cases like the one we just mentioned, REQUIRES a largeness of soul. The man who throws himself in front of a gun to save someone does so because his soul is healthy. So the analogy between bodily harm and harm of the soul does not work for Augustine.

As was mentioned earlier, sin always moves us away from God, not only relationally but metaphysically as well. This is never acceptable to God. Thus sin is never acceptable to God. You might still ask, “OK, it is never permissible to sin, but how does it follow that lying is always a sin?” We can find the answer to this in our definition of what a lie is. A lie, by definition is a rupture between our thought and our speech. It is essentially disruptive and damaging to the soul. To lie is to create a gap between our intellect and our actions. This brings about the chaos we spoke of earlier. God works to mend our souls and unify our being. Anything that frustrates that work is evil and should be done away with.

What about Augustine’s view of truth as a gift from God? How does that lead to the conclusion that we should always tell the truth? You might say, “if I give my son a baseball bat for Christmas and he hit’s someone in the head with it in order to save one of the neighbor kids life, he wouldn’t be using the bat in the way I intended, but I wouldn’t think that it was wrong for him to use it that way because he did something good with it. In fact, I would be proud of him for saving the life of another kid in our neighborhood.”

The point of the objection here would be to say that even though I didn’t buy the bat so that my son could hit people in the head with it, my son appropriated that gift in a way that was appropriate at the time. Perhaps lying can be like that? Perhaps God doesn’t intend for us to use our speech to lie, but there are certain situations, like lying in order to save a life, where lying is appropriate.

However, this takes too lightly the importance of being truthful. Being truthful is the virtue which allows you to recognize the truth about your condition. This is a necessary first step in your salvation. It is also the first step in dealing your sin as a believer. If you are not honest, then you can’t progress on the journey of sanctification. That journey relies on your being honest with yourself and your being able to recognize those areas in your life where you need improvement.

Augustine does not see the lie as simply one sin among many sins. The lie is a foundational sin. In fact at one point he says that “all sin is a lie”. By this he appears to mean that since sin is fundamentally the willful choosing of temporary goods even though we know those temporary goods are not really good for us. In this sense, we can lie to ourselves. We can allow our desires to overtake our intellect and will so that they become twisted into believing that things that are bad for us are really good for us.

Taking the gift that God has given us and using it for our own purposes reveals in us a fundamental lack of regard for the Creator. When we lie, we act as if truth is ours to do with as we please. This is utterly repulsive to Augustine. How can we think that God, who IS truth, would allow us to get away with treating His ‘giving of Himself’ as if it were something that we could run through the mud?

While God has given us whatever truth that we have, it is not ours to do with as we please. The truth is given to us so that we might benefit from it and so that we can benefit others with it. It is one of the most precious gifts that we can give to others in a spirit of love.

If all of this is true, then does this leave us in the social predicament I mentioned earlier? Does this mean that we should go around telling people that they smell or that we don’t like them?

Not necessarily. Augustine believes that we have other ways of being gracious that don’t involve lying. One of these graces comes from the nature of thought itself. Our thoughts are not in the form of a language. Thoughts transcend language. Language is used to translate thought into a physical medium. This is evidenced by the fact that many languages can be used to signify the same thought. With this in mind, we can convey our thoughts in a variety of ways. Technically you are not lying as long as what you say does not contradict something you think.

The wise or skillful person can formulate his or her thoughts in such a way as to both be truthful and graceful. What this requires is a reflective thoughtfulness and a love for the person with which you are speaking. It may also require a quick wit. Humor can often be employed to diffuse a situation. Diverting the conversation may also be an alternative depending on the situation.

There is a limit to this, however. You cannot change the normal use of words to make them mean whatever you want in order to avoid lying. So you can’t tell Joe that he sounds like an opera singer and change the meaning of the words “opera singer” in your own mind. You can’t say “Joe you sound like an opera singer, and by opera singer I mean wounded monkey”.

Another tool you do have is silence. Contrary to those who say that “to say nothing is to be in agreement”, silence is a good way to avoid lying. According to Augustine, you cannot lie without saying something, so if you were always silent, you would never lie. You can also always say “I would rather not comment on that.”

So there are many ways to remain graceful without lying. I am not sure that I agree with Augustine when it comes to the universal ban on lying, but even if he is wrong about that, he brings sobriety to the issue. Even if we do think it is OK to lie sometimes, we should take very seriously the wrongness of it before we give ourselves license to do it. We usually give ourselves way too much license to distort the truth.

This is especially true in a culture whose highest value is to “not offend anyone”. I don’t think we need to go out of our way to offend anyone, but we do need to grow up and stop being so easily offended. We also need to stop being so worried about offending others. If our love for each other is genuine, we can withstand some verbal bumps and bruises.

In fact, a big part of what holds us back from having deeper relationships is our lack of honesty with each other. We go years without telling someone how we feel or what we think for fear that “they may not like us if we say it”. So then every time that “touchy” subject comes up, we avoid it and never mend the relationship. Because of our fear of offending people, we leave huge rifts in relationships that keep us from loving each other in the way that Christ called us to love each other.

Having deep and abiding relationships with people is messy. We get angry with each other. We disagree with each other. We say things to each other that we later regret. But we stick together because of our common love of Christ and because we have invested in each other. A relationship that does not involve investment and honesty is not a genuine relationship. You may be able to get together with others and have a good time, but you will not be true friends until you can be honest with each other and still be friends.

God longs for us to be honest with Him in our prayers. He can handle messiness and awkwardness. In fact, He demands that we lay ourselves bare before Him. If we do not do this, we will never be a friend of God. Our lack of honesty is very often the cause of our superficial prayers. “God thank you for this food” without being truly thankful is superficial. Our speech must reflect what our mind and our heart. If that happens, you will be in a position to spot your own superficiality. You will see when you are just going through the motions because you diligently train yourself so that your speech and your thoughts are in agreement.

I would like to challenge everyone this week. Try to be very cognizant of what you say to people. When you say something, if you suspect that you aren’t being entirely honest, stop speaking. Think about what you are saying and make sure that what you are saying is truthful. Pray that God would make it apparent to you when you are being disingenuous. Be mindful of when you are trying to manipulate people. Recognize when you are using arguments to get your way rather than to help people come to a knowledge of the truth.

Spinoza and Aquinas on the Divine Substance

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Graham) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:18:00 -0700

In this article, two views concerning the nature of the Divine Substance will be explained and compared. First, some key points concerning Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza’s view will be given. After that, the classical view of God will be offered. As the classical view is explained, similarities and differences between the two views will be highlighted.

Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza’s View of Divine Substance

Substance as Self-Sufficient

In his book A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, Jonathan Bennett outlines five aspects of Spinoza’s thinking that set the stage for his philosophy in general and his view of the Divine Substance in particular. Two of those five aspects will be mentioned here, as they are more pertinent to our discussion of the Divine Substance. The two aspects of his thinking which are relevant to our discussion are his implicit notions of “explanatory rationalism” and “causal rationalism”. Explanatory rationalism refers to the idea that, given a fact, an explanation may be given for that fact. Causal rationalism is an extension of explanatory rationalism. It makes causal relationships strong analogs to logical relationships.

According to Bennett, explanatory rationalism “is the refusal to admit brute facts”. In other words, the explanatory rationalist cannot offer ‘it just is the case’ as an explanation for any given fact. Everything, in principle, must be explainable. Causal rationalism is the refusal to allow a distinction between what is logically necessary and what is causally necessary. The causal rationalist thinks that logical necessity does not merely entail causal necessity; rather, to speak of logical necessity is simply another way of talking about causal necessity. As Bennett states, “When [Spinoza] speaks of ‘the reason or cause why Nature acts’… he thinks he is talking about one relation, not two.”

A serious problem naturally arises from explanatory and causal rationalism. They inevitably lead to an infinite regress of explanations and causes. For example, to explain “F” Spinoza points to “E” as the cause of “F”. However, “E” must be explained as well since everything must have an explanation. In order to explain “E” Spinoza points to “D” as the cause of “E”. Unless Spinoza can offer a stopping point for his explanations, he will inevitably end up in some kind of infinite regress of causes / explanations. Whether this regress is really vicious or not is beyond the scope of this article. The point here is that Spinoza looks to substance as the ultimate explanation / cause of everything.

However, to be consistent, Spinoza needs to answer the following question: How can substance be the ultimate explanatory stopping point given the fact that explanatory rationalism demands an explanation for everything? The answer lies in rationalist’s notion of substance. For the rationalists in general, substance was thought to be that which is causally self-sufficient.

However, to be self-sufficient appears to admit of a brute fact, which violates Spinoza’s underlying form of rationalism. Spinoza resolves this problem with proposition 7 which states, “It pertains to the nature of substance to exist.” Thus, substance can be the cause of itself and the cause of everything else because it is “of the nature” of substance to exist. To Spinoza, this is an explanation for the existence of substance.

God is Substance

Spinoza defines substance as “that which is in itself and is conceived through itself”. Understanding the phrase “in itself” is very important for understanding Spinoza’s view of substance. According to Aristotle, a substance is that aspect of being which undergoes change. It is the enduring thing in which accidents inhere. Accidents do not exist in their own right, but exist only in substances. Upon considering the distinction between substance and accidents, Spinoza wondered how any finite substance could exist in itself since finite substances are always found within something else. Accidents like “pale” and “short” may inhere in a finite “human substance”, but human beings are finite creatures that find themselves in the greater context of the universe. Spinoza suspected that the traditional distinction between substance and accidents in finite things was misguided.

If an accident is an accident because it does not exist in itself but rather it exists in another, then the following question may be asked concerning “finite substances”. Since human beings themselves exist in the universe, why should they not be considered accidents?

Furthermore, if accidents are modifications of a substance, why not think of finite substances as mere modifications of that which really endures change without itself changing: namely, the universe as a whole? Hence Spinoza moves away from Aristotle’s accidents and clings to the view that finite things are modes of a single substance. Given a mechanistic view of the universe, this notion makes sense. If anything deserves the title “substance”, it would be the universe itself because everything in it changes, while it remains the universe.

At this point, it might be tempting to stop here and say that Spinoza simply takes the sum of the modes in the universe and then affixes the label substance on that sum. However, this would be a misrepresentation of his view. In his book The Philosophy of Spinoza, Harry Austryn Wolfson says that Spinoza “[declares] that substance is a whole which exists over and above and beyond the sum of the modes”. If Wolfson is correct, then substance cannot be reduced to the world, nor can substance be identical with it. Thus, the question still stands: What is substance? For Spinoza, God is Substance. In the Ethics, God is defined in the following way: “By God, I understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence.”

In identifying God as Substance, Spinoza is not necessarily saying that the universe is God or that the universe is an absolutely infinite Being whose essence is expressed in each of its attributes. Rather, God is more than the universe. The universe is in God in the strongest possible sense, but only two of God’s attributes are expressed in the universe. As Genevieve Lloyd argues in her book Spinoza and the Ethics, God is not reducible to the universe because “no one of his attributes can claim exclusive identification with him”.

So in sum, God is substance and substance is not the universe; however, the universe is in God in the strictest possible sense.

God and His Attributes

To this point, substance and modes have been discussed, but there is another ontological category used by Spinoza which was briefly mentioned above. Contained within his definition of God, he makes a claim concerning God’s attributes. He says that God is substance consisting of infinite attributes. But what exactly does Spinoza mean by attribute? Fortunately, he defines the term for his readers; however, his definition requires some explanation to be understood. He defines an attribute as “that which the intellect perceives of substance, as if constituting its essence”. To better grasp what he means by attribute, it will be helpful to briefly revisit the terms substance and modes again.

When speaking of substance Spinoza speaks of a thing. When speaking of modes, Spinoza speaks of modifications made to that thing. Or again, when speaking of a substance, Spinoza is talking about the subject of predication. When he speaks of modes, he is talking about predications made of the subject. For example, if a human being could be a substance, then the different properties of a human would be the modes of that person. The person taken as a basic unit would be the substance and the person’s eye color, hair, height, etc. would be the various modes of that person. In the case of Spinoza, God is Substance and everything we see in the world is a mode of that substance.

Where then are attributes to be found in this ontology? They are to be found at the most fundamental level of our understanding of the world. This is because attributes are the most basic modes of being. All particular modes in the world are reducible to one of two irreducibly basic categories: thought or extension. Every declarative statement we make is either predicating a mode of thought or a mode of extension of a subject. Thus, attributes are those basic non-substantial categories through which finite modes are conceived. Since they are the most basic categories, one attribute may not be conceived through another attribute. An attribute may only be conceived through itself.

As has been stated above, God has an infinite number of attributes, only two of which are known to us. Our intellect perceives God through thought and extension as if each of those distinct attributes constituted the essence of God. At first glance, this appears to be a very odd proposition. If God has an infinite number of attributes, then how can the mind perceived God’s essence through a single attribute? The answer lies in how Spinoza relates attributes in the Divine Substance. According to Spinoza, one should not think of the attributes of God as discrete parts in God. God is not a collection or aggregation of attributes; instead, He is an absolute unity of His attributes. Thus, because of the absolute unity of God’s attributes, to know one attribute is to have knowledge of the essence of God.

Only One Substance

One of the most striking features of Spinoza’s philosophy is his strict monism. He does not hold to a Creator / creature distinction. When Spinoza distinguishes between modes, attributes, and substances he is dividing up the aspects of a single Substance. In other words, he thinks that there are an infinite number of modes, and an infinite number of attributes, but he thinks that all of these belong to a single Being whom he called God. In essence, Spinoza thought that God is all there is. The question we now turn to is this: How does Spinoza prove that God is all there is?

Bennett summarizes Spinoza’s argument in the following way:

1. There must be a substance with every possible attribute;

2. There cannot be two substances with an attribute in common;

There cannot be more than one substance.

Premise 1: Why think that there must be a substance with every possible attribute? This premise stands on Spinoza’s proposition that “It pertains to the nature of substance to exist”. In other words, if something is a substance, then it necessarily exists. Spinoza’s concept of a necessary being entails a being with every possible attribute. For he says, “the more reality or being [a being] has, the more attributes it possesses…”. According to Spinoza, God has the most being and reality and must therefore possess infinite attributes. So there must be at least one substance, namely God, with every possible attribute.

Premise 2: Why think that there cannot be two substances with an attribute in common? There cannot be two substances with an attribute in common because a thing may only differ from another thing by a difference in attribute or a difference in affection. But to differ by either one of these is not to differ substantially since attributes are always attributes of a substance and substances are always prior to their affections. If two distinct attributes are known to the intellect, what grounds would the intellect have for arriving at two substances? Spinoza’s answer is that the intellect would not have grounds to deduce two substances from the existence of two distinct attributes. Therefore, Spinoza demands that there is only one substance with many attributes, not multiple substances with multiple attributes.

Conclusion: Given the fact that there is one substance with every attribute, in order for there to be a second substance it would have to share an attribute with the first substance because the first substance has every possible attribute. However, two substances cannot share an attribute because for a thing to differ substantially it must differ substantially. A thing may only be known to differ substantially through its attributes or its affections. But the intellect does not have grounds for claiming a substantial difference between two things that differ by its attributes or its affections. Therefore, there is one Substance which has infinite attributes.

Everything Happens of Necessity

Another prominent feature of Spinoza’s philosophy is his strict determinism. In the Ethics, Spinoza says, “God is the efficient cause of all things which can fall under the infinite intellect”. For Spinoza this means that anything which the Divine Intellect can conceive will happen necessarily. In 1p29, Spinoza says, “In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things are determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and act in a certain manner.” This is the strongest possible form of determinism. There is no contingency in the world at all. According to Spinoza, anyone who calls something “contingent” does so because he has a defective knowledge of the world.

In 1p16c2, Spinoza goes on to say that God causes all things through Himself. God does not depend on anything, and as such He is the first cause of everything in the strongest sense possible. This view is the denial that there is a bidirectional causal order between God and the world. Rather, there is a strict causal direction that flows necessarily from the nature of God to all of God’s Divine actions. In fact, while Spinoza claims that God is “free” (based on 1d7), all he means by this is that God is free to be determined by His own nature rather than determined to act by something outside of Himself. God’s nature necessitates every particular divine act.

This notion is fleshed out in 1p33 where he says, “Things could have been produced by God in no other manner and in no other order than that in which they have been produced.” Spinoza demonstrates this by arguing that if the Divine Nature could produce something other than what is now the case, then there would be two Gods. However, in order for there to be two Gods, one God would have to share an attribute with the other God since both have infinite attributes. But this is absurd because there cannot be two or more substances which share the same attribute. Therefore, since there is only one God with infinite attributes, everything is determined of necessity.

Thomas Aquinas’ View of Divine Substance

God as Self-Sufficient

Like Spinoza, Aquinas held that God is self-sufficient. God does not depend on anything for His Being; rather, every finite thing owes its existence to God. Aquinas and Spinoza disagree, however, concerning whether or not God, as a self-sufficient being, is material or immaterial. Spinoza says that God is material, and Aquinas thinks God is immaterial.

For Aquinas, God cannot be self-sufficient if He is a material being because material beings are composed of matter. To be composed of matter is to be in potency since whatever is in matter is in potency. Since to be material is to be in potency, and since there is no potency in God, it follows that there is no matter in God.

In keeping with God as a self-sufficient being, both Aquinas and Spinoza hold that God’s essence somehow involves existence. When the claims of Aquinas and Spinoza are put side by side, they look very similar. For example:

Spinoza: “The existence of God and His essence are one and the same thing.”

Aquinas: “God’s being is His essence.”

Both, in fact, maintain that God exists necessarily and that God’s essence is identical with his existence. Both also think that, as a necessary being, God must be immutable. However, even though they agree that it is of God’s essence to exist, these thinkers come to very different conclusions about God’s nature and His attributes. These differences, in large part, stem from each thinker’s view of substance.

Aquinas on Substance

Unlike Spinoza, Aquinas distinguished between finite substances and the infinite substance. For Aquinas, man is not a mode or even an accident of a single Substance. On the contrary, a man is an individual finite substance. Moreover, in contrast with the rationalist notions of substance, Aquinas denied that a substance was something which was necessarily selfsufficient.

Instead, substance was understood to refer to a subject that maintains its identity throughout a change. Thus even finite beings could be substances because they changed while retaining an identity.

This difference in their views of substance reflects their individual methods of inquiry. As a rationalist, Spinoza began with accepted definitions of God and substance rather than arriving at them through a lengthy philosophical process. Aquinas, on the other hand, was much more empirically oriented. He started with observations of the world and then moved to his metaphysical conclusions from those observations. Naturally Aquinas knew how he arrived at his definitions of substance and accidents and thus had a fuller understanding of the concepts he employed. His definitions were derived from his observations of change in the world. He, like Aristotle, sought to account for change and identity in those things which he observed. Spinoza and Aquinas also had different understandings of what substance is.

As is noted by Wolfson, Spinoza’s understanding of substance appears to be derived from Descartes’ view of substance rather than from the medieval view. Wolfson appears to be correct in saying this. Unfortunately, the differences between Aquinas and Spinoza are often minimized by contemporary writers. Even Wolfson, who thinks that Spinoza derived his view of substance from Descartes, also said that Spinoza and Descartes started from the “medieval definition of the term”. However, even if they did start with the medieval definition, they did not have the same understanding of what substance is.

This fact becomes obvious when one looks at the results of each thinker’s philosophical system. If Aquinas thought that a substance is, by definition, causally self-sufficient he would not have claimed that finite composite substances exist. He thought that there were finite substances and he believed that those substances were dependent on God for their existence. He says, “Everything which is in any way at all must then derive its being from that whose being has no cause… Everything which is in any mode whatever, therefore is from Him.” Notice Aquinas does not say that everything which is in any mode is in God, as Spinoza says, rather he says everything is from God. Aquinas, who thought that all finite substances were dependent on God for their existence, did not have the same understanding of substance that Spinoza had.

God and His Attributes

As was mentioned above, the two different views of substance led to differences in how each thinker thought of God and His attributes. The most obvious difference between Aquinas and Spinoza concerning God and His attributes is this: Aquinas distinguishes God’s attributes from the world, while Spinoza identifies God’s attributes with the world. Spinoza thought that the world was in God. He made God so strongly immanent, that a distinction between God and the universe was difficult to grasp. Aquinas, on the other hand, viewed God as transcendent. God exists above and beyond the universe. He created the universe out of nothing, so the universe cannot be understood as a part of God. Thus, while both agree that God is an essential unity of His attributes, Spinoza counts thought and extension among the attributes of God while Aquinas does not. For Aquinas, God is not materially extended.

Thus God has His own attributes and the world has its own attributes. God’s attributes do not relate to God or to each other in the same way that beings in the world relate to their attributes. This is because God is a simple being and is not composed of any parts or principles. Ultimately, the distinction between God and the world is based on the real distinction between act and potency. God is pure act, and as such, is an essential unity of His attributes.

However, that unity of attributes does not include anything that is by its nature limited. Since potency is that which limits act, it follows that potencies should not be predicated of God who is pure act. Thus, God is an essential unity of His attributes, but He is really distinct from the world. In fact, God is so distinct from the world that the mind of man cannot conceive of God.

All of man’s concepts are of finite things. God, being infinite, cannot be conceived or even defined. Aquinas says that “God cannot be defined, for every definition is constituted from the genus and the differences.”35 Since God is not in a genus, He cannot be defined. This view of God is in stark contrast to Spinoza’s thinking. Spinoza not only thinks that God can be defined, he also thinks that God can be conceived. In thinking this, Spinoza wrongly takes previous medieval descriptions of God and illicitly turns them into definitions. This move, however, is foreign to any Thomistic doctrine of God. It should be noted that Spinoza’s moving from descriptions of God to a definition of God contributed to his thinking that the world is part of God. He mistakenly thought that God and the world could be spoken of univocally.

God’s Freedom of Will

Finally, in contrast with Spinoza, Aquinas thinks that God has a will. God’s acts are not necessitated by His nature; rather, his acts are in accordance with His nature. Aquinas shows that God has a will by showing that God has an intellect. He says that “from the fact that God is endowed with intellect it follows that He is endowed with will.” However, in some places Aquinas sounds like Spinoza in that he says God wills of necessity. For example, when speaking of God’s willing Himself to be and in speaking of God’s love for Himself it sounds as though Aquinas thinks that God’s will is necessitated by His own essence. And, in fact, Aquinas is saying that. He says, “God of necessity wills Himself to be” and “of necessity God loves Himself”. However, to conclude from this that Aquinas maintains that God wills everything of necessity would be premature.

In the very next question, Aquinas says that God does not will everything of necessity. God wills the good, but in willing Himself necessarily He wills infinite goodness. Hence, God does not need to will anything outside of Himself because He is self-sufficient in every way. He is the principle object of His own will because the will is inclined to the good and God is goodness itself. In creating the world God does not have to create every possible good. All that is required is that creation must participate in His goodness. Since He can order the world to the good in an infinite number of ways, He is not necessitated to create the world in one way or another.

Unlike Spinoza’s God, the Thomistic doctrine allows for free will in creatures as well. Aquinas maintains that God is the cause of all things, including the free choices of men. Additionally, Aquinas thinks that God is not affected in any way by the created order. However, free will is not ruled out on the Thomistic view. Even though God is the cause of everything, His causality is not of the sort that rules out free will. On the contrary, God enables finite creatures to have free will. For Aquinas, God is the primary agent who created secondary agents to act freely according to their finite natures.

Works Consulted

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Contra Gentiles Book One: God. London: University of Norte Dame

Press, 1975.

________. Summa Contra Gentiles Book Two:Creation. London: University of Notre Dame

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Bennett, Jonathan. A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company,

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Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald. God: His Existence and His Nature vol.1. St. Louis: B. Herder

Book Co., 1934.

________. God: His Existence and His Nature vol.2. St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co.,

1936.

________. Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought. St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co.,

1950.

Klubertanz, George P. and Maurice R. Holloway. Being and God: An Introduction to The

Philosophy of Being And to Natural Theology. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Lloyd, Genevieve. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Spinoza and the Ethics. New York:

Routledge, 1996.

Maurer, Armand. Medieval Philosophy: revised edition. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Pontifical

Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1982.

Spinoza, Benedict. “The Ethics,” in Classics of Philosophy: Vol2 Modern and Contemporary,

Louis P. Pojman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Wolfson, Harry Austryn. The Philosophy of Spinoza. New York: Meridian Books, inc., 1960.