Technorati Tags: philosophy fridays

Every now and then I like posting something incisive that was written in the past because it speaks so well into the present. The sweet thing about this is that these guys, who are often waved away today, have dealt with a lot of the same issues while remaining simultaneously (by the modern mind) ignored.

6. My reader must bear in mind that I am silent about the current objections through no forgetfulness, and no distrust of my cause. For that constantly cited text, The Father is greater than I, and its cognate passages are perfectly familiar to me, and I have my interpretation of them ready, which makes them witness to the true Divine nature of the Son. But it serves my purpose best to adhere in reply to the order of attack, that our pious effort may follow close upon the progress of their impious scheme, and when we see them diverge into godless heresy we may at once obliterate the track of error. To this end we postpone to the end of our work the testimony of the Evangelists and Apostles, and join battle with the blasphemers for the present on the ground of the Law and the Prophets, silencing their crooked argument, based on misinterpretation and deceit, by the very texts with which they strive to delude us. The sound method of demonstrating a truth is to expose the fallacy of the objections raised against it; and the disgrace of the deceiver is complete if his own lie be converted into an evidence for the truth. And, indeed, the universal experience of mankind has learned that falsehood and truth are incompatible, and cannot be reconciled or made coherent; that by their very nature they are among those opposites which are eternally repugnant, and can never combine or agree.

7. This being the case, I ask how a distinction can be made in the words, Let Us make man after Our own image and likeness, between a true God and a false. The words express a meaning, the meaning is the outcome of thought; the thought is set in motion by truth. Let us follow the words back to their meaning, and learn from the meaning the thought, and from the thought attain to the underlying truth. Thy enquiry is, whether He to Whom the words Let Us make man after Our own image and likeness were spoken, was not thought of as true by Him Who spoke; for they undoubtedly express the feeling and thought of the Speaker. In saying Let Us make, He clearly indicates One in no discord with Himself, no alien or powerless Being, but One endowed with power to do the thing of which He speaks. His own words assure us that this is the sense in which we must understand that they were spoken.

9. But now let us continue our reading of this Scripture, to shew how the consistency of truth is unaffected by these dishonest objections. The next words are, And God made man; after the image of God made He him. The image is in common; God made man after the image of God. I would ask him who denies that God’s Son is true God, in what God’s image he supposes that God made man? He must bear constantly in mind that all things are through the Son; heretical ingenuity must not, for its own purposes, twist this passage into action on the part of the Father. If, therefore, man is created through God the Son after the image of God the Father, he is created also after the image of the Son; for all admit that the words After Our image and likeness were spoken to the Son. Thus His true Godhead is as explicitly asserted by the Divine words as manifested in the Divine action; so that it is God Who moulds man into the image of God, Who reveals Himself as God, and, moreover, as true God. For His joint possession of the Divine image proves Him true God, while His creative action displays Him as God the Son.

10. What wild insanity of abandoned souls! What blind audacity of reckless blasphemy! You hear of God and God; you hear of Our image. Why suggest that One is, and One is not, true God? Why distinguish between God by nature and God in name? Why, under pretext of defending the faith, do you destroy the faith? Why struggle to pervert the revelation of One God, One true God, into a denial that God is One and true? Not yet will I stifle your insane efforts with the clear words of Evangelists and Prophets, in which Father and Son appear not as one Person, but as One in nature, and Each as true God. For the present the Law, unaided, annihilates you. Does the Law ever speak of One true God, and One not true? Does it ever speak of Either, except by the name of God, which is the true expression of Their nature? It speaks of God and God; it speaks also of God as One. Nay, it does more than so describe Them. It manifests Them as true God and true God, by the sure evidence of Their joint image. It begins by speaking of Them first by their strict name of God; then it attributes true Godhead to Both in common. For when man, Their creature, is ceated after the image of Both, sound reason forces the conclusion that Each of Them is true God.

15. But perhaps it will be argued that, when the Angel of God is called God, He receives the name as a favour, through adoption, and has in consequence a nominal, not a true, Godhead. If He gave us an inadequate revelation of His Divine nature at the time when He was styled the Angel of God, judge whether He has not fully manifested His true Godhead under the name of a nature lower than the angelic. For a Man spoke to Abraham, and Abraham worshipped Him as God. Pestilent heretic! Abraham confessed Him, you deny Him, to be God. What hope is there for you, in your blasphemy, of the blessings promised to Abraham? He is Father of the Gentiles, but not for you; you cannot go forth from your regeneration to join the household of his seed, through the blessings given to his faith. You are no son, raised up to Abraham from the stones; you are a generation of vipers, an adversary of his belief. You are not the Israel of God, the heir of Abraham, justified by faith; for you have disbelieved God, while Abraham was justified and appointed to be the Father of the Gentiles through that faith wherein he worshipped the God Whose word he trusted. God it was Whom that blessed and faithful Patriarch worshipped then; and mark how truly He was God, to Whom, in His own words, all things are possible. Is there any, but God alone, to Whom nothing is impossible? And He, to Whom all things are possible, does He fall short of true Divinity?

19. Be with me now in thy faithful spirit, holy and blessed Patriarch Jacob, to combat the poisonous hissings of the serpent of unbelief. Prevail once more in thy wrestling with the Man, and, being the stronger, once more entreat His blessing. Why pray for what thou mightest demand from thy weaker Opponent? Thy strong arm has vanquished Him Whose blessing thou prayest. Thy bodily victory is in broad contrast to thy soul’s humility, thy deeds to thy thoughts. It is a Man whom thou holdest powerless in thy strong grasp; but in thine eye this Man is true God, and God not in name only, but in nature. It is not the blessing of a God by adoption that thou dost claim, but the true God’s blessing. With Man thou strivest; but face to face thou seest God. What thou seest with the bodily eye is different far from what thou beholdest with the vision of faith. Thou hast felt Him to be weak Man; but thy soul has been saved because it saw God in Him. When thou wast wrestling thou wast Jacob; thou art Israel now, through faith in the blessing which thou didst claim. According to the flesh, the Man is thy inferior, for a type of His passion in the flesh; but thou canst recognise God in that weak flesh, for a sign of His blessing in the Spirit. The witness of the eye does not disturb thy faith; His feebleness does not mislead thee into neglect of His blessing. Though He is Man, His humanity is no bar to His being God, His Godhead no bar to His being true God; for, being God, He must indeed be true.

21. Human judgment must not pass its sentence upon God. Our nature is not such that it can lift itself by its own forces to the contemplation of heavenly things. We must learn from God what we are to think of God; we have no source of knowledge but Himself. You may be as carefully trained as you will in secular philosophy; you may have lived a life of righteousness. All this will contribute to your mental satisfaction, but it will not help you to know God. Moses was adopted as the son of the queen, and instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; he had, moreover, out of loyalty to his race avenged the wrong of the Hebrew by slaying the Egyptian, and yet he knew not the God Who had blessed his fathers. For when he left Egypt through fear of the discovery of his deed, and was living as a shepherd in the land of Midian, he saw a fire in the bush, and the bush unconsumed. Then it was that he heard the voice of God, and asked His name, and learned His nature. Of all this he could have known nothing except through God Himself. And we, in like manner, must confine ourselves, in whatever we say of God, to the terms in which He has spoken to our understanding concerning Himself.

33. But it may be argued that the Apostle was not inspired by the Spirit of prophecy when he borrowed these prophetic words; that he was only interpreting at random the words of another man, and though, no doubt, everything the Apostle says of himself comes to him by revelation from Christ, yet his knowledge of the words of Isaiah is only derived from the book. I answer that in the beginning of that utterance in which it is said that the servants of the true God shall bless Him and swear by Him, we read this adoration by the prophet:—From everlasting we have not heard, nor have our eyes seen God, except Thee, and Thy works which Thou will do for them that await Thy mercy. Isaiah says that he has seen no God but Him. For he did actually see the glory of God, the mystery of Whose taking flesh from the Virgin he foretold. And if you, in your heresy, do not know that it was God the Only-begotten Whom the prophet saw in that glory, listen to the Evangelist:—These things said Esaias, when he saw His glory, and spake of Him3. The Apostle, the Evangelist, the Prophet combine to silence your objections. Isaiah did see God; even though it is written, No one hath seen God at any time, save the Only-begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father; He hath declared Him, it was God Whom the prophet saw. He gazed upon the Divine glory, and men were filled with envy at such honour vouchsafed to his prophetic greatness. For this was the reason why the Jews passed sentence of death upon him.

34. Thus the Only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, has told us of God, Whom no man has seen. Either disprove the fact that the Son has thus informed us, or else believe Him Who has been seen, Who appeared to them who knew Him not, and became the God of the Gentiles who called not upon Him and spread out His hands before a gainsaying people. And believe this also concerning Him, that they who serve Him are called by a new name, and that on earth men bless Him and swear by Him as true God. Prophecy tells, the Gospel confirms, the Apostle explains, the Church confesses, that He Who was seen is true God; but none venture to say that God the Father was seen. And yet the madness of heresy has run to such lengths that, while they profess to recognise this truth, they really deny it. They deny it by means of the new-fangled and godless device of evading the truth, while making a studied pretence of adhesion to it. For when they confess one God, alone true and alone righteous, alone wise, alone unchangeable, alone immortal, alone mighty, they attach to Him a Son different in substance, not born from God to be God, but adopted through creation to be a Son, having the name of God not by nature, but as a title received by adoption; and thus they inevitably deprive the Son of all those attributes which they accumulate upon the Father in His lonely majesty.

Technorati Tags: deity of christ, hilary, quotables

If a person is proficient in original languages I’d probably suggest starting there since they can see the breaks in the passage (that is, if you’re reading any Greek text post-minuscule) but the average student probably doesn’t need to go there.

Many versions have a ton of scholarship backing the translation; the ones I’ve recommended (except the MSG) will probably give you the best footing. But, if you’re committed to the go-to-Greek-text: Nestle-Aland27/UBS4.

First, identify sentences. This is usually easy since, with the verse numbers turned off, you’ll probably just identify them with punctuation.

Next, identify paragraphs. A paragraph is a collection of sentences based on a common idea. This is usually pretty easy too since a lot of modern versions already come with paragraph breaks.

You might notice in your parallel reading that versions break them down differently. This is why you’ll want to also identify when the author changes what he’s talking about.

This sounds similar to a paragraph in that it’s dealing with an idea. But an idea might go through several paragraphs and still be about that one subject. What’s nice about identifying the Big Idea first, you can more easily identify the movement within the block.

For example John 9. The entire chapter has one idea/story: the man who was born blind is healed. Within that section there are several paragraphs comprise the entire unit: the discussion, the healing, the man alone, the man meeting Jesus again. But in all cases, it’s one unit of thought. This is called a pericope.

Usually modern versions divide periscopes by headings but we’ve turned them off. Sometimes you’ll read the text and realize that the pericope seems to continue. In other cases you’ll find that maybe there should be more pericopes than the translation suggests. By studying the text without the headers, we get to try to discover the unit of thought for ourselves, or at the very least come up with a heading which is more understandable for our personal notes.

• Online: Sentence diagramming tools might be helpful. The good thing is that you can do a variation of this with just about any word processor or email program.

The Word <-subject

——-|In the Beginning <–time marker

—————-|was with God  <–modifies subject

—————-|was God <–modifies subject

• Downloadables: BibleArc is a tool that’s available for a suggested yearly donation of $10 but they’ll work with you if you can’t afford that. Basically they have a method for you to breakdown sentences (or even collections of sentences) visually portray connecting thoughts. You can also check Sendraw, an opensource program by UCF’s Department of English that lets you diagram sentences. If you don’t know (or don’t remember) how to do that, check this easy walkthrough.
• Paid: I personally haven’t seen anything like BibleArc in the expensive paid for suites though they do have many other interesting tools. For example, logos has a compare pericope tool which lets you compare what each version has decided was a unit of thought. It also has a very handy Word tree, which lets diagrams a word in relation to other thoughts within specific passages. Also for the iPad, you might want to check out some mind mapping apps.

When you’re done with this, you’ll be able to apply your own headings to the sections.

Technorati Tags: bible study, digital tools, reading

I’m going to focus on Matthew. Not because I think Matthews account was first (I actually think priority goes to Mark), nor because I think that Matthew is most reliable (I think Luke’s account gives the most historically pertinent information) but because Matthew account might possibly, yet without conviction, be examined on it’s own.

Let me justify that with cumulative points:

1. One: The Synoptic accounts were most likely early. None of the Synoptic writers record the actual destruction of the Jewish Temple. Neither does Paul. Luke mentions having collected data to write his accounts (Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-12) and surely would have recorded it, but then goes on to include everything right up to Paul’s the Roman house imprisonment (Acts 28:30-31). If one were to deny the recorded messages of Christ as prophecy, then it could mean that these Gospel accounts were written after 70 A.D but that presupposes that prophecy doesn’t happen.
2. Two: The Synoptic accounts probably did not circulate before Paul’s writings. That doesn’t mean Paul’s writings are less or more important, but it is to say that Paul’s writings contains some of the earliest Christian beliefs—one of many being that Christ is God.
3. Three: Paul might have influenced Mark and Luke. Mark was an original member of Paul’s missionary party (Acts 12:25; 15:37) and later would be a helpful companion (Phil 1:24; Col 4:10; 2 Tim 4:11).  Luke was Paul’s travel companion (Phil 1:24; Col 4:14). If both Mark and Luke’s Gospel accounts were contemporaneous to their activity with Paul, and they were in happy fellowship together, then it is possible that there is influence.
4. Four: Paul was in step with Jerusalem. Paul, after all, actually checked himself to see if the message he preached was the same as that of the original Twelve, was confirmed in the endeavor (Gal 2:6-9), and was sent back with full approval and backing (Gal 2:10; Acts 15:23-29). Not only did he function in the capacity as apostle, he was a contemporary itinerant worker with the living Disciples (1 Cor 9:5; Gal 2:14-15). And even where Paul and Peter’s messages differed, Luke goes out of his way to record the similarities (Acts). Going to the Gospel accounts shouldn’t create a force field where on the one side we have whatever it is Paul believed about Jesus and on the other side what the Gospel writers actually thought of Jesus but in all honesty should be seen as offering a spectrum.
5. Five: Differences of purpose in writing aren’t an excuse. Paul’s writings address specific church needs and the Gospel accounts records a biographical account of the basis for the Church—but that doesn’t matter. Since these points aren’t based on the purpose of the writing, but what the writer wrote as a believed and textually recorded message.

The Jewish disciple Matthew surely held strong beliefs about the nature of God. God is other. God stands apart. God upholds all things. God is the God of the Sabbath. If a later community put his account together then it is likely that they were recording the beliefs that were already circulating which are only evidenced by what the text says.

So we’ll see certain patterns in the text. We’ll see that Matthew doesn’t record Jesus as only the recipient of God’s promises. That is not to say that the book doesn’t speak of Christ as King—surely it does—but it doesn’t speak of him as no more than King.

Jesus Really is God’s Family

The book contains a rhythmic pattern of Christ’s unique relationship to the Father.

Early in the book, we have the recorded conception and birth of Christ. The child is conceived in a woman by The Holy Spirit (Matt 1:18) and the fact is announced by God’s angel (Matt 1:20).

This baby is supposed to do things that no mere human king could do: he would save His people from their sins. Matthew takes this announcement to fit into the prophetic saying of Isaiah that (A) a virgin would conceive and (B) that his name will be God With Us. As to (A) it is interesting that in the Isaiah passage, historically speaking, Isaiah was possibly referring in his own mind to the young woman his wife. Before she would conceive, the prophecy would come to be. Matthew seems to take this as Isaiah speaking even better than he knew, a young lady who is a virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call his name Immanuel which is God with us. The Parents actually name the child Jesus so the fact that Matthew records the “They” and gives the child the dictated name (Matt 1:21, 25) seems to indicate something going forward. The child will be called God With Us by People.

Magi come along looking for the King of the Jews but one must remember what this sought for King was to do. Ezekiel 34 stipulates that the Lord God would get rid of the leaders of the people and would take care of them himself by then establishing David over the people. So when the Magi are in awe looking for this King they are searching for God’s Stand In of David.

God’s son, this one who is born of the Holy Spirit, is called out of Egypt typologically rising up out of oppression by actually exodus out of Egypt just like Israel of old. But this son isn’t merely heralded by a human agent (like Moses did when he told Pharaoh that Israel was His Son—Ex 4:22) he is heralded by God himself who speaks out of heaven saying “This is my beloved Son!” (Matt 3:17; Matt 17:5)

Jesus Heralded as God

Another textual pattern is this interplay of John the Baptist and Elijah. For that you would need to know your Jewish History, but in a bit of short hand it was expected that before the end of the world arrived, Elijah would show up and herald it. The Lord Himself is coming to bring judgment and messenger goes before him.

The idea exploded in the intertestamental period labeling the messenger as Elijah, but it finds its ground on two passages: Isaiah 40:3, Malachi 3:1 and Mal 4:5.

Isaiah 40 is about the Lord God himself commanding a messenger to straighten his paths according to his mandate giving both a mission and a message to the messenger. This is really the incomparable God:

See, the Sovereign LORD comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm.

“To whom will you compare me?  Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. (Isaiah 40:10, 25)

It’s in this passage that the messenger is stated as doing the Lord’s work out in the wilderness (Is 40:3)

The Malachi passage is about God coming in judgment ready to purify the temple and its practices. The messenger is sent before him (Mal 3:1) but it is the Lord God Almighty (Mal 3:5) himself who comes after the messenger to do the judge-work.

So when we get to Malachi 4, we see the repeated message that the fiery day of the Lord is coming (Mal 4:1) where he arrives as judge but before he comes he will send the prophet Elijah.

“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.”

Matthew picks up on this and presents John The Baptist as God’s messenger, making straight the way of the Lord, Elijah who was to come (if the people are willing to accept it:  Matthew 3:1-17;  11:1-14). This is almost torqued up when we see Jesus actually having a conversation with the actual Moses and Elijah (Matt 17:1-13). John on the one hand functioned as Elijah, but on the other hand Elijah himself stands with Jesus and Moses (discussing Christ’s exodus Luke 9:31) and Jesus is revealed as brighter than white. The fact that in Matt 27:46-54 some people believe he’s calling for Elijah and they wonder if Elijah will come is met with a pregnant silence: Elijah as come as John and they killed him, and Elijah is still to come before the Lord who judges.

But hop over to Mathew 21. Jesus is now approaching his exit and he’s functioning in an extremely important way. Throughout the following chapters he will make all types of prophetic proclamations but in this chapter we start to get a peek that he’s not only functioning as a mere prophet or King.

He tells the disciples to go into the village and find a colt. When the question is asked “what for” the answer the disciple is to give is:

The Lord has need of them.

This is not merely predictive. This is the Lord Yahweh showing the divine ordering of events and dictating his desire in accordance with events which God had already recorded as coming to occur (Zech 9:9):

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
He is just and endowed with salvation,
Humble, and mounted on a donkey,
Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Now, when the events transpire exactly as he said, the crowds welcome Jesus into Jerusalem saying “blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” evidencing some of that Matthean irony. He is heralded as coming in the name of the Lord because his name is actually Lord (remember the Lord had need of these things). He’s functioning with the authority of Yahweh because he is Yahweh—and the people, unbeknownst to them, herald him home.

It’s as if Matthew is saying that this Jesus is twice heralded as God: once in his proclamation and later with his judgment.

Jesus Functions with God’s Prerogatives

Mathew also depicts Jesus as having all the prerogatives of God.

Note Matthew 12. Jesus is questioned regarding the Sabbath because his disciples are picking the heads of grain and eating them and Jesus answers in four parts:

1. David did something only the priests could do (this was not-bad)
2. The priests work on the Sabbath  (this is good)
3. Good is better than sacrifice
4. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

The fourth point just seems to hang there. Why underscore it if it has nothing to do with the argument? I mean, isn’t the point proven on Point 3?

The passaged doesn’t stop there.  Again, in front of a man with withered hands, the Pharisees demand to know if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath. Jesus answers

1. People do good by saving injured sheep on the Sabbath
2. Injured people are more important than Sheep
3. Therefore healing injured people is right to do on the Sabbath.

And here a structure is unveiled as Jesus allows his actions to speak louder than his words. As one who has power over the withered hand, he turns and does a work on the Sabbath specifically underscoring the 4th point above: Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.

But who is rightly Lord of the Sabbath?

And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens…(Gen 2:3-4)

And it doesn’t stop there. Scribes had authority, but Jesus taught as one with authority (Matt 7:28-29) and healed with one directly under God’s authority evidenced in a conversation with a man who knew how authority functioned (Matt 8:8-13). But miracles and doing activity on the Sabbath isnt’ the end of it.

It was commonly known that you couldn’t’ forgive a person’s sins because that is something God does. After all, God provides the means for it to happen by offering sacrifices; you can’t just stand up in the way of that and forgive sins.  But Jesus operates with God’s own prerogatives when he takes a paralytic and forgives his sins apart from any sacrifices, offerings or even a verbal plea for forgiveness (Matt 9:2). Then knowing the very thoughts of his opponents he points out how the Son of Man has special authority on earth to forgive sins by doing something easy like telling the paralytic to get up and walk.

It’s no wonder that he allows people to worship him (Matt 14:33; 28:9) while explicitly knowing that a person must worship and serve only the Lord God (Matt 4:10).

This is not only a King functioning under God’s authority; this is God Himself acting like God.

Jesus’ Enemies Know Him

Another interesting happening in Gospel’s account is the activity of Christ’s demonic enemies.

For example, the Gadarene demons (Matt 8:28-33) wonder why the Son of God is there to torment them before The Time which should engender two questions: torment them how and what time? Their hope is that he has mercy on them and lets them indwell pigs. Honestly, I don’t understand demons but it seems to mean that as Son of God he had (1) the power to tell them what to do, (2) they had to ask him permission, (3) they envision that what he’s doing hurts them and (4) there is an ultimate time coming which they expect Jesus to do something.  In light of that whole Elijah bit above, I’d assume that what they’re talking about is the final judgment and noting that this one has power over them in that respect.

But we wouldn’t know since Jesus keeps them quiet because, says Mark, they knew who he was (Mark 1:34).

But what of Satan? He recognizes him enough to be personally involved in trying to throw him off track or possibly trying to detract him from his mission (Matt 16:23); yet he speaks in terms of “If you are the Son of God” (Matt 4:10). Did Satan not recognize him while the Demons did? Well Christ says that the demons are part of Satan’s house, as it were, so that would be a strange phenomenon (Matt 12:26). I don’t know much about the devil or demons but I do know he’s a deceiver so maybe it’s that Satan was trying to force Christ’s hands to act outside of the Triune will? Or maybe to see how submissive was he really trying to be with a secondary motive that could be beneficial? Satan has been crafty from the get go, so it may be best to avoid coming up with his exact motivations. His Satanic Majesty is not to be trifled with.

Conclusion: Well we don’t see confessions of Christ is God like we do in other places but we see (1) the compass pointing North as it were and (2) enough clues to strongly suggest that Matthew intends us to see that this is the case. Maybe that’s why Matthew’s Gospel is just choc full of people speaking better than they know, or God’s direct activity illuminating Christ’s activity. Elijah not showing up is one thing, but not the only thing. Christ dies and tombs open and the veil of the temple rips from the top down. Christ dies and a centurion says that Jesus was the Son of God, which surely meant something different for him than it did for the Jew. True Matthew also wants us to see that this Jesus, God, born of God, in the flesh with Gods’ prerogatives also functioned in subjection to another but he makes sure to include that all authority has been given to him in heaven and, presumably now, on Earth (Matt 28:18-20). He teaches, he commands and he tells people to baptize others in the collective name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—putting him on equal footing with God himself.

So does Matthew see Jesus as God? I don’t think you can say he doesn’t. You can’t even say it isn’t important. It seems to be “Yes surely: as the Yahweh God” while admitting that Matthew is trying to get across several themes to his audience. It’s probably part of the reason why John felt it necessary to record his own account clarifying things (like Jesus is God; like the Baptist said he wasn’t Elijah).

Technorati Tags: deity of christ, matthew

Every now and then, on a Friday, I’ll step into the deep waters of Philosophy, ramble on about some idea and maybe even interact with something I might be reading. Most of the time, a real philosopher could probably read my drivel and offer a corrective—but for now I’ll speak from ignorance. After all, it is Friday; what better way to have fun than with philosophy. In this post I’ll follow up a previous question with answering this question: “Can you be justified in believing God acted in history if you lack evidence or even an argument for the best inference of the evidence?”

Why would we need either arguments or evidence to be justified in believing that God worked in history? People don’t usually function like that.

Currently I believe that I am typing on this keyboard but I don’t believe that it’s really you dreaming of me typing. I don’t have evidence for that belief, nor do I have a good argument: I just believe I’m doing it. This belief could prove to be unsubstantiated (if I’m really plugged into the Matrix) but on what grounds am I currently not justified in holding the belief?

That’s now, but what about three days ago? I truly believe that I bathed. I don’t have a formed picture in my mind of the event. My current stench is evidence to the contrary. Checking the water bill proves nothing. Asking for early rising eyewitness accounts is unhelpful. Am I therefore unjustified in believing that I bathed?

Let’s not belabor the point: we don’t need evidence or an argument to be justified in most of our beliefs. Why would the bar suddenly rise when it comes to God?

Enter the slogan “extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence” which doesn’t make sense on several levels.

First: “extraordinary” is arbitrarily defined. If I bathed only once every three years, but my wife bathed twice a day, wouldn’t me bathing be extraordinary? And at what point is bathing becoming “ordinary”? After bathing every 2 years? Every month?

Second: it’s a moving goal post. After all, some things that at one point might have been extraordinary are now ordinary. Believing in future smartphones in 1982 suddenly becomes a justified belief in 2001 when technology changes?

Third: it forces us to ignore any event. As William Lane Craig said, imagine that I buy a lotto ticket and actually hit the jackpot…am I unjustified in my belief that I actually hit the jackpot because the only bit of evidence I have (ie: the winning ticket) isn’t extraordinary enough? Maybe the winning ticket and the random numbers stated on the screen aren’t enough. Maybe I need to also get struck by lighting. But even getting struck by lightning is less extraordinary than hitting the lotto.

Fourth: what’s extraordinary for God? Imagine God says “I’m going to raise a dead man” then proceeds to do it. Sure the dead don’t normally rise, but how is God doing what he said he would do an extraordinary thing? And if it is the case that he said he would do it back then, can’t I now be justified in believing he acted in history as he said he would?

If James the Baker always tells the truth tells me that yesterday he made me a cake am I not justified in believing him? He’s never made me a cake before. There seems to be no good reason for a cake. And there’s not even evidence that he made me the cake. But I know James and he’s a truth teller and baking is within his sphere of ability. Can’t my belief be justified simply on account of who James is and what he does?

If we substitute James for a necessary maximal being who is The Good, doesn’t that in itself justify beliefs of (at least) God’s activity in history (without saying anything more about what he said)?

So, to the opening post, am I justified in believing God acted in history even if I lack evidence or an argument? Of course I am. That doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence. It just means that I don’t need it to believe it.

Technorati Tags: matrix, philosophy, philosophy friday, plantinga, warranted belief