Beginning with reason, logic, and reality, we start far from home. Then, along the way, we follow reason as truth-finder as she [1] avoids reductions to absurdity and [2] satisfies her own relentless demands for lucidity. Then, by the end, we find ourselves within a thoroughly Trinitarian metaphysic. The syntax is going to be – at times – intentionally repetitive with respect to just why and how it is that the metaphysic in question is in fact Trinitarian. The occasionally repetitive syntax is used so that at *each* step through our progression we are forced to recall – and include – each claim along the way vis-à-vis one’s proverbial [A] Reductio Ad Deum as opposed to one’s proverbial [B] Reductio Ad Absurdum. So, with that disclaimer – with that forewarning – we can start.

Far from closure – far from home:

Whether it is QM or Atheism or Christianity or X or Y or Z, the issue is not uncertainty/certainty unless one wants to assume the unfortunate posture of defending what can only be a radical, opaque skepticism. Of course, the Christian is quite satisfied in these discussions when Non-Theists assume that unfortunate posture. The Christian there only needs to simply coach the Non-Theist further and further down the Non-Theist’s own wish-list of premises in that path and, when the Non-Theist finally embraces the manifestly absurd, it is a sort of intellectually satisfying “QED” for the Christian.

If uncertainty/certainty do not necessarily compel reason (…in her role as truth-finder…) then what will rationally (…and necessarily…) compel her? That’s obvious: the proverbial “Y” in the road is when and if one is forced to embrace this or that reductio ad absurdum – this or that reduction to absurdity.

The goal of reason as truth-finder is [1] avoiding reductions to absurdity and [2] satisfying reason’s demands for lucidity. On occasion our Non-Theist friends are confronted with that and they argue-by-emote with something akin to, “Sophistry! Pure sophistry!” but of course that’s not surprising given the Non-Theist’s (…somewhat common…) decision at that proverbial “Y” in the road.

As for the disagreements internal to Christianity, the entire array of peripheral topics which our Non-Theist friends point to are irrelevant to what defines Christianity’s metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility – or Christianity’s epicenter – (…as all vectors converge in Christ…). That is a substratum which our Non-Theist friends have not managed to negate – as too often all they’ve done in each attempt to negate that fountainhead is point to things outside of Christianity’s epicenter – which in a sense merely begs the question.

What everyone is left with is uncertainty in several layers, and certainty in several layers, and, so, that is all a proverbial “wash”. As in: Corrie ten Boom, no stranger to life’s unknowns, commented,

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

Faced with the challenge of the unknown in, say, the initially perplexing problem of how to get X into orbit around the earth, we rely on, trust in, the mathematics which we’ve every rational reason to trust as we face the challenge of, again, “…how to get X into orbit around the earth…”. We do not there assert that we are irrational for moving forward with our Mathematics in hand. No. We embrace, trust in, the known, that which we’ve rational reason to trust and we push forward into the problems and the unknowns. Rationally. Such is the nature of Corrie ten Boom, Reason, Faith, and Mathematics.

Evidence based faith is the only kind the Christian metaphysic recognizes and for good reason: such comports with reality. And reality matters. There is the Known, there is the Unknown, and there is our trust in, reliance upon, faith in, the known as we work through reality’s array of often perplexing unknowns/problems. Like Corrie ten Boom and Mathematics.

That’s not complicated.

Therefore certainty/uncertainty cannot help us decide – or more precisely – certainty/uncertainty do not necessarily and rationally compel reason (…in her role as truth-finder…) into A vs. B. vs. C., as it were. But that’s old news. Everybody already knows that with respect to the nature of the knowledge of reality (…on the one hand…) and the fundamental nature of reality (…on the other hand…).

All that is left then is that painful “Y” in the road between the forced reductio ad absurdum (…on the one hand…) and reason’s lucidity (…on the other hand…). Uncertainty never has disqualified a premise, but what is clear is that when this or that premise forces a reduction to absurdity, the premise itself is (then) rationally rejected. Reason’s relentless demands for lucidity press ever forward, outward, upward.

“Reason Itself” in the sense of mirroring the “classical theism” phrase of, “Being Itself” inevitably forces our hand in several ways. “That” proverbial “compelling” arrives in and by and through the respective premises constituting this or that explanatory terminus with respect to Reason, Being, Non-Being, & Ontological Cul-de-sacs (…which is discussed at https://metachristianity.com/reason-being-non-being-ontological-cul-de-sacs/ …). It is there where, once again, we arrive, at some ontological seam somewhere, at Reason’s obligation with respect to Truth for it is at that metaphysical seam where Reason ends while Reality constituted as Non-Reason continues — ad infinitum.  The Edge of Reason there exposes what just is the End of Reason and that is unavoidable in one’s metaphysic unless reality’s explanatory terminus (…under review here…) is in fact Reason Itself  vis-a-vis Being Itself — and so on up and down the proverbial “ontic line” as we traverse that fateful “Y” in the road and press into the [A] Reductio Ad Deum or else into the [B] Reductio Ad Absurdum.  A brief excerpt from the linked discussion on Reason, Being, Non-Being, & Ontological Cul-De-Sacs:

….Often, not always, but often enough to prompt this brief paragraph, it is the case that many of our Non-Theist (A-Theist) friends are, when it comes to being, quick to trade away permanence in their paradigm when it comes to the moral, whereas very few are so bold when facing the argument from reason and/or the rationalist proof. And for good reason (no pun intended). The inevitable shipwreck suffered by trading away permanence in the paradigm of metaphysical naturalism when it comes to reason is just too costly. Why? Because at that juncture it becomes evident that while they have been forced to leave “Being Itself” on the table, they have, by their own hand, stripped reason away from it (…away from being – away from “Being Itself”…) such that we find that reason “is” what it always has been in metaphysical naturalism, which is no-thing, as in non-being. Non-Theism is intrinsically anti-reason with respect to “being”. That is to say that Non-Theism just is Non-Reason.

Ontological Cul-De-Sacs & Bobbles & Bubbles:

As just discussed we find that, at some ontological seam somewhere, the end of reason itself is finally forced and that lands the entire Non-Theistic attempt NOT in the convertibility of the necessary transcendentals with respect to its own being but, rather, in the illusory shadows of non-being…..

The fundamental nature of reason, logic, knowledge, and perception will always force our hands, whatever paradigm we may be working within. Regarding this or that “metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility”, no rational person intentionally embraces absurdity (…the proverbial reductio ad absurdum and so on…). The reach of the physical sciences (…on the one hand…) and of reason herself (…on the other hand…) are universally and fundamentally distinct, and distinction here does not mean wholly disconnected from one another, but simply means that they – and their respective reaches – are in a relevant sense different (….scientism being fallacious (etc.)….).

For example, knowledge just isn’t “physics-full-stop” (….methodological naturalism etc…) and the moment the Non-Theist attempts to claim that such *is* the definition of Knowledge is the moment reality’s universal and fundamental transcendentals come roaring in to dismantle his “.…cluster of tautological statements giving an appearance of a meaningful structure or system when stacked and leaned up against each other at various angles …. the resultant spaces providing the necessary illusion for pattern projecting subjects to go on to…..” (DNW) The Non-Theist and physicist Sean Carroll makes the attempt in his “The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself” and, bit by bit, the absurdity of “useful but not true” (…in various “layers” of “reality”…) subsumes all of his syntax.

Therein we find that one chooses, embraces, prefers – loves – absurdity over coherence, one chooses, embraces, prefers, loves, some contour of the ludicrous more than this or that contour of the lucid, one chooses the irrational over the rational. In short, there amid that unavoidable interface between self and truth the volitional man vis-à-vis the will of man invades the doxastic experience and displaces reason, hijacking the role of truth-finder and the rational man suffers yet another dive into he knows not what.

And there it is. QED.

That move by (too many) Non-Theists is hard evidence that one’s doxastic experience is fueled not “just” by evidence/reason, but also by other vectors subsumed within the intentional-being, within the being’s will, within taste and agenda. That the sky is blue may be a belief compelled such that one cannot deny it except by embracing the absurd, and yet the rationally compelled belief is *not* (…as is demonstrable…) constituted of “just” evidence/reason. If the price is sacred enough the Non-Theist will be telling us there is no such thing as blue, nor sky, nor sight, or I, nor self, nor even the utterance of “the sky is blue” nor even this very sentence one is reading for it – all of it – is you see but the absurd and the opaque, the “useful but not true”. You’re not reading this sentence. There is no sentence. There is no room for *you* to be *doing* anything there in nature’s four fundamental forces/waves which all layers ultimately reduce to, as all layers but one are ultimately and cosmically illusory. In fact, even the perception of our senses by which we organize nature’s four fundamental forces – and so on – are also subsumed by the illusory such that there is not even *one* layer which is “real”. It is *not* “…we know not what…” for there is no “we” nor “know” nor “what” nor “it”. Full Stop (…assuming – that is – that the price is sacred enough…).

Still far from home, the light breaks through:

Non-Theists are compelled into the hard stop of Mind and they therein do most of the Christian’s work for him in these discussions. That is to say that atheistic philosophers get there all by themselves as we’re just forced into it by logic regardless of our presuppositions. The hard stop of Mind is peculiar. One must squint really hard to deny it – to eliminate it – but even then…….. The choice between ultimate or cosmic or final absurdity (…one the one hand…) or God / the Divine Mind (…on the other hand…) is, if we are patient – and we are – where these conversations always end up.

“I think solipsism is always an interesting topic because if we start “mid-stream” in our epistemology by rejecting solipsism (as I think most of us probably do), it is then interesting to try to infer what “upstream” structure of our thoughts must have led to this rejection. There is some hope that by swimming upstream in this manner we will discover certain “first principles” that lie unrecognized at the wellspring of our beliefs.” (j.hilclimber)

It is simply a matter of [1] following reason, logic, and observational reality as far as they will take you and, from there, [2] pulling in that which makes the most sense of all the information and also being careful to embrace [3] that which avoids the many pains of this or that reductio ad absurdum. Atheists of all strips do the Christian’s work for him here, saving the Christian all sorts of time, as they (…Non-Theists of all strips…) typically follow reason and logic and end up within various cousins of solipsism, both hard and soft, which of course is again what the Christian’s metaphysic predicts as that proverbial “Y” in the road between the Divine Mind – a Reductio Ad Deum (…on the one hand…) and Absurdity – a Reductio Ad Absurdum (…on the other hand…) approaches ever more rapidly.

Truth-Finding:

Having arrived in the Divine Mind by starting outside of such and allowing reason and logic to compel us truth-ward, we then discover that the rational terminus of reason’s impossibly extravagant appetite in fact never leaves the elemental substratum of Reason Itself and is therein – in a full and ontic sense – a kind of total rationalism:

“……the concept of being is one of power: the power of actuality, the capacity to affect or to be affected. To be is to act. This definition already implies that, in its fullness, being must also be consciousness, because the highest power to act — and hence the most unconditioned and unconstrained reality of being — is rational mind. Absolute being, therefore, must be absolute mind. Or, in simpler terms, the greater the degree of something’s actuality, the greater the degree of its consciousness, and so infinite actuality is necessarily infinite consciousness. That, at least, is one way of trying to describe another essential logical intuition that recurs in various forms throughout the great theistic metaphysical systems. It is the conviction that in God lies at once the deepest truth of mind and the most universal truth of existence, and that for this reason the world can truly be known by us. Whatever else one might call this vision of things, it is most certainly, in a very real sense, a kind of “total rationalism.” (D.B.H.)

Racing towards the “Y” in the road, we find that, as to Consciousness in God, that is to say, as for the constitutions of “Irreducible and Infinite Consciousness” in what is necessarily nothing less than *GOD* / “Being Itself”, such is, to be sure, another part to this narrative as we are forced thricely into an infinite locus of consciousness each of which by necessity cannot be less than Being in totum.

Consciousness in *GOD* is not and cannot be on ontological par with any contingent consciousness for given what the term *GOD* necessarily entails, the Divine Mind necessarily entails three irreducible and Infinite Loci of that which (…by logical necessity…) cannot be “less than” that which is “Infinite Consciousness”.

And here – in the Divine Mind, in God – in Infinite Consciousness – we must move methodically within the contours of Divine Simplicity. Moving forward then let us recall the opening paragraph’s disclaimer – the opening paragraph’s forewarning – with respect to what is going to be intentionally repetitive syntax. Again, the repetitive frame is used so that at *each* step through our progression we are forced to recall – and include – each claim along the way vis-à-vis one’s proverbial [A] Reductio Ad Deum as opposed to one’s proverbial [B] Reductio Ad Absurdum.

“To speak of God, however, as infinite consciousness, which is identical to infinite being, is to say that in Him the ecstasy of mind is also the perfect satiety of achieved knowledge, of perfect wisdom. God is both the knower and the known, infinite intelligence and infinite intelligibility. This is to say that, in Him, rational appetite is perfectly fulfilled, and consciousness perfectly possesses the end it desires.” (D.B. Hart)

Consciousness in *GOD* forces distinction void of division: It is uncanny that while, say, “Power” or “Goodness” or “Truth” all speak to some contour within Divine Simplicity such do not expressly and immediately force distinct centers of consciousness, whereas, while still within that same landscape, we do eventually come upon the affairs of *GOD* vis-à-vis Infinite Consciousness and, once we arrive “there”, we discover that the Divine Mind necessarily entails three irreducible and Infinite Loci of that which (…by logical necessity…) cannot be less than Infinite Consciousness which – it so happens – cannot be less than “Being In Totum“. One may be tempted to fully insist/claim that “not all” such distinctions void of division expressly and immediately force the Divine Mind, or Infinite Consciousness. Very well but such trepidation can only remain rational for so long, through this or that syntax of, say, Power or Presence or Speech as without fail all such vectors converge in the Epicenter of the Intentional Self vis-à-vis the Totality of nothing less than Being in totum vis-a-vis the I-AM as it turns out that – again on force of logic – three distinct Progressions vis-a-vis Communique vis-à-vis Totality in fact do force our hand as we come upon the affairs of *GOD* vis-à-vis Infinite Consciousness and all over again once we arrive “there” we discover that the Divine Mind necessarily entails three irreducible and Infinite Loci of that which (…by logical necessity…) cannot be less than Infinite Consciousness which – it so happens – cannot be less than “Being In Totum”. It is both peculiar and unavoidable.

Consciousness in *GOD* finds distinction void of division: The trio of the Infinite Knower (…which in Infinite and Irreducible Consciousness cannot be less than Being in totum…) and of the Infinitely Known (…which in Infinite and Irreducible Consciousness cannot be less than Being in totum…) and of all Communique/Procession vis-à-vis Logos therein (…which is both *of* infinite consciousness and also *is* infinite consciousness, which cannot be less than Being in totum…) carries – compels even – logic and reason into a thoroughly Trinitarian metaphysic.

Logic forces our hand: If there were no Communique / Processions of/via the Divine Mind / Infinite Consciousness then there could only be the stark/static Non-Trinitarian Monotheism. However, the moment we realize the Living Infinite Consciousness vis-à-vis Being Itself we arrive at Logos — and that necessarily arrives in/as/of/by Communique / Processions — and that necessarily changes everything. Putting the lens on Divine-Simplicity forces our hand by sheer Logic — IF we retain Divine Simplicity and Logos — THEN we ipso facto affirm the Triune God. Following through we find the following as we “Map” “Being Itself” amid Divine Simplicity:

Being Itself via Infinite Consciousnesses via Divine Simplicity

Is Procession vis-à-vis Logos less than Being “in total”?

Is Procession vis-à-vis The Infinite Knower less than Being “in total”?

Is Procession vis-à-vis The Infinitely Known less than Being “in total”?

The reply to each is of course “No” and, therefore, we find the following:

Being in totum vis-à-vis Infinite Knower vis-à-vis Divine Simplicity

Being in totum vis-à-vis Infinitely Known vis-à-vis Divine Simplicity

Being in totum vis-à-vis All Processions vis-à-vis Logos vis-à-vis Divine Simplicity

We must keep following through: In the Life of Timeless Processions of Absolute Consciousness — which is to say in Being Itself vis-à-vis The Infinite Knower and The Infinitely Known and All Processions Thereof — it is the case that Divine Simplicity reveals Being Itself as Logos — as Timeless Communique — as Timeless Speech — Whereof it is impossible to deny Timeless Generation:

“….in the prologue of John’s Gospel… we learn… at the beginning of the whole tale that the biblical God has eternally a word to say, a word that as God’s eternal Word must conversely be God… The Word that eternally is with God and so is God, is discourse… in the triune God, the God of John’s prologue, there is no such thing as the silence of eternity. What is eternal is not silence, but discourse… This does not mean that God in himself is silent and then happens to speak, but rather that precisely the breaking of silence is eternally constitutive of God’s triune life…” ((..from Joining The Eternal Conversation – John’s Prologue and the Language of Worship – by Robert W. Jenson…))

R.W. Jensen also writes, “…Since the God in question is the inwardly talkative Triune God, Christian Liturgy does not move toward silence…” and Brandon M. then observes, “This “chattiness” is essential to God’s nature – God is the Word as the Word is God as He is never speechless, never mute, never silent. Our loquacious God would have us in communion with Himself and others and this is the true end of words.”  That refers again to the aforementioned:

“….there is no such thing as the silence of eternity. What is eternal is not silence, but discourse… This does not mean that God in himself is silent and then happens to speak, but rather that precisely the breaking of silence is eternally constitutive of God’s Triune life…”

Divine Simplicity reveals Divine Communique reveals Divine Speech in Eternal Procession which reveals Timeless Generation which is to say Logos which is to say Being Itself. An uncanny discovery there is the provision of a Metaphysical Terminus by which the Ground of Knowledge is in fact Being Itself in Eternal Procession as Logos vis-à-vis Divine Discourse as Divine Speech in the Timeless Communique of the Trinitarian Life:

“Then what we have to acknowledge is that we cannot get behind all this to some linguistically blank table of deity, on which to inscribe our metaphors. For there is no such thing back there. With the triune God, what we hear is what we get, because that’s what there is – the Word is the complete and perfect self-statement of God, he is God….” (Jensen)

Final Causality is here transcended as Garrigou-Lagrange reminds us that “…the identity of Communicate transcends efficient and final causality for that which Is Caused does not exist before in Act, whereas that which Is Communicated exists before in Act…”  Some of the earlier quotes were from Joining The Eternal Conversation – John’s Prologue and the Language of Worship – by Robert W. Jenson and the following additional excerpts from that essay are helpful here:

Begin Excerpts:

….in the prologue of John’s Gospel… we learn… at the beginning of the whole tale that the biblical God has eternally a word to say, a word that as God’s eternal Word must conversely be God… The Word that eternally is with God and so is God, is discourse… in the triune God, the God of John’s prologue, there is no such thing as the silence of eternity. What is eternal is not silence, but discourse… This does not mean that God in himself is silent and then happens to speak, but rather that precisely the breaking of silence is eternally constitutive of God’s triune life…

This biblical and dogmatic notion of an intrinsically talkative God is, of course, an offense to usual religion. For by speech persons become involved with one another, they become mutually invested and historical, and it is precisely escape from mutual investment and history that human religiosity seeks in the various divinities it posits. The biblical God provides no such escape. The triune God’s very life is mutual investment; in the classical formulation, a triune identity simply is a subsisting relation to the other triune identities. And whether you are willing to speak of the divine identities’ perichoresis as divine “history” or not is, I think, mostly a matter of conceptual taste. This God’s salvation, the “deification” to which he draws us, is not a vanishing into the sea of abstract perfection but our total inclusion in the life of the three identities, and that is to say, given John’s teaching, in their living discourse.

…since the God in question is the inwardly talkative triune God, Christian Liturgy does not move toward silence…. Trinitarian doctrine of God apprehends God and then God again; it apprehends an other in whom and as whom God knows himself. And this other, as I have just argued, is not in the first instance an essence; God does not know himself by seeing himself in a sort of metaphysical mirror. This other, according to John, is rather an utterance. God speaks himself, and so, in what he says, knows himself. And, according to John, he speaks himself not only to himself but also to us. Or rather, John’s point is the vice versa: The word we hear from God—the story John is about to tell about Christ and the words of Christ he will report—this word is none other than the Word in the beginning, the Word by which God knows himself.

The Word Is God: The word that God addresses to us is the same word he speaks to know himself. Let us take John’s notion of God’s Logos in the expansive way the tradition has done: to embrace Christ and what he says and the gospel about him and the Scripture that testifies to both. Then what we have to acknowledge is that we cannot get behind all this to some linguistically blank table of deity, on which to inscribe our metaphors. For there is no such thing back there. With the triune God, what we hear is what we get, because that’s what there is; the Word is the complete and perfect self-statement of God, he is God.

End Excerpts.

We begin to find all strong vectors converging at a proverbial “Y” in the road and so into one of two termini. Down one “arm” of that “Y” Metaphysical Naturalism’s Necessary Conservation of [No-I-AM] in ANY “Fundamental Nature of X” forces Non-Being:

Reductio Ad Absurdum: Ultimately all paradigms, including all forms of Non-Theism(s), must follow through on their respective metaphysical / explanatory termini vis-à-vis Reason & Reciprocity — or vis-à-vis Logic & Love — such that each must traverse their respective Maps ever outward and upward — and outward and upward still again — and still again — until one’s epistemic gives way to one’s ontology and one’s ontology gives way to one’s metaphysic and – in the case of all forms of Non-Theism – one’s metaphysic vis-à-vis Reason & Love in/as Being gives way to Non-Being – as per illusion. The concept of this or that fundamental nature vis-à-vis being somehow emerging from non-being gives-way to what it always was/housed all along and collapses into a metaphysical absurdity — namely the syntax of non-being vis-à-vis the syntax of the illusory-fundamental-nature-of-x vis-à-vis the syntax of illusion.

Whereas, down the other “arm” of that “Y” the we find a Categorically Distinct “Fundamental Nature of X” vis-à-vis Being:

Reductio Ad Deum:  Contra that unfortunate reductio ad absurdum within Non-Theism, the explanatory distinction which the Christian Metaphysic enjoys is that the Christian spies within Reason & Reciprocity — within Logic & Love — that which when followed through and through to the irreducible contours of being itself vis-à-vis reality’s concrete furniture in fact reveals that Reason Itself has no Edge/Bottom — no terminus other than Being  — even as Reciprocity Itself  has no Edge/Bottom — no terminus other than Being — even as Reason & Reciprocity or Logic & Love arrive in a Metaphysical Singularity which has no Edge/Bottom —  no terminus other than Being Itself.  It is there vis-à-vis the robust lucidity of the Reductio Ad Deum that the Christian rationally rejects Non-Theism’s unavoidable Reductio Ad Absurdum. 

It is reason itself which reveals and unmasks the many absurdities within Non-Theism’s / Metaphysical Naturalism’s many varieties of syntax landing within the fundamentally illusive [Self] or “I”.  Mind itself and Thought itself there sums to “I can think/choose/reason, but I cannot think what to think, choose what to choose, reason what to reason.” There the Currency of [reasoning] ultimately emerges as never having emerged at all — as non-emergent — as non-being. Non-Theists such as Harris, Carroll, Rosenberg, Churchland, and of course many other widely published Non-Theists agree with the Christian Metaphysic with respect to what we find “…given metaphysical naturalism…” (and so on). Whereas, on the Christian Metaphysic, reason’s ontology comes upon reality’s concrete furniture vis-à-vis Reason-Itself as Being-Itself (and so on).

The Christian Metaphysic and Non-Theism there converge and agree that one cannot rationally land within the illusory shadows of non-being vis-à-vis those Currencies just described which ultimately emerge as never having emerged at all — as non-emergent — as non-being, even as they converge and agree that once one has arrived within Irreducible Mind one has arrived in Theism. It is there that all Non-Theistic premises pay the price of valuing the topography of No-God above the topography of Reason Itself as they are forced to avoid claims of Realism vis-à-vis Reality’s Concrete Furniture vis-à-vis Irreducible Mind just as they are forced to avoid the subtle equivocations within claims that “THAT” can be or is in fact contingent and mutable and thereby in principle available within Metaphysical Naturalism — for the simple reason that all such combinations and permutations can only be made on pain of contradiction, circularity, and, all over again, reductio ad absurdum.  

Segues → Knowledge Piggybacks Off Of Knowledge:

Fortunately Reason & Logic & Love begin & end all Communique/Syntax and therein contingent minds build and navigate & add & so we widen & discover actual facts. We become what we behold as the Self-Revealing God breaks through.

As opposed to Non-Theism’s Irreducible/Concrete Furniture which Testifies that Self is illusion & thereby Reason with it ((“because Physics-Full-Stop”)) & which Testifies that nothing is irreducibly || concretely || objectively wrong/evil ((“because Physics-Full-Stop”)). A fallacy emerges with respect to that and the supposed “acquisition” of “knowledge” as per the following form:

(A) “It Turns Out That “3X” Actually Piggybacked Off Of “X”. Therefore 3X Is Fallacious. Because [Knowledge].

(B) “Calculus piggybacks off of subtraction & addition. Therefore calculus is fallacious. Because [Knowledge].

The [reductio ad absurdum] there is that [everything] [Piggybacks] off of [something]. Therefore, IF one means to tow that line THEN one’s Reason had better Piggyback all the way home — to Reason Itself vis-à-vis Being Itself.

A Brief Digression: 

While this will be explored further a few paragraphs downstream from here, it seemed fitting to briefly comment here on the reach which is (by necessity) required when reaching for the “ultimately self-explanatory” — therefore this brief digression: The Self-Explanatory forces the Absolute’s Reference Frame as all such vectors force Totality of Reference Frame and again we are immersed within the topography of Infinite Consciousness but by somewhat different set of three distinct progressions, namely that which is by necessity nothing less than [A] Self-Reference – and that which is by necessity [B] distinction void of division, and [C] by necessity such distinctions (…plural…) can never be “less than” that which is “Being Itself” as all over again logic forces Infinite Consciousness.  All of that retains coherence all over again as we converge upon the fundamental nature of Time and Fact and Conscious Observer and Perception and Reference Frame. We know that whether we speak of Presentism or whether we speak of Eternalism it is the case either way that Time is neither the Absolute nor the absolute reference frame nor the Absolute’s Own Reference Frame. The Absolute’s frame of reference cannot even in principle *be* Self-Explanatory unless and until the Absolute is in fact Self-Referencing. We also know by both reason and logic that at the end of all explanatory termini we are forced into either A. final absurdity or else B. the Self-Explanatory in and of and by the Absolute’s Reference Frame, which must by necessity be Self-Reference and the reason why is found in both the necessity of Totality and in the necessity of Identity as each reveals (….forces else reductio ad absurdum…) all over again that the Absolute’s frame of reference cannot even in principle *be* Self-Explanatory unless and until the Absolute is in fact Self-Referencing — which is a metaphysical absurdity but for the Triune God who meets us in Genesis.

End brief digression.

As we pointed out earlier, even Non-Theists will do much of the Christian’s work here as they along with the Christian follow logic and reason into the various cousins of solipsism. From there logic simply, even nonchalantly, forces our hand into either a reductio ad absurdum or else into a reductio ad deum. Diving into “Being Itself” must entail the act of following upstream premises far enough downstream to address the actual question on the table with respect to the trio of [1] “Being Itself” and [2] Brute Fact and [3] the Self-Explanatory.

As we move farther downstream – or upstream depending on one’s approach – the necessary transcendentals are not convertible in any attempt at an “ontic-cul-de-sac”. Why? Because there are no such realities as ontological cul-de-sacs.

Nothing less than Being Itself presents reason with an irreducible substratum within the contours of Infinite Consciousness and it is both uncanny and yet expected that we find in this same Trinitarian metaphysic nothing less than a self-giving diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum which carries reason (…in her proper role as truth-finder…) to the end of reality – into love’s indestructible and timeless reciprocity. All definitions stream from *that* metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility such that the Imago Dei itself and Reason itself and the Beautiful itself and the Rational itself are – all – in fact ontologically seamless with what is nothing less than the Moral landscape.

The complete metaphysic compels reason into the inimitable semantics of necessity, into the syntax of gospel, into a timeless and self-giving diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum:

“[The] very action of kenosis is not a new act for God, because God’s eternal being is, in some sense, kenosis – the self-outpouring of the Father in the Son, in the joy of the Spirit. Thus Christ’s incarnation, far from dissembling his eternal nature, exhibits not only his particular propriumas the Son and the splendor of the Father’s likeness, but thereby also the nature of the whole trinitarian taxis. On the cross we see this joyous self-donation sub contrario, certainly, but not in alieno. For God to pour himself out, then, as the man Jesus, is not a venture outside the trinitarian life of indestructible love, but in fact quite the reverse: it is the act by which creation is seized up into the sheer invincible pertinacity of that love, which reaches down to gather us into its triune motion.” (D. B. Hart)

And again:

“This is true in two related and consequent senses: on the one hand, love is not originally a reaction but is the ontological possibility of every ontic action, the one transcendent act, the primordial generosity that is convertible with being itself, the blissful and desiring apatheia that requires no pathos to evoke it, no evil to make it good; and this is so because, on the other hand, God’s infinitely accomplished life of love is that trinitarian movement of his being that is infinitely determinate – as determinacy toward the other – and so an indestructible actus purus endlessly more dynamic than any mere motion of change could ever be. In him there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning because he is wholly free, wholly God as Father, Son, and Spirit, wholly alive, and wholly love. Even the cross of Christ does not determine the nature of divine love, but rather manifests it, because there is a more original outpouring of God that – without needing to submit itself to the order of sacrifice that builds crosses – always already surpasses every abyss of godforsakenness and pain that sin can impose between the world and God: an outpouring that is in its proper nature indefectible happiness.” (D.B. Hart)

Avoiding Absurdity and Embracing Lucidity – Approaching Home:

There are independent philosophical reasons for landing within the “Divine Mind” and, having arrived “there”, there are still other independent philosophical reasons for landing within an irreducibly triune topography amid the Infinite Knower (…which by logical necessity cannot be less than Being in totum…), the Infinitely Known (…which by necessity cannot be less than Being in totum…), and irreducible Communique / Procession therein as such relates to Logos (…which is both *of* infinite consciousness and also *is* infinite consciousness, which by logical necessity cannot be less than Being in totum…), as neither of the three (by logical necessity) can be “less than” the procession of Being in totum.

That is a fact which necessarily and logically flows from what the term *GOD* entails. [A] is not [B] which is not [C] which is not [A] and each by logical necessity cannot be “less than” The Absolute, or Being In Total. Just as unavoidable, contra various Non-Theistic straw-men, distinction is not division as logic carries us onward and outward:

Distinction is not division as logic compels us thricely into an infinite locus of infinite consciousness whereby we come to our topography:

Mapping Reality:

The map of “Being Itself” — which of course is not the territory — begins to take shape:

[A] is not [B]
[B] is not [C]
[C] is not [A]

Each is Being in totum, each is *GOD*.

Conclusion:

Both [A] Logic and [B] Love’s timeless reciprocity compel reason (…in her proper role as truth-finder….) into a thoroughly Trinitarian metaphysic.

That same Map of Infinite Consciousness — of Being Itself — once again:

For conceptual context there are inroads available from Alexander Pruss’ description of Mereological Perfection (… http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-perfection-of-gods-alleged-parts.html …) with the following excerpt:

Mereological Perfection

1. Every part of God is perfect.
2. Only God is perfect.
3. So, every part of God is God.
4. So, God has no proper parts (parts that aren’t himself).
5. So, divine (mereological) simplicity is true.

Following those same contours we arrive – yet again – within the Divine Mind where we are compelled thricely into an infinite locus of infinite consciousness vis-à-vis an irreducibly triune topography:

[A] is not [B]
[B] is not [C]
[C] is not [A]

Each is Being in totum, each is *GOD*.

Mind’s Reference Frame:

“…..if reason’s primordial orientation is indeed toward total intelligibility and perfect truth, then it is essentially a kind of ecstasy of the mind toward an end beyond the limits of nature. It is an impossibly extravagant appetite, a longing that can be sated only by a fullness that can never be reached in the world, but that ceaselessly opens up the world to consciousness. To speak of God, however, as infinite consciousness, which is identical to infinite being, is to say that in Him the ecstasy of mind is also the perfect satiety of achieved knowledge, of perfect wisdom. God is both the knower and the known, infinite intelligence and infinite intelligibility. This is to say that, in Him, rational appetite is perfectly fulfilled, and consciousness perfectly possesses the end it desires. And this, of course, is perfect bliss.” (David Bentley Hart – The Experience of God)

We want to be methodical so that at *each* step through our progression we are forced to recall – and include – each claim along the way vis-à-vis one’s proverbial [A] Reductio Ad Deum as opposed to one’s proverbial [B] Reductio Ad Absurdum. And, so, let us repeat a brief item from earlier: Having arrived in the Divine Mind by starting outside of such and allowing reason and logic to compel us truth-ward, we then discover that the rational terminus of reason’s impossibly extravagant appetite in fact never leaves the elemental substratum of Reason Itself and is therein – in a full and ontic sense – a kind of total rationalism:

“……the concept of being is one of power: the power of actuality, the capacity to affect or to be affected. To be is to act. This definition already implies that, in its fullness, being must also be consciousness, because the highest power to act — and hence the most unconditioned and unconstrained reality of being — is rational mind. Absolute being, therefore, must be absolute mind. Or, in simpler terms, the greater the degree of something’s actuality, the greater the degree of its consciousness, and so infinite actuality is necessarily infinite consciousness. That, at least, is one way of trying to describe another essential logical intuition that recurs in various forms throughout the great theistic metaphysical systems. It is the conviction that in God lies at once the deepest truth of mind and the most universal truth of existence, and that for this reason the world can truly be known by us. Whatever else one might call this vision of things, it is most certainly, in a very real sense, a kind of “total rationalism.” (D.B.H.)

While none of this sums to any sort of claim upon any kind of thoroughgoing Idealism, the Divine Mind is inescapable. Within that context of Idealism juxtaposed to Christianity (…and nothing more is implied here…) one can perhaps consider landscapes as discussed in “Idealism and Christian Theology: Idealism and Christianity Volume 1” within its subsection titled, “Necessary processions of idea and action in God”. It seems logic and reason in fact “compel” us into the Divine Mind and that, once there, logic and reason again force our hand – into something irreducibly triune. On sheer force of will I suppose one can reason oneself *out* of a thoroughgoing Trinitarian metaphysic, but, of course, being compelled (…by that attempt…) to embrace an ever widening array of reductions to absurdity, the metaphysic of the Triune *GOD* is – hands down – reason’s bliss. The Christian rationally rejects absurdity, self-negation, contingency, and so on and thereby we find reason spying the proverbial “Y” in the road between a forced Reductio Ad Deum and a forced Reductio Ad Absurdum.

And, if one recalls, reason is, after all, where this whole journey started – out there – far from home – and now – finally – reason as truth-finder has found her delight – that of total rationalism – that of the uniquely triune metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility. Reason has found, that is, her Groom. And with that she has found nothing less than Home. One can even begin to see just how it is that we can say that reason has found the ultimate and the self-explanatory.

The Self-Explanatory and Ontic-Closure Part 1 of 2

Irreducible Being? Moral Fact? Logic Itself? Reason Itself? Mind as per Absolute Consciousness? Abstraction’s Transposition? Are THOSE reality’s concrete furniture? One way to see why that in fact IS the case is to look at the following:

Our Non-Theist friends often Challenge Logic along the same line as they Challenge Moral Fact and while that is honest on their part it is interesting that the they seem unaware ((…or unconcerned…)) with the cost of that choice. And it is a choice of course as other options are immediately available.

The Form of the Challenge which our Non-Theist friends present with respect to the fundamental nature of Logic typically shows up along the following lines:

A—  “….If Logic ends in God then God must be subject to Logic and so God is not God, or else God is metaphysically free to be Non-Logic and therefore able to make round-squares such that [A = Non-A] is true in some possible world….or something like that….”

B— That which is “Logic Itself” is either 1. itself under the Laws of Logic or else 2. It (logic) can be, or is metaphysically free to be, Non-Logic.

Notice that the problem with that approach in [A] and [B] is the same problem with all contingent abstractions of all contingent minds and that is true whether one makes the attempt with Logic Itself or with Being-Itself or with The-Good Itself or with Reason-Itself or with Mind Itself and — lest we move to fast — it also holds if/when one makes the attempt with “I/Self” or with one’s First Person Experience vis-à-vis one’s one perceived “Irreducible-I-Am” vis-à-vis that which is nothing less than “Self” vis-à-vis “i-am” / “i-reason” / “i-intend” / “i-exist” and so on.

Notice that in both [A] and [B] the challenge redefines that which “God-Is” into that which “God-Has” such that THEN — and ONLY then — it can be said that Something Is Above/Beneath Something Else such that “…God must be subject to Logic and so God is not God, or else God is metaphysically free to be Non-Logic…” and so on as per [A] and [B]  above.  When the Christian speaks of “God” as “Being Itself” it is for a reason as that which “Has Being” cannot be ((…in any coherent sense…)) the Ground of All Being.

Obviously both [A] and [B] employ the syntax of the following:

A2— Logic-Is-Subject-To-Logic and/or

B2— Logic-Is-Beneath-Logic and/or

C2— Logic-Is-Metaphysically-Free-To-Be-Non-Logic or else Logic is not Logic.

Which then forces / sums to the following:

D2— “X Is Subject To X“ akin to
E2— “X Is Beneath X“ akin to

F2— “Being Itself Is Subject To Being Itself” akin to
F2— “Being Itself Is Beneath Being Itself” akin to

G2— “X Is Metaphysically Free To Be Non-X” akin to
H2— “Being Itself Is Metaphysically Free To Be Non-Being”

Those are of course are nonsensical identity claims and we rationally say of all such syntax:

— 1— None of them have anything to do with the Christian Metaphysic

— 2— All of them are themselves logical absurdities

Notice that “Getting In Behind/Beneath Oneself” is not coherent such that “We Mean To Apply Logic’s Force To Pre-Logic” is not coherent. “Presupposition” is not possible UNLESS and UNTIL the Critic can coherently pull-off A2 through H2. But of course the Non-Theist cannot pull-off those Nonsensical Identity Claims.  It is not clear what our Non-Theist friends mean with respect to Reason/Mind when they accuse the Christian of Pre-Supposing by getting in Pre-Being and getting in Pre-Mind and getting in Pre-Reason and getting in Pre-Perception vis-à-vis getting in Pre-The-Intentional Self.

Think It Through: It becomes unavoidable as to WHY the Christian does not and in fact CANNOT Start/Stop in any such Pre-ANY-thing given that the very notion of Pre-Being collapses into a metaphysical absurdity. Indeed once we apply the UNDOING of those Nonsensical Identity Claims of A2 through H2 ((…which were only the result of fallacious re-inventions / fallacious strawmen of actual Christian premises/definitions…)) we find the express Start/Stop or the express A—Z of the Christian Paradigm vis-à-vis Reason Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis Goodness Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis Logic Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving as Being in totum || Being Itself vis-à-vis All Processions as The Trinitarian Life.

Think It Through: We are forced to find Being Itself and I-AM as a metaphysical Singularity and here there are no options for any Non-Theistic Map of the Underived/Derived. The question of “The Fundamental Nature of X” vis-à-vis Intentionality, Reason, Self, Mind, and Being/Existence in/of i-exist/i-am in and of the First Person Experience forces us to ask, “From Whence The Fundamental Nature of i-am?” That question is what is on the table and the Christian Metaphysic alone houses all such semantic intent in and by the Principle of Proportionate Causality (…not to be confused with the PSR…) as per the following:

“…The idea is perhaps best stated in Platonic terms of the sort Aquinas uses (in an Aristotelianized form) in the Fourth Way. To be a tree or to be a stone is merely to participate in “treeness” or “stoneness.” But to be at all – which is the characteristic effect of an act of creation out of nothing – is to participate in Being Itself. Now the principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause. And only that which just is Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely to be a tree or to be a stone, but to be at all…” (E. Feser)

With that same Principle of Proportionate Causality in hand we realize that without any such (actual/ontic) Being To (actual/ontic) Being seamlessness there is no seamless ontology for the fundamental nature of Being/Existence vis-à-vis i-am/i-exist in ANY Non-Theistic “explanatory terminus” as in all such ((Non-Theistic)) termini one must attempt the metaphysically impossible — as alluded to in the following:

• One must willfully trade away one’s self as/in being instead of retaining being when one’s own First Person Experience in/as being never led one to do so ((how could it?)).
• One must willfully trade away one’s self as/in reason instead of retaining reason when one’s own First Person Experience in/as reason never led one to do so ((how could it?)).
• One must willfully trade away one’s self as/in intention instead of retaining intention when one’s own First Person Experience in/as intention never led one to do so ((how could it?)).
• One must willfully trade away one’s self as/in existence instead of retaining existence when one’s own First Person Experience in/as existence never led one to do so ((how could it?)).
• One must willfully trade away one’s self as/in i-am instead of retaining i-am when one’s own First Person Experience in/as i-am never led one to do so ((how could it?)).
• Trading For Non-Being 1 of 3: One must willfully trade away what one Sees not only for what one Cannot See but for what one cannot see even in principle, which is to say one must trade away Being for Non-Being ((but how?))
• Trading For Non-Being 2 of 3: One must willfully trade away that which both Is & Can-Be, namely Lucidity, for that which not only Is-Not but that which Cannot-Be even in principle, namely Non-Being vis-à-vis the Metaphysical Round-Square — namely Non-Being vis-à-vis the Reductio Ad Absurdum ((but how?))
• Trading For Non-Being 3 of 3: One must therefore stop one’s Evidence Based Act of Walking Forward for one must stop placing one’s foot atop the Next Stepping Stone out in front vis-à-vis that which one in fact Sees because one must instead turn one’s gaze backwards and make one’s bizarre appeal to the Pre-I-AM vis-à-vis Pre-Being vis-à-vis Non-Being vis-à-vis the Presupposition in order to “pull it off” ((but how?))

Think It Through: In one’s i-am/i-exist First Person Experience it is that very Consciousness as Intentional-Being which must willfully trade away i-am/i-exist vis-à-vis the Irreducible First Person in Reasoning as Intentional-Being when it is in fact impossible for one in/as i-am/i-exist vis-à-vis the Irreducible First Person Experience of Being/Existence to do/make any such Trade/Giving. The very notion of Reasoning Being ((Illusion)) following Reason In Being ((Illusion)) and thereby on the Force of Reason Itself ((Illusion)) giving away Reason Itself ((Illusion)) to Non-Reason/Non-Being ((Non-Illusion)) collapses into a metaphysical impossibility. But then that just is the Circularity & Question Begging & Reductio-Ad-Absurdum of all Non-Theistic “Ends” given Metaphysical Naturalism’s Necessary Conservation of [No-I-AM] in ANY “Fundamental Nature of X”.

The Compulsory A—Z as Logic Itself Sums To Irreducible Being:  In simplicity and in seamlessness we arrive in that which is free of all Non-Being and thereby free of Pre-Being and thereby free of all Pre-Supposition and therein we arrive at the same A—Z which we arrive at through Natural Theology which [A] starts off with nothing but the Presupposition-Free Neonate + Perception + Self + the External World + Change ((Etc. Etc.)) and which eventually [B] terminates in nothing less than the Principle of Proportionate Causality vis-à-vis Being Itself vis-à-vis Divine Mind vis-à-vis Pure Act vis-à-vis the Christian Paradigm and all of that of course in arrives in seamless singularity as the Christian Metaphysic vis-à-vis Reason Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis Goodness Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis Logic Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis the Reference Frame of Totality — or The Absolute’s Own Reference Frame — which necessarily saturates (1) all possible reference frames within all possible worlds and (2) all actual reference frames within all actual worlds vis-à-vis Logos void of Potentiality and so in nothing less than Pure Act as the Fountainhead of all ontological possibility which necessarily streams from nothing less than all possible Procession & Communique amid The Infinite Knower & The Infinitely Known in Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving as Being in totum compelling us – carrying us – into the Map of The Underived.

The Compulsory A—Z therefore unavoidably Maps as follows: [Logic Itself] sums to [Irreducible Being] if and only if [Being Itself = Pure Act] and therefore is Itself the Metaphysical Wellspring of [All Ontological Possibility] — and therefore is Itself the Metaphysical Wellspring of [All Possible Propositions] in All Possible Reference Frames — and therefore is Itself the Metaphysical Wellspring of [All Possible Syllogisms] in All Possible Frames of Reference — and therefore Itself necessarily saturates all possible reference frames within all possible worlds and all actual reference frames within all actual worlds vis-à-vis Logos void of Potentiality in Timeless Processions vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life.

Think It Through:  The essay “The Lord of Non-Contradiction: An Argument for God from Logic” by James N. Anderson and Greg Welty is at  https://www.proginosko.com/docs/The_Lord_of_Non-Contradiction.pdf and is 22 pages long. A brief excerpt offers context and segues of obvious relevance here is below. Recall first that it’s only an excerpt and also recall that the Pains of Platonism fail to do the necessary work here for the reasons described in https://metachristianity.com/platonism-and-be-ing-and-do-ing-and-pure-act-and-counterfactuals-and-moral-facts/ — Here’s the excerpt from Anderson and Welty’s argument for God from Logic:

“….In any case, the laws of logic couldn’t be our thoughts — or the thoughts of any other contingent being for that matter — for as we’ve seen, the laws of logic exist necessarily if they exist at all. For any human person S, S might not have existed, along with S’s thoughts. The Law of Non-Contradiction, on the other hand, could not have failed to exist — otherwise it could have failed to be true.  If the laws of logic are necessarily existent thoughts, they can only be the thoughts of a necessarily existent mind….. The laws of logic are necessary truths about truths; they are necessarily true propositions. Propositions are real entities, but cannot be physical entities – they are essentially thoughts. So the laws of logic are necessarily true thoughts. ((…recall the failures of Platonism…)) Since they are true in every possible world, they must exist in every possible world. But if there are necessarily existent thoughts, there must be a necessarily existent mind; and if there is a necessarily existent mind, there must be a necessarily existent person. A necessarily existent person must be spiritual in nature, because no physical entity exists necessarily. Thus, if there are laws of logic, there must also be a necessarily existent, personal, spiritual being. The laws of logic imply the existence of God….”

Notice again that regardless of one’s  “….metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility…” it is the case that “Getting In Behind/Beneath Oneself” is not coherent such that our earlier D2 “X Is Subject To X” akin to our earlier E2 “X Is Beneath X” are metaphysical impossibilities when we speak of ANY “Fundamental Nature” and for all the same reasons we here again find that “We Mean To Apply Logic’s Force To Pre-Logic” is again incoherent. “Presupposition” is not possible UNLESS and UNTIL the Critic can coherently pull-off those earlier/aforementioned A2 through H2. But of course the Non-Theist cannot pull-off those Nonsensical Identity Claims.  It is not clear what our Non-Theist friends mean with respect to Reason/Mind when they accuse the Christian of Pre-Supposing by getting in Pre-Being and getting in Pre-Mind and getting in Pre-Reason and getting in Pre-Perception vis-à-vis getting in Pre-The-Intentional Self. The principle of proportionate causality, the metaphysic of Being Itself, and the fallacy of Presuppositionalism are perhaps segues into ((…or out of…)) the following:

“The most basic pedagogical decision to make in presenting the doctrine of the Trinity is whether to begin the exposition with the temporal missions and reason back from them to the eternal processions, or whether to take the opposite approach, beginning rather with the eternal processions and then working out and down to the temporal missions. Both procedures have much to commend them.” (Fred Sanders: The Triune God – New Studies in Dogmatics)

The Self-Explanatory and Ontic-Closure Part 2 of 2

We come upon Mind, and Time, and Reference Frame, and the Absolute’s Reference Frame:

“This is arguably the besetting mistake of all naturalist thinking, as it happens, in practically every sphere. In this context, the assumption at work is that if one could only reduce one’s picture of the original physical conditions of reality to the barest imaginable elements — say, the “quantum foam” and a handful of laws like the law of gravity, which all looks rather nothing-ish (relatively speaking) — then one will have succeeded in getting as near to nothing as makes no difference. In fact, one will be starting no nearer to nonbeing than if one were to begin with an infinitely realized multiverse: the difference from non-being remains infinite in either case. All quantum states are states within an existing quantum system, and all the laws governing that system merely describe its regularities and constraints. Any quantum fluctuation therein that produces, say, a universe is a new state within that system, but not a sudden emergence of reality from nonbeing. Cosmology simply cannot become ontology. The only intellectually consistent course for the metaphysical naturalist is to say that physical reality “just is” and then to leave off there, accepting that this “just is” remains a truth entirely in excess of all physical properties and causes: the single ineradicable “super-natural” fact within which all natural facts are forever contained, but about which we ought not to let ourselves think too much.” (by D.B. Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss)

The nature of an ultimate self-explanatory principle presses in:

The Self-Explanatory forces the Absolute’s Reference Frame as all such vectors force Totality of Reference Frame and again we are immersed within the topography of Infinite Consciousness but by somewhat different set of three distinct progressions, namely that which is by necessity nothing less than [A] Self-Reference – and that which is by necessity [B] distinction void of division, and [C] by necessity such distinctions (…plural…) can never be “less than” that which is “Being Itself” as all over again logic forces Infinite Consciousness.  All of that retains coherence all over again as we converge upon the fundamental nature of Time and Fact and Conscious Observer and Perception and Reference Frame. We know that whether we speak of Presentism or whether we speak of Eternalism it is the case either way that Time is neither the Absolute nor the absolute reference frame nor the Absolute’s Own Reference Frame. The Absolute’s frame of reference cannot even in principle *be* Self-Explanatory unless and until the Absolute is in fact Self-Referencing. We also know by both reason and logic that at the end of all explanatory termini we are forced into either A. final absurdity or else B. the Self-Explanatory in and of and by the Absolute’s Reference Frame, which must by necessity be Self-Reference and the reason why is found in both the necessity of Totality and in the necessity of Identity as each reveals (….forces else reductio ad absurdum…) all over again that the Absolute’s frame of reference cannot even in principle *be* Self-Explanatory unless and until the Absolute is in fact Self-Referencing — which is a metaphysical absurdity but for the Triune God who meets us in Genesis.

The I AM identity: There is no frame of reference for “Self” but for the fact of “Other”, as the Absolute’s Self-Reference presses in through the eons of the “I AM” traversing history:

“….. we are forced to conclude that these are relational qualities and have no meaning in isolation. In other words, in God, qualities of personality can be actualized only if there is an actual, eternal relationship in him prior to, outside of, and without reference to creation. Only in that way would God be a personal being without being dependent on his creation. When Moses asked God for his name, the answer he got was least expected: I AM (Ex. 3:14). This amazing mystery of the name (identity) of God solves a problem that we may not always be aware of: God is his own frame of reference. We have already considered the fact that the infinite cannot be defined with reference to the finite. God, therefore, must be self-referencing. This would be an absurd proposition but for the fact that, in the being of God, there is a plurality of infinite persons and each can define himself with reference to the other. God can truly be said to be self-existent only because he is the all-personal, all-relational being…” (L. T. Jeyachandran)

It is at this juncture where we begin to come upon the nature of the Self-Explanatory. However, when speaking of the “Absolute”, there can be no “rational reference frame” other than Self-Reference.

That finds two interesting footprints. First, there is “that” or else all “explanation” at all “levels” of “reality” suffer the pains of the absurd vis-à-vis the inexplicable on all fronts as the only other option of “brute fact” comes roaring in. Now, reason in her proper role as truth-finder seeks to embrace – not absurdity – for such is her extinction and forces her non-existence – and instead she chases after lucidity through and through.

“You want to endorse a form of naturalism according to which real explanations are possible at levels of physical reality higher than the level of the fundamental laws of nature, yet where these explanations rest on a bottom level of physical laws that have no explanation at all but are “brute facts.” But this view is, I maintain, incoherent. For if you endorse a regularity view of laws, then you will have no genuine explanations at all anywhere in the system. All of reality, and not just the level of fundamental physical laws, will amount to a “brute fact” ……. You maintain in your most recent post that explanations legitimately can and indeed must ultimately trace to an unexplained “brute fact,” and that philosophers who think otherwise have failed to give a convincing account of what it would be for the deepest level of reality to be self-explanatory and thus other than such a “brute fact.” Unsurprisingly, I disagree on both counts. I would say that appeals to “brute facts” are incoherent, and that the nature of an ultimate self-explanatory principle can be made intelligible by reference to notions that are well understood and independently motivated.” (E. Feser)

Ontic closure in Self-Reference, that is to say in the Divine Mind – in the irreducibly triune – in Trinity:

“….God is his own frame of reference. We have already considered the fact that the infinite cannot be defined with reference to the finite. God, therefore, must be self-referencing. This would be an absurd proposition but for the fact that, in the being of God, there is a plurality of infinite persons and each can define himself with reference to the other. God can truly be said to be self-existent only because he is the all-personal, all-relational being…” (L. T. Jeyachandran)

The Logic of the Trinity:

A not uncommon question arises:

“….isn’t it that the Christian is saying that 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 and/or that 1 = 3 = 1 or something like that…..?”

That answer to that question of  “Isn’t Christian is saying that 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 and/or that 1 = 3 = 1 or something like that?” of course depends on what the units on each side of the equal sign/signs referent. Therefore, a better question is this:

What are the Units?  Numerical? Identity? A case of the ‘is’ of Predication? A case of the ‘is’ of Identity?

The following “Quote/Excerpt” is taken from The Logic of the Trinity by Einar Duenger Bohn as per Bohn, E.D. SOPHIA (2011) 50: 363. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-011-0265-1 To avoid confusion it will Begin/End with Begin Quote/Excerpt and End Quote/Excerpt here:

—Begin Quote/Excerpt →

It has the predicative form:

The Father is F, the Son is F, and the Holy Spirit is F.

And yet they are not three Fs, but one F where F is uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal, almighty, and God, respectively. Seeing the predicative pattern in the first four cases, there is no reason to read the last case, according to which each three persons are God, as being a case of numerical identity. Following the predicative pattern, there is instead all the reason to read the last case too as being a case of the ‘is’ of predication, rather than the ‘is’ of identity. This is also the most simple and reasonable way to avoid contradicting the last sentence: “yet they are not three Gods, but one God.

My solution to the Trinitarian Paradox is thus that we should understand Christian orthodoxy as asking us to believe in the following set of propositions (among many others):

15. God = the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit
16. The Father ≠ the Son
17. The Father ≠ the Holy Spirit
18. The Holy Spirit ≠ the Son

Which is a consistent set of propositions in conjunction with the classical laws of identity as long as proposition 14/15 is read collectively, not distributively.⁸ This set of propositions is a very simple and sufficiently good expression of the core demand in the Athanasian Creed, according to which we must worship Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, but neither confound the persons nor divide the substance. It is also, as I have argued, compatible with the rest of the creed. This set of propositions is also consistent with monotheism, i.e., with proposition 13 according to which there is one and only one God. Of course, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three, not one, but proposition 13 implies no denial of that fact. Orthodoxy recognizes that they are three and not confounded with each other through its acceptance of 4-6/16-18. It is when conceptualized as God that He is one, undivided in substance.

I anticipate at least six objections, but first note four general features of my solution.

First, the topics of plural identity and the nature of numerical properties are, as shown by the examples given above, general logical and metaphysical topics in their own right. My solution is therefore not motivated solely by the problem of the Trinity, and hence cannot legitimately be accused of being an objectionably ad hoc such solution.

Second, my solution is not a version of modalism, the heretic view according to which the three persons are mere “appearances” or “modes” of the one God. According to my solution, the three persons are real divine existences in their own right.

Third, it is not a version of subordinationism, the heretical view according to which there is some sort of ordering relation among the three persons with respect to their divinity. For all my solution says, it might be the case that the Son is begotten by the Father and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but nonetheless that each of the three persons is the same with respect to their divine features. For all my solution says, it might also be the case that there is no priority relation between God and the three persons; the one might be on a par with the three.

Fourth, it is neither a version of so-called Latin Trinitarianism (LT) nor so-called Social Trinitarianism (ST). Roughly, LT takes its starting point in the one and only God, and then tries to explain the three persons in Him, i.e., tries to explain how the one and only God is three persons. (Its main challenge is to avoid modalism, which my solution avoids.) ST on the other hand (again roughly) takes its starting point in the three persons, and then tries to explain the one and only God in them, i.e., tries to explain how they are one God. (Its main challenge is to avoid polytheism, which my solution avoids, but more on that below.) By identifying the one and only God with the three persons collectively in the way I suggested above, one neither takes its starting point in God nor in the three persons. By being identical, God and the three persons (collectively) are on a par in all senses of the term, and hence not sensibly explained in each other. It is important to note that my solution is to be understood literally: the one God is identical with the three persons (collectively), and the three persons (collectively) are identical with the one God. As shown above, this is not contradictory on the condition that numerical properties (or predications, if you prefer) are relational properties (predications).

My solution thus also avoids more general objections to ST and LT as such. To partly support this further claim, consider some objections to both these forms of Trinitarianism put forth by Dale Tuggy. Tuggy objects that ST fails because it identifies God with a community of three divine persons, but since a community is neither a person nor divine, it turns out, according to ST, that God is neither a person nor divine. But that God is neither a person nor divine contradicts the scriptures. My solution identifies God with a portion of reality that can equally well be conceptualized as a plurality of three divine persons. There is no privileged way of conceptualizing it in terms of which we can explain the other way. Both ways are equally legitimate. But then God is not a mere “community” (or rather: plurality) as opposed to a divine person because the relevant portion of reality can equally well be conceptualized as a divine person, namely God. Recall, my solution is a claim of strict identity: God is the same portion of reality as the three persons.

As such it also avoids what Tuggy calls the Quaternity Problem, namely that according to ST there really are four divine persons, not three: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and God.

According to Tuggy (2003:169): “The problem is this: in the New Testament, we encounter three divine and wonderful personal beings. In those pages there is no additional person called ‘God’ or ‘the Godhead.’”

But according to my solution, the divine portion of reality can be conceptualized as three persons, and as one person, but not, ontologically speaking, as four persons because the three persons together are the “fourth” person. So, to the extent that we think of four divine persons, we must be thinking of the same divine portion of reality “twice over,” much like we can think of my body as both my arms, legs, head and torso and as a body. We can do so, but it is, ontologically speaking, thinking of the same thing “twice over,” and as such, for metaphysical purposes, an innocent act. So, yes, there is a sense in which there are four divine persons, but it is an ontologically innocent such sense compatible with the New Testament since the “fourth” person is the three persons collectively.

Tuggy (2003:171–173) objects to what he calls popular LT by the fact that it identifies God with each one of the three persons (while upholding that each one of the three persons are mutually distinct), which violates the classical transitivity of identity. Obviously, by only employing a collective reading of the identity sign, my solution does not stumble over this problem (cf. proposition 14). But Tuggy (2003:173) also objects to what he calls refined LT by the fact that it denies there being a so-called absolute identity-relation of the form “x is the same as y,” and instead only accepts a so-called relative identity-relation of the form “x is the same F as y,” where F is a count-noun.  According to Tuggy, it is self–evident that there is an absolute identity-relation of the form “x is the same as y.” My solution does not deny that there is an absolute identity-relation (cf. footnote 8). According to my solution it is numerical properties that are relational, not identity. My solution is simply not one employing relative identity.

So, from the foregoing, I conclude that my solution falls on neither side of the often-mentioned distinction between ST and LT, and as such avoids the more general objections raised against each side.

I nonetheless anticipate at least six objections.

First objection………….

End Quote/Excerpt.

Reason and logic, and, as it so happens, love’s timeless and self-giving diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum, all compel us into a thoroughly Trinitarian metaphysic.

In the Christian metaphysic reason discovers love’s timeless self-giving as Trinitarian processions await reason at the ends of all vectors such that should reason chase after some other constitution amid the unavoidable “one-another“, should reason chase after some other form or procession, then she would be (…factually…) “contra-reason”, that is to say she would be (…factually…)*un*reasonable. The rational is (…therein…) perfectly or ontologically seamless with the moral. The observation that the rational and the moral are in fact perfectly seamless is another way of expressing both the coherence and the explanatory power of Christian metaphysics.

Paradigmatically speaking, such is a radically different explanatory terminus than we find in any Non-Theism. The Golden Thread of Reciprocity is affirmed by natural theology, is perceived by reason, is seen by Non-Theism, but Non-Theism must foist a metaphysical impossibility in order to claim her given that in that paradigm irreducible self-giving trades on irreducible indifference and the convertibility of the transcendentals is finally illusory. Whereas, in the pursuit of coherent definitions with respect to the fundamental nature of reality it is the Christian metaphysic whereby reason affirms that the “A” and the “Z” of reality in fact carries the rational mind into an ethic of irreducible and self-giving reciprocity – such that it is the case that “GOD” or “Ultimate Reality” is in fact love. An immutable and cruciform love housed within the ceaseless and Self-Giving diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum vis-à-vis Infinite Consciousness logically forces an unavoidable reductio ad deum. Such contours carry reason towards reality’s irreducible substratum within love’s timeless reciprocity amid those uncanny Trinitarian processions housed in Being Itself – housed in the revealed “…God who is glorified by sacrificing Himself for creation and not by sacrificing creation for Himself…..” (Fischer)

The thoroughly Trinitarian metaphysic illuminates – explains – the root within the pains of our privation while simultaneously illuminating – explaining – not only the express epicenter of intelligibility but also our true good, our final felicity:

The perfection of love necessarily entails the perfection of reason, which itself necessarily entails the perfection of consciousness, which is the perfection of being. We are relational beings and that is true for a reason – as in the Imago Dei, as in Trinity, as in The Good, as in nothing less than God.

Postscript 1:

“Trinity As Paradigmatic Love” by James Chastek at Just Thomism https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/trinity-as-paradigmatic-love-by-james-chastek-at-just-thomism-.pdf

Postscript 2:

God is Pure Absolute Personhood Therefore All Processions Are Purely Absolutely Personal

Non-Trinitarians forget too much. Their complaints reveal that they are wholly unaware of the following facts:

God is not a being

God is not a person

God does not exist

All of the Non-Trinitarian’s definitions are therefore wrongheaded. Thereby all their syllogisms follow suit. They cannot speak of one who isn’t a being, who isn’t a person, or who doesn’t exist. They have no idea how. The very suggestion seems to them nonsensical for to them God is “a” “being”.

Meanwhile Scripture forces our hand and the Trinitarian learns the semantics of Eternal Speech:

God is Being Itself

God is Personhood Itself

God is Existence Itself

All the Trinitarian’s definitions are therefore properly informed. Thereby all their syllogisms follow suit. They speak of One Who is Pure Being, Pure Personhood, Pure Existence, Pure Act.

Therein:

God is Being Itself therefore all Procession necessarily entails Absolute Being.

God is Personhood Itself therefore all Procession necessarily entails Absolute Personhood.

God is Existence Itself therefore all Procession necessarily entails Absolute Existence.

Therein:

Pure Being = Pure Personhood = Pure Existence = Pure Act

Therein:

All Procession Is Necessarily Personal All…The…Way…Down

Therein:

Procession is Being

Being is Personhood

Personhood is Existence

To emphasize the metaphysically irreducible terminus:

Pure Procession is Pure Being

Pure Being is Pure Personhood

Pure Personhood is Pure Existence

That’s all Prologue — so to speak — as in the following sense:

“Prologue. “Next in order we consider the divine relations.” [There Thomas Aquinas] says “next in order” because according to faith these relations are the relations of origin or procession, inasmuch as the Son proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son. Therefore the processions are the foundation of really distinct relations which, as we shall see in the following question, formally constitute the persons. Hence we are now speaking implicitly of the persons although they are not yet explicitly mentioned.” ~from The Trinity and God the Creator by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

God Is Absolute Consciousness:

More inroads to the same explanatory terminus of Pure Being = Pure Personhood = Pure Existence = Pure Act such that All Procession is Necessarily Personal All – The – Way – Down are found in the following quotes:

[C] “…the concept of being is one of power: the power of actuality, the capacity to affect or to be affected. To be is to act. This definition already implies that, in its fullness, being must also be consciousness, because the highest power to act — and hence the most unconditioned and unconstrained reality of being — is rational mind. Absolute being, therefore, must be absolute mind. Or, in simpler terms, the greater the degree of something’s actuality, the greater the degree of its consciousness, and so infinite actuality is necessarily infinite consciousness. That, at least, is one way of trying to describe another essential logical intuition that recurs in various forms throughout the great theistic metaphysical systems. It is the conviction that in God lies at once the deepest truth of mind and the most universal truth of existence, and that for this reason the world can truly be known by us. Whatever else one might call this vision of things, it is most certainly, in a very real sense, a kind of “total rationalism.” (D.B. Hart)

[B] “To speak of God, however, as infinite consciousness, which is identical to infinite being, is to say that in Him the ecstasy of mind is also the perfect satiety of achieved knowledge, of perfect wisdom. God is both the knower and the known, infinite intelligence and infinite intelligibility. This is to say that, in Him, rational appetite is perfectly fulfilled, and consciousness perfectly possesses the end it desires.” (David Bentley Hart)

[C] “….if reason’s primordial orientation is indeed toward total intelligibility and perfect truth, then it is essentially a kind of ecstasy of the mind toward an end beyond the limits of nature. It is an impossibly extravagant appetite, a longing that can be sated only by a fullness that can never be reached in the world, but that ceaselessly opens up the world to consciousness. To speak of God, however, as infinite consciousness, which is identical to infinite being, is to say that in Him the ecstasy of mind is also the perfect satiety of achieved knowledge, of perfect wisdom. God is both the knower and the known, infinite intelligence and infinite intelligibility. This is to say that, in Him, rational appetite is perfectly fulfilled, and consciousness perfectly possesses the end it desires. And this, of course, is perfect bliss.” (D.B. Hart)

[D] “….in the prologue of John’s Gospel… we learn… at the beginning of the whole tale that the biblical God has eternally a word to say, a word that as God’s eternal Word must conversely be God… The Word that eternally is with God and so is God, is discourse… in the triune God, the God of John’s prologue, there is no such thing as the silence of eternity. What is eternal is not silence, but discourse… This does not mean that God in himself is silent and then happens to speak, but rather that precisely the breaking of silence is eternally constitutive of God’s triune life…” ~from Joining The Eternal Conversation: John’s Prologue and the Language of Worship – by Robert W. Jenson

[E] “This is true in two related and consequent senses: on the one hand, love is not originally a reaction but is the ontological possibility of every ontic action, the one transcendent act, the primordial generosity that is convertible with being itself, the blissful and desiring apatheia that requires no pathos to evoke it, no evil to make it good; and this is so because, on the other hand, God’s infinitely accomplished life of love is that trinitarian movement of his being that is infinitely determinate – as determinacy toward the other – and so an indestructible actus purus endlessly more dynamic than any mere motion of change could ever be. In him there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning because he is wholly free, wholly God as Father, Son, and Spirit, wholly alive, and wholly love. Even the cross of Christ does not determine the nature of divine love, but rather manifests it, because there is a more original outpouring of God that – without needing to submit itself to the order of sacrifice that builds crosses – always already surpasses every abyss of godforsakenness and pain that sin can impose between the world and God: an outpouring that is in its proper nature indefectible happiness.” (D.B. Hart)

[F] “[The] very action of kenosis is not a new act for God, because God’s eternal being is, in some sense, kenosis – the self-outpouring of the Father in the Son, in the joy of the Spirit. Thus Christ’s incarnation, far from dissembling his eternal nature, exhibits not only his particular propriumas the Son and the splendor of the Father’s likeness, but thereby also the nature of the whole trinitarian taxis. On the cross we see this joyous self-donation sub contrario, certainly, but not in alieno. For God to pour himself out, then, as the man Jesus, is not a venture outside the trinitarian life of indestructible love, but in fact quite the reverse: it is the act by which creation is seized up into the sheer invincible pertinacity of that love, which reaches down to gather us into its triune motion.” (D. B. Hart)

 

—End—

To begin, the following is an excerpt out of David Bentley Hart’s “The Experience of God”.

Begin Excerpt:

In the mechanical view of nature, the physical realm is devoid of simple unities, at least at the level of continuously subsistent things; nature consists in composites, with extension in space and time. Nonetheless — and despite the claims of many materialist philosophers to the contrary — consciousness is, in its subjectivity, one and indivisible. This is not to say that brain states cannot be altered, or that the mind cannot be confused, or that either the operations of the brain or the actions of the mind cannot be multiple. But in order for there to be such a thing as representation, or reason, or conceptual connections, or coherent experience, or subjectivity, or even the experience of confusion, there must be a single unified presence of consciousness to itself, a single point of perspective that is, so to speak, a vanishing point, without extension or parts, subsisting in its own simplicity….

….It is unimportant here, however, whether one wants to speak of this unity as the *nous that abides within and beyond our ordinary psychic operations, or as the *atman within and beyond the finite mind wandering in *maya, or as the transcendental apperception that is distinct from the ego’s empirical apperception, or in altogether different terms. However one describes it, it is that luminous continuity and singleness of consciousness that underlies all the variety of perception, knowledge, memory, or even personal identity. It is in and by this unity that the incalculable diversity of the brain’s processes, as well as the plurality and complexity of the world perceived, are converted into the fused awareness of a single subject; but this unity cannot have arisen from that diversity….

….I am talking here only about the transcendental condition of consciousness, a simple and perhaps anonymous singularity of vantage, which makes subjective awareness and mental activity possible. It is present even when the ego’s psychological or cognitive operations have been disoriented, clouded, or shattered. It is the failure to make this distinction — between, on the one hand the unity of this transcendental perspective within the mind and, on the other, the integrity of personal mental states — that occasionally leads to assertions of the divisibility and hence materiality of consciousness….

….Only the “vanishing point” of a subjective perspective allows the diversity of reality to appear to the mind as a unified phenomenon, to which consciousness can attend. This, and not just the psychological integrity of the “empirical ego,” is the unity of consciousness — the “I think” that underlies any mental representation of reality as a coherent phenomenon — that seems irreconcilable with a purely mechanical picture of the mind, even one that allows for a physiological convergence of the disparate faculties of the brain in some privileged panopticon located at some executive hub of the brain’s neurology. However modular the structure of the brain may or may not be, the attempt to discover the unity of consciousness in a final supervisory cerebral module suffers from a number of simple logical difficulties. For one thing, as a physical reality that organizing module would itself be a composite thing whose power to unify experience could not arise from its various parts and functions, but would have to precede them and organize them into a single point of view also. Even if every part of that faculty were in some sense partially aware, there would still have to be a simple awareness of the whole ensemble of impressions organizing them, a prior intention and capacity to view that whole as one. Neuroscientists tend not to believe in a central locus of thought within the brain in any event; but even if there were such a thing it could unify the disparate forms of knowledge drawn from the various parts of the brain and nervous system only by synthesizing them through its own faculties; and these too would have to be unified by some other central faculty, which itself would have to be unified, and so on without end.

Any physical thing that might be able to integrate experience into a conscious unity would somehow already have to possess a unified “knowledge” of the diverse realities that it is supposed to gather into a totality, a transcendental grasp of the empirical data as a consonant totality, toward which it would be intentionally inclined; and so it would already have to be informed by a unity of perspective logically prior to its own physiological complexity. It would have to be dependent upon, and hence could not be the source of, the principle of unity; and, apart from that principle and its perfect simplicity, all the diverse faculties of perception, in all their splendid richness and variety, would never be combined in a coherent act of knowledge. Any attempt to arrive at the unity of thought from the complexity of material structures leads to an infinite regress, an infinite multiplication of pleonastic insufficiencies.

End Excerpt ((…from David Bentley Hart’s “The Experience of God”, bold added…))

Notice the observation of the extension in space and time. In his book “Something Deeply Hidden” S. Carroll asks,

“In the present context, how is an immaterial mind, lacking extent in space and time, supposed to cause wave functions to collapse?….”

 The topic here is not the veracity of that model per se ((…regarding whether or not wave functions actually do collapse and if so what that is mapping…)) but rather the unavoidable intersection we find with Space-Time vis-à-vis Material/Immaterial. Carroll observes that extension into time and space may be ((or not)) merely a useful description of one particular slice of “the” much larger terminus/ultimate that is [The Quantum Wave Function] and/or of [Many Worlds]. Second, regarding extension into Space (Space-Time) as it relates to Mind, all of that converges with the following four comments. They are taken from near the end of a discussion in which that very question presents a problem for this or that attempt at [QM-Full-Stop] by any Non-Theism/Non-Theistic map of Consciousness. The four comments are copy/pasted in full below but for reference they are as follows:

1. https://disqus.com/home/discussion/strangenotions/materialism8217s_failures_hylemorphism8217s_vindication/#comment-4592707811
2. https://disqus.com/home/discussion/strangenotions/materialism8217s_failures_hylemorphism8217s_vindication/#comment-4593756623
3. https://disqus.com/home/discussion/strangenotions/materialism8217s_failures_hylemorphism8217s_vindication/#comment-4596561815
4. https://disqus.com/home/discussion/strangenotions/materialism8217s_failures_hylemorphism8217s_vindication/#comment-4596779684

Here’s excerpt 1 of 4:

You are absolutely right. This is about a perception, not a mere representation (which here we call an “image”). The problem is that as long as what is experiencing the whole is claimed to be purely physical, the logic of the problem remains — for the same reason even you said that interacting physical parts cannot “perceive anything.” Making the perceiver do what no physical thing can do is the problem. Of course, there is a perceiver — but it cannot be physical, for the same reasoning I have given multiple times.

Physical things are extended in space and thus must “assign” different functions to different parts. But to perceive a whole all at once is precisely what a material entity cannot do, since the different functions, exactly as different and separate, defy unification by purely physical means. Think of the water example above.

But perception does occur. Therefore it is not just a matter that we cannot conceive how it does it. We can conceive precisely how a physical thing works — with different parts doing different things. But the logic I gave above shows that the one thing a physical thing cannot do is to unify the whole.

There is no “reasoning of the gaps here.” Physical things simply cannot do what is entailed in sense experience, namely the unifying of the whole.

You are finally grasping that perception is not an image, but what you understandably are resisting is the realization that perceiving is radically different than a physical image, since in its immateriality it can do what no physical thing extended in space can do, namely, embrace its wholeness at the same moment it is merely a bunch of distinct and separate parts in space. This is the same reason that materialists cannot see that some immaterial principle of unity must make them one being, when a total purely physical analysis of our being would indicate that all we are is a bunch of discrete atomic parts.

Although materialists resist it, the much more reasonable position is to accept that the macroscopic things of the world around us do exist as independent, whole beings, and that they are unified by some real, non-material, principle which is not explained by the atoms alone.

And, if that it true, it is far more reasonable to believe that some central principle of the same type, or some aspect of that central principle, enables us to perceive the world around us in an immaterial way — since it is evident that perception is radically difficult to understand if you insist it is merely some function of a bunch of material parts. In a word, materialism is not only metaphysically impossible, but it is also unlikely.

Here’s Excerpt 2 of 4:

I think we are hung up on the following point of yours where you say: “Again, I see that as a call to intuition. The perception is of a unified whole, that does not imply that the whole itself had to actually be unified in a singularity-type way for being perceived as such….”

It is not the whole itself is actually unified, since the whole — say, an image of a triangle or an actual triangle — is NOT unified, precisely because as an object under the conditions of matter, it is itself extended in space, and hence, has parts outside of parts. (The angles are exterior to each other.) What is unified is the act of perception itself, NOT what is perceived. That is the entire point of the insight. Were not the perception itself unified, we could never perceive the whole that is being perceived as a whole. Solely by apprehending all the parts of the whole at once can we know them both as distinct parts in themselves and as parts of a whole. Thus, the unification is in the act of perception, NOT in the whole which is being perceived. This is not an intuition in the sense of a guess about reality. It is rather a careful description of what we are experiencing, which is the proper role of epistemology.

Here’s Excerpt 3 of 4:

The problem is not avoided. A unified set of particles is still extended in space-time and either its parts do something toward “representing” the apprehended whole, or they do not. If they do, then you have the same problem I have described many times, with discrete parts representing discrete parts of the whole, but with nothing representing the whole in a single act — or else, you have a single part on which all the data converges altogether, producing unintelligibility. I think you are thinking that somehow material reality MUST be able to do precisely what a close analysis of the facts reveals it cannot do.

Here’s Excerpt 4 of 4:

You have to decide whether a perception, then, can be extended in space. If it is, then it falls victim to the same objection that a representation does. My whole point is that an act of perception does what it does precisely because it is NOT extended in space. Saying that an extended representation somehow produces a perception, and then, that the rules of extension do not apply to that perception is to grant that the perception is NOT extended in space, which is exactly my point.

As to whether an extended in space representation (or neural pattern) can generate a perception that is not extended in space is a distinct question. The answer to that is “no,” for the simple reason that the perception is doing something that no physical thing can do (as per the argument), and hence, does not have the quality of “existence without extension” needed to give it to the perception. This pertains to a secondary issue, known as emergent materialism. That is, can material bodies make things that do not have physical characteristics. But, by definition, things that lack physical characteristics do not belong in the space-time continuum, and hence, materialism is defeated again.

End 4/Four Excerpts.

Those four are all from Dennis Bonnette PhD and he has an essay which overlaps some of that (in part) at the following: How Metaphysical Certitudes Anchor Proofs for God at https://www.hprweb.com/2021/09/how-metaphysical-certitudes-anchor-proofs-for-god

There is also overlapping (in part) content in the following: Genesis, Quantum Worlds, Allegory, Metaphor, Divine Communique, Transposition, And The Heavy-Meta-Bible at https://metachristianity.com/genesis-quantum-worlds-allegory-metaphor-divine-communique-transposition/

Regarding the Simplicity/Indivisibility of Mind/Person/Consciousness:

Many ask HOW can there be such a Singularity as the Hard Stop regarding the I-AM||i-am and, so, here is the (somewhat) short version:

The Simplicity/Unity of the Contingent Mind vis-à-vis i-am ((…the Adamic…)) is fully funded in and by the Simplicity/Unity of Absolute Consciousness vis-à-vis I-AM through and by the Principle of Proportionate Causality which fully and seamlessly funds the convertibility of all Necessary Transcendentals as the Unity of Mind is the Unity of Being even as the Irreducibility of Mind is the Irreducibility of Being — https://metachristianity.com/the-unity-of-mind-is-the-unity-of-being-even-as-the-irreducibility-of-mind-is-the-irreducibility-of-being-by-david-bentley-hart/

The (somewhat) longer version: To begin with there is E. Feser’s description of the Principle of Proportionate Causality ((…and notice that there is a “causality” in play…not “no-thing”// “no-cause” and so on…)) which is from A First Without A Second at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/first-without-second.html as per the following:

“Now that which creates out of nothing is not limited by any such external factors, precisely because it is not modifying anything that already exists outside of it.  But neither can it be limited by any internal potentialities analogous to the limits on a sculptor’s skill.  For it is not *merely causing *a being of this or that sort to exist (though it is doing that too) – modifying preexisting materials would suffice to cause that – but also making it the case that *any *being *at *all *exists.  And only that which is not *a being among others but rather *unlimited being – that which is pure actuality – can do that.  The idea is perhaps best stated in Platonic terms of the sort Aquinas uses (in an Aristotelianized form) in the Fourth Way.  *To *be *a *tree or *to *be *a *stone is merely to participate in “treeness” or “stoneness.”  But *to *be *at *all – which is the characteristic effect of an act of creation out of nothing – is to participate in Being Itself.  Now the principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause.  And only that which just *is Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely *to *be *a *tree or *to *be *a *stone, but *to *be *at *all.  So only God – who just is pure actuality or Being Itself rather than a being among others – can cause a thing to exist *ex *nihilo”.

That holds firm even/especially within the semantic intent behind all First-Person Experience vis-à-vis “I-AM” || “i-am” and not only that but again the Christian is afforded the intellectual right to counter objections with the following: Mind Body Interaction Problem? What Interaction Problem? There cannot be any such “problem” given “Being’s Superseding Ontic Over Both Material and Non-Being”. Being’s Ontic Weight supersedes the Ontic Weight of both Material and Non-Being just as the Ontic Ordering of Being||Material||Non-Being finds Being necessarily Ordered Ahead-Of/Logically-Prior-To ((which is distinct from chronologically prior to)) both Material and Non-Being.

In a key sense we can say that ‘Dualism’ is ultimately ‘Monism’ ((…in a sense…)) because *Being*Itself* is the Root||Wellspring of the whole show — hence Seamlessness — hence “Seamless Singularity”. And, again, lest we forget our steps, how that unfolds is seen in key parts through the Principle of Proportionate Causality described earlier and, also, therein, it is worth pointing out that the relevant transcendentals retain lucidity as we move from Being/Creator to Contingent/Created and thereby amid any/all “interactions”. Another helpful approach is found when we recover the proper ‘Hierarchy of Being‘ which brings us to the following:

(A) Recovering The Hierarchy Of Being ~ by David Oderberg https://metachristianity.com/recovering-hierarchy-of-being-by-david-oderberg-transcript

(B) Creation Ex Nihilo, The Principle of Proportionate Causality, Seamelessness In Being From Pure Act To The Contingent And From I AM to Imago Dei https://metachristianity.com/creation-ex-nihilo-the-principle-of-proportionate-causality-seamelessness-in-being-from-pure-act-to-the-contingent-and-from-i-am-to-imago-dei/

(C) Being’s Superseding Ontic Over Both Material and Non-Being https://metachristianity.com/beings-superseding-ontic-over-both-material-and-non-being

For context the following are a few excerpts from the third in that list which is Being’s Superseding Ontic Over Both Material and Non-Being as follows:

Begin Excerpts:

We ask “What Interaction Problem?” but the Non-Theist never realizes that BOTH the landscape of Creation Ex Nihilo AND the landscape of the Mind-Body Interaction converge at [Being’s] superseding ontic over both [Material] and [Non-Being]. The SAME Superseding Ontic which forces BOTH the Finite Universe AND any Timed/Tensed Eternal Universe into the Ground of Being Itself and into the Unmoved Will is the SAME Ontic of God’s Relationship to the world AND our own relationship to it. Pure Act vis Being Itself and all of those SAME reasons why [Miracle] does not ((and in fact *cannot*)) “Violate-Physics” are the SAME reasons we find in the “Relationship-And-Interaction” of the “Divine-Mind-And-Contingent-Mind” with ALL ontological vectors of [Material-Full-Stop].

The exclusive ontic real estate of [A] proportionate causality ((…defined further down…)) and [B] concurrentism and [C] the aforementioned “Being’s Superseding Ontic over both Material and Non-Being” reveal the Map and Topography of the Ground of all Ontic-Possibility vis Pure-Act||Being-Itself as all such contours seamlessly converge within that which [Informs] and that which is [Informed].

Because of the unique ontological real estate in the aforementioned Collection ((…Proportionate Causality & Superseding Ontic & Concurrentism & Absolute Consciousness & so on..)) we find the SAME content in [1] WHY God’s [Miracle] does not ((…and in fact cannot…))  “Violate” Physics AND in the “Content” of [Relation] vis-a-vis [Interaction] vis-à-vis Causal-Closure.  Another way of saying it is that because of the aforementioned Collection we find [1] The ((supposed)) “problem” of the Divine Mind moving into [B] Interaction with [3] The World and  when we unpack THOSE three items we discover that there never was a “problem” at all —and — then — from there we find [1] the SAME misunderstandings leading into [2] the SAME  ((supposed)) “problem” of ((in the contingent being/mind)) vis-à-vis [3] the ((supposed problem)) of Mind||Body Interaction. As before, when we unpack THOSE three items we discover that there never was a “problem” at all and for all of the SAME reasons.

The only question is this: Can *God* create in this or that created being the ontologically irreducible Will Itself just as He creates in that same sense and in that same created being that which is the ontologically irreducible “Existence Itself“? Given *God* Who is reality’s eternal wellspring with respect to the principle of proportionate causality, the answer is obvious: of course He can.

End Excerpts. 

See also:

Causality, Pantheism, And Deism at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/causality-pantheism-and-deism.html

The Metaphysical Middle Man at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/01/metaphysical-middle-man.html

Consciousness? First Person Experience? I-AM//i-am? The Non-Theist must show how stacking up billions of layers of reality’s fundamental nature ((non-intentional/non-mind)) yields the fundamental nature of intentionality/mind and of course the key is that AT SOME POINT he faces a Death by 10K Equivocations as he moves FROM “[A]” over TO “[Non-A]” regarding ANY claim/s about “the fundamental nature of X” and so on, All the Non-Theist, Theist, Christian, you/we/anyone has/haves are “metaphysical equivalents” vis-à-vis the SAME “Principal of Proportionate Causality” as it were, and, so Non-Theism gets “Emergence” as he moves from [A] to [Non-A] and that is why, at some point, all brands of Emergence force the Eliminative Maps akin to Churchland, Rosenberg, Dennett, and so on. Nature can’t break free of Nature just as Nature cannot beget fundamentally different Natures other than Nature.

Two Maps:

MAP 1 ~ Non-Theism: Four-Fundamental-Forces ((or whatever)) are on stage and give ((…beget/create/pour…)) their Four-Fundamental-Forces ((or whatever)) in/through the same concept of “the Principal of Proportionate Causality” and land within Emergence as we move from [A] to [Non-A] and that is why ((again)) at some point, all brands of Emergence force a Death by 10K Equivocations in and of the Eliminative Maps akin to Churchland, Rosenberg, Dennett, and so on. Nature can’t break free of Nature just as Nature cannot beget fundamentally different Natures other than Nature.  The First-Person Experience of Self / Intentionality / “i-am” falls into Non-Theism’s illusory ends of — not Being — but of Non-Being ((See Churchland, Rosenberg, Carroll, Etc., Etc.)).

MAP 2 ~ Christianity: Being||Existence || I-AM begetting/creating/pouring Being||Existence || I-AM  seamlessly traverses Non-Being vis-à-vis the Principal of Proportionate Causality and finds I-AM//i-am irreducibly and seamlessly intact. All logical//ontological possibility is found because it starts with Pure Act and proceeds in what is necessarily a Downhill Ontic in/by Creation Ex Nihilo. The result is immediately apparent: The First-Person Experience of Self / Intentionality / “i-am” / and all such semantic intent lands in Being Itself as Absolute Consciousness Itself as Irreducible Mind Itself as Reason Itself as The Great I-AM that I-AM. In short the Simplicity/Unity of the Contingent Mind ((…the Adamic in our case etc…)) is fully funded in and by the Simplicity/Unity of Absolute Consciousness || Necessary Being.

See the following: Consciousness, Emergence, Intentionality, Searle, Reason Atop The Irrational, And Naturalism’s Egregious Deficiency at https://metachristianity.com/consciousness-emergence-intentionality-searle-reason-atop-the-irrational

 

—END—

Eight/8 Examples Of Correcting Fallacious Definitions Of Faith:

A key factor is the simple fact that one must not invent definitions of another’s terms. In a thread/post at www.STR.org  in the comment section of Show Them God Is Better Than the Promises of Anything Else ((…at https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/show_them_god_is_better_than_the_promises_of_anything_else/…)) Amy Hall takes the time – eight different times – to define the Christian’s analysis of the doxastic experience (…our noetic frame and the nature of belief…).

Each time – all 8 times – our Non-Theist friends do not take the time to hear but just plow ahead and insist that because what popular culture means by “faith” is different than the Christian’s meaning then WHEN the Christian SAYS anything about the doxastic experience the Christian MUST simply drop Christianity and Christianity’s metaphysical landscape and INSTEAD embrace/affirm popular culture’s definition. So according to the Non-Theistic/Critic’s plowing-ahead it is the case that “therefore” the popular culture’s meaning IS what the Christian means. But of course the Christian doesn’t mean that but instead means what the Christian said and, so, that Non-Theistic “tactic” or method there only guarantees that no forward progress in mutual understanding can transpire.

The term “shoehorn” for instance means different things in different settings. That’s the nature of syntax, of “words”, of language and so on. When are we dealing with a Noun? A Verb? When is it Connotation? Denotation? What about discovery with respect to linguistic content? Are we riding beneath subtext or atop context? …and… so… on…

Unfortunately some of our Non-Theist friends are unable to break free of their high school dictionary when interpreting reality “out there” because through all of it they return to the inane lens of something akin to “high school dictionary full stop”. But Christendom’s wide array of longstanding trajectories houses the wherewithal to speak towards its own metaphysical topography.

The aforementioned eight/8 examples are given in the following 8 items and note that these are from a dialogue in a comment section and so the comments will reflect that syntax for the context they were in.

1 of 8

Trusting in the promises of someone that haven’t yet come to pass, or trusting in something we can’t yet see is not the same as being confident something is true even though you have no reason to think it is. In the illustrations given in that chapter of Hebrews, God made Himself known to people, and then they trusted what He said, even though the fulfillment of His promises were sometimes after their deaths (i.e., they couldn’t see the fulfillment). But they wouldn’t have trusted Him if He had not first made Himself known to them. This is why the Old Testament says a great many times that God did such-and-such so that the nations would know He is God. In other words, we trust (have faith in God—His promises for our future and His character) because of the reasons we have to trust Him. In the same way, you have faith in your wife to uphold her promises of marriage to you. You have confidence in what you hope for (i.e., that she will fulfill her promises) because you know her—you have reason to trust her and her promises. You can’t yet see the future of what she will do, yet you have faith (trust) in her. The fact that you have faith in her does not prove you have no previous evidence to trust her. In fact, it says the opposite. It’s because you have reasons to trust her that you have faith in her and her promises.

2 of 8

You said, “Faith is the filler when there is insufficient evidence to know something based on our senses and/or experience.”

No. That is simply not the way the Bible uses the word. Faith would be the disciples trusting in Jesus (who had already given them clear reasons to trust Him) when He said Peter could walk to Him on the water. Faith isn’t “filler.” Faith is trust. And God clearly goes out of His way throughout the Bible to give reasons for people to trust. Faith still means trust. We don’t “use it” to get to a belief in God. Rather, we have reasons to believe in God, and we have reasons to trust Him, thereforewe trust that He will follow through with His promises in the future (i.e., we have faith in Him).

You said, “No such leaps of faith are required with my wife’s actions. It is a totally different connotation of the word faith.”

No, it’s the exact same meaning. You trust that your wife is trustworthy based on what you know about her, such that when she tells you something, you believe it. What you are trusting her to do is irrelevant to the meaning of the word. The trust isn’t “filler,” it’s based on your knowledge of her. In the same way when people become convinced that God exists, and they become aware of His past actions, they therefore trust in Him as a Person and believe what He’s promised for the future—things we can’t yet see. That’s the way the Bible uses the word.

3 of 8

You said, “This has to do with you running from one connotation of the word which demonstrates some of your beliefs to be unfounded.”

No. It has to do with denying a connotation of the word that has nothing to do with how the Bible uses the word, and therefore nothing to do with what the Bible means when it says the word “faith,” and therefore nothing to do with what we actually mean when we say we have faith. The fact that some people use the word that way does not mean that meaning applies to the way Christians—or the Bible—use that word, so to superimpose that meaning over the word when we use it—or to try to hold that foreign meaning against us—is to misunderstand at best and to mislead at worst. And further, it makes conversation very difficult when you keep telling us what we mean by a word even though we’re telling you that’s not what we mean when we use it. We have reasons to think God exists, we have reasons to think the resurrection happens, we have reasons to trust the Bible, we have reasons to think God has acted in history. Nowhere does the Bible talk about some “filler” thing called faith that we use to find truth in opposition to the evidence. Nowhere. Faith is trust, and in the Bible, God consistently gives evidence to support that trust. You don’t have proof your wife never cheated on you, and yet you believe that she hasn’t. But I would never say that you’re using “faith” as a filler to come to that conclusion, and that you’re running from the connotation of the word that demonstrates your belief that your wife never cheated on you to be unfounded. No. Your faith in your wife is trust, and that trust is based on your knowledge of your wife, not in opposition to the evidence. The insistence internet atheists have on redefining the word “faith” is ridiculous, rhetorical, and unproductive.

4 of 8

And what I am saying is that the cultural definition some people have taken on is not the definition we’re using or the Bible is using, so it matters not a bit that it’s in the dictionary. If you want to understand how we’re using the word, the fact that our culture has redefined it has nothing to do with that. If you want to insist that we answer for the culture’s redefinition, then that’s just unproductive silliness.

You said, “There are literally dozens of verses which instruct believers to some form of “walk by faith not by sight.” What else can that possibly, reasonably mean…”

I actually already talked about this when I talked about Hebrews 11 and when I described your trusting things about your wife that you can’t see (like her past and future faithfulness). You’re not trusting (having faith) in her despite the real evidence in front of you, but because of it. That is, because of the evidence you have about her and her character, you have faith in her. As I said, “Trusting in the promises of someone that haven’t yet come to pass, or trusting in something we can’t yet see is not the same as being confident something is true even though you have no reason to think it is.” Walking by trust in things we can’t see with our eyes (like the people in Hebrews who were trusting God would come through on His promises) has nothing to do with lacking reasons to trust. Your mistake is that you try to conflate the two. I can’t see all the reasons for the bad things that happen to me, but I trust God when He says there are reasons. Why do I trust? Because I’ve become convinced God exists, and I’ve found Him to be trustworthy. In other words, I walk by trust in God, not by whether or not I’m currently seeing what He promised. That is how trust (faith) works when we’re talking about having faith in people. The faith the Bible talks about is not only not incompatible with reasons to trust, it actually requires reasons to trust. That’s the kind of faith the Bible talks about.

5 of 8

Of course I concede people wrongly use the word! Like I said, our culture has twisted it over time so that it doesn’t reflect the use in the Bible. But it’s irrelevant if the sloppy thinking of some (or even many) doesn’t reflect what the Bible actually says about it. As for the two quotes above, I definitely think the second one is sloppy thinking, but the first one fits with what I’ve said. We can’t see God with our eyes, but that doesn’t negate the fact that God (according to the Bible) understands that in order to trust we need to have reasons to trust. We can’t see Him with our eyes, therefore God does things over and over throughout the Bible saying He’s doing it “so that they may know” He is God. Again, the need to trust when we can’t directly see something is not opposed to the need to have reasons in order to trust. The two go together, and the Bible puts them together. Jesus does the same thing. Can they directly see with their eyes that He’s a Person of the Trinity? No, so He gives them evidence. I can understand atheists taking in the cultural view of the word and not knowing what the Bible actually says about it, but the charge becomes rhetorical when it’s pointed out that the Bible doesn’t teach that understanding of faith, yet they persist in making the charge against Christianity. If you want to argue against Christianity, argue against Christianity, not the mistaken ideas people have of it. That would be like arguing that modalism is ridiculous, therefore Christianity is ridiculous; and then, when a Christian explains that the Bible doesn’t teach modalism, continuing to insist that the charge is accurate against Christianity because many Christians believe in modalism (which, in fact, many mistakenly do). The truth is, it’s very unproductive to argue against Christianity by arguing against modalism.

6 of 8

The “trait that lets you believe”?
Uh…a trait I call “being convinced”?

Being convinced it’s true is what “lets me believe.”

Again, you wouldn’t talk about any other understanding of the world in these strange terms you’re using. I don’t put religion in a separate, strange category from every other understanding I have of the world. And I don’t require that I see “physical evidence” to become convinced about every single thing I think is true about the world (much of history, for example—also, philosophy, logic, etc.). I don’t need some special “thing” that “lets me believe” that morality is real and objective, even though there’s no physical evidence for it. There are many other ways to reason to a conclusion and become convinced it’s true. So to say that religion alone is some crazy category that requires some special “thing” to “let you believe” just because you can’t put it in a test tube just sounds strange to me. Rather, those who become convinced Christianity is true then trust (have faith in) God; the faith isn’t what causes a person to think it’s true in the first place.

7 of 8

I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying because I’ve already addressed that. Lack of physical sight is not the same as lack of evidence. The fact that Thomas touched the risen Jesus is itself a piece of evidence for me. Testimony is a form of evidence. Philosophy, history, logic, and the work I’ve seen God do throughout the centuries are all evidence. When “ye of little faith” is said in the Bible, it’s talking about the person’s lack of trust despite what God has said and done. Thomas did not believe Jesus would rise from the dead, even though Jesus predicted it. He did not trust the other disciples who told him they had seen Jesus risen from the dead. The point is he already had reasons to believe what he heard from them was true because he had been with Jesus for years, listened to what He said, watched Him do miracles, knew the Scriptures, and heard the testimony of the other disciples; and he did not trust Jesus or the disciples enough to believe it. Again, we believe all sorts of things based on non-physical evidence (testimony, philosophy, logic, etc.). What do you call it when you think something is true based on one of those non-physical things?

8 of 8

You said, “Anyone who believes the second story because of the testimony or because it is written in a book, has filled the gap in evidence with 2.b faith….”

No. Just because people are convinced by reasons you aren’t convinced by, that in no way means they used some other “thing” to fill some sort of gap. They were convinced, you weren’t. That’s it. In fact, people believe all sorts of things about all sorts of subjects I don’t think are true, but it would never occur to me to say, “Clearly, since they know the evidence wasn’t good enough for what they think about that political subject (or whatever), they must be filling the gap with some other ‘thing,'” because I realize that people are convinced by different things. You keep insisting we treat religion differently from every other judgment about reality in our lives, and I simply don’t do that. But as long as you’re insisting on it, we’re just going to go around in circles. And I would call that insufficient evidence too. Don’t be silly. That’s not analogous to Christianity. Like I said before, over-the-top rhetorical flourishes only hurt your credibility.

End 8 Quotes/Excerpts.

Worldviews take a bit of teasing-out of not only WHAT the claim is but also WHY the claim is in fact held. This pattern repeats itself when it comes to “Faith & Evidence” once again. For example, is it “A” or is it “B” via the following:

((A)) Iron miraculously floats on water all by itself.

((B)) Causal Agents (God, Man) intentionally rearrange and manipulate nature’s fundamental building blocks and invent novel – never before seen – elements….. and other arrangements all the time, and, also, Causal Agents manipulate physical systems and suspend physical things on water…all the time. That’s how iron “floats” on water. We do it all the time. God is the Causal Agent where miracles are concerned.

Christians reject [A] and affirm [B] with respect to the definition of the term “miracle”.

That’s not complicated. Atheist’s believe “iron floats on water” in the only relevant sense here. Once again: it’s not complicated.

A key step being skipped by our Non-Theist friends is discussed in the following:

God vs A God vs Gods vs The Gods vs Sky Daddy vs Santa Clause vs Imaginary Friend vs Being Itself vs Existence Itself vs Metaphysical Wellspring Of All Ontological Possibility at https://metachristianity.com/god-vs-a-god-vs-gods-vs-the-gods-vs-sky-daddy-vs-santa-clause/

Also helpful:

“…..Dr. William Lane Craig defines miracles as extraordinary acts of providence which should not be conceived, properly speaking, as violations of the laws of nature, but as the production of events which are beyond the causal powers of the natural entities existing at the relevant time and place….” (…from http://christianapologeticsalliance.com/2017/07/05/miracles-are-useless-if-2/ ..)

The step by step unpacking of that the Critic’s bizarre and disingenuous “Tactics” eventually unravels their attempt to foist things akin to, say, “The Universal Stalemate Straw Man” as described in the following linked comment from a comment-section ~ note that the comment opens with: “….There Is Misinformation & Misinterpretation – Therefore No-God…!” but from there one will have to scroll down about half way through the comment to the bolded section “The Universal Stalemate Straw Man” ~ and so that said the comment is at https://randalrauser.com/2019/12/five-reasons-that-christians-unnecessarily-experience-a-crisis-of-faith/#comment-4736707296

Brief Conceptual Observation:

In the particular thread referenced earlier, after our Non-Theist friends plowed over Amy’s carefully explained definitions, our Non-T. friends then moved the goal post once again and plowed over my own description of the Christian account of the doxastic experience and simply demanded that I too must mean something very different. Then they avoided interfacing with our actual definitions once again and went on about a new topic and demanding *evidence* of the X’s on the list which they gave. That behavior of theirs is mentioned simply to introduce the following concept: That mode of inquiry in which every reasoned reply the Christian offers is met by a rapid-fire style of yet more new topics while never actually addressing replies is akin to “Just Say No to Fragenblitzen” at https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/01/saying-no-to-fragenblitzen/

So then, a little more on the “Iron Floats On Water” topic: No one has any evidence that iron floats on water “all by itself” which is why the Christian does not believe “that”. However, the referent of “God” and “Being Itself” and “Causal Agent” and the semantic intent within the syntax of ….causal agents intentionally manipulating and rearranging nature’s fundamental building blocks…. ((…as in the Periodic Table of the Elements and many other demonstrations etc…)) are all cohesive.  In the same way, our Non-Theist friends have no evidence, none, with respect to their apparent belief in a Flat World/Earth ~ well ~ in a manner speaking as what is meant there by “Flat” is the referent of “Edge” and their voyage atop the “Flat Earth” as they set sail and are tirelessly vigilant in their attempt to evade the unavoidable Edge of Reason Itself as, at some ontological seam somewhere, “Reasoning” is revealed to be a property which must die the death of ten thousand equivocations ~ as described in https://metachristianity.com/atheism-world-flat-none-non-non-theist/

The mistake is that some assume that Christians use [1] Experience and Intuition and/or [2] Eyewitness Accounts in some sort of vacuum in isolation from a far wider T.O.E. ((ToE/Theory Of Everything)) which incorporates reasoning through reality’s wide array of variables. But that all leads to the fallacies of replying to, say, intuition “as if” the Christian is positing “intuition full stop” and/or “as-if” the Christian is positing “eyewitness accounts full stop” and the fact that anyone would camp out on those two accusations against the Christian rather than interact with the worldview’s entire set of truth-claims is either an uninformed and honest error or else it is intentional and therefore dishonest.

Disqualification vs. Falsification: Most of what we believe is not falsifiable in any heavy weight sense. Explanatory power reaches a certain critical mass at some point, either in affirmation or in disqualification. Disqualification is not always falsification. Though sometimes it is. Example:

Certainty / Uncertainty: uncertainty never has disqualified a premise, but what is clear is that WHEN this or that premise forces a reduction to absurdity, the premise itself is THEN rationally rejected (it’s been falsified). Certainty/uncertainty cannot help us decide – or more precisely – certainty/uncertainty do not necessarily and rationally compel reason (…in her role as truth-finder…) into A vs. B. vs. C., as it were. All that is left then is that painful “Y” in the road between the forced reductio ad absurdum (…on the one hand…) and reason’s lucidity (…on the other hand…) and that is why it is the case that when this or that premise forces a reduction to absurdity the premise itself is NOT ONLY rationally rejected BUT ALSO falsified rather than “only” “disqualified”. General context on that is at the specific comment that opens with “…but imagine you’re talking to an A or a B or a C who starts by assuming Q or R or S…” which is linked here: https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/overcome-your-cognitive-bias-with-the-50-50-rule/#comment-3967551213

Key Factoid: The Conscious Observer ((… “I” “i-am” /and thereby all I-Statements such as I-Am/I-Reason/I-Think/I-See/I-Perceive/Etc.…)) in Non-Theism suffers, eventually, at some ontological seam somewhere, the death of ten thousand equivocations as there is no Hard Stop of I-AM given (A) Non-Theism’s Necessary Conservation of [No I-AM] in/at ANY “level” of ANY “irreducible/fundamental nature” of ANY X/Thing/Etc. and given (2) the fact that should Reality in fact have such a Rock-Bottom well that is just Theism. Unavoidably we find in the fate of the Conscious Observer the fact that even Reason Itself is falsifiable when unpacked through the Non-Theistic lens — it just eats itself alive. Whereas should we retain logic and reason and identity ~ without equivocating at/in any step ~ and carry through to lucidity “through-and-through” vis-à-vis all explanatory termini ~ without equivocating at/in any step ~ we arrive necessarily within nothing less than the various contours of Absolute Consciousness ~ see Total Rationalism, Total Intelligibility, and Perfect Bliss at  https://metachristianity.blogspot.com/2021/09/total-rationalism-total-intelligibility-perfect-bliss.html ~ and also see Consciousness, Emergence, Intentionality, Searle, Reason Atop The Irrational, And Naturalism’s Egregious Deficiency at https://metachristianity.com/consciousness-emergence-intentionality-searle-reason-atop-the-irrational/

Faith Is Relying on Knowns As We Work Through Unknowns

((A)) Science has faith in the lame man walking and THEREFORE spends billions to move in that direction.

((B)) That is contrary to Hume’s shouts of Black Magic and shouts about Zeus and Celestial Teapots ~ and so on.

That particular [B] is curious because the “person” that is “science” clearly “believes” and has faith in the lame man walking “one day” and, based on the Knowns, spends billions as it navigates the Unknowns. Is it “easy” to make that Forward March? Well no. Is it sometimes frustrating? Well yes. And yet science marches on.

It’s called Evidence + Faith + Faithfulness + Knowns + Unknowns. Folks have died while only partially through this or that unknown, never having reached their desired end, only to have that end actualize further downstream in more distal generations. That is BOTH emotively disappointing in the moment AND intellectually rational in that same moment. It’s called Evidence + Faith + Faithfulness + Knowns + Unknowns.

Why don’t our Non-Theist friends share in that doxastic experience along with the Christian and the whole of reality? Why do our Non-Theist friends in fact go out of their way to hedge and equivocate only so that they can re-define all of that, only so that they can deny that entire swath of the human experience? Well again it is either honest and uninformed or else aware/intentional and hence dishonest. Something akin to the following:

“I know this isn’t what theists mean, but I’m going to pretend otherwise for rhetorical purposes” as per https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/02/omnibus-of-fallacies

“….Faith is believing in something without sufficient evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence….”

There again as with the aforementioned Knows // Unknows the accusation is confused about physics and mathematics and about what Christian faith in general is, and more specifically about what mankind’s reasoning is. Evidence based faith is the only rational, and Christian, kind. Corrie ten Boom, no stranger to the hard problem of evil, commented,

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

((A)) We know and have good reasons to trust something or someone.

((B)) Then, there is all that happens outside of and around ourselves and that person.

Notice that “B” cannot “un-do” “A” unless and until “B” somehow demonstrate otherwise in “A”. Right there with Corrie ten Boom is a new challenge in, say, how to get a satellite or etc. into orbit around the earth and the fact that that challenge cannot “un-do” the mathematics we will trust, lean on, to work through the problem. At first the mathematics keeps hitting some brick walls. But we’ve reasons to trust those Knowns nonetheless.  Is it confusing at first? Well yeah. Is it hard? Well yeah. But that’s got nothing to do with leaning on, trusting, that which we’ve rational reasons to trust, namely mathematics, as we journey through, work through, the frustrations, the delays, the problem, the Unknowns.

We trust the known, the rational, and proceed through life’s various array of X’s with the known and the rational in hand. That’s faith in the middle of trouble. We trust the known and the rational. We lean on it when problems arise. Like mathematics. We use the math to press forward and work through the unknown, through the problem. Because we trust it. The fallacious assertion that the unknown / problem somehow “un-does” mathematics is just silly and uninformed.

Silliness: By the Critic’s definition of ‘faith’ we would say that when we face a challenge in the bizarre physics of getting a satellite into orbit we’d just toss out mathematics and panic – because a problem/work/trouble meets us fact to face. The silly premise seems to be that IF the aforementioned “((A))” ((….We know and have good reasons to trust something or someone…)) is mathematics THEN it is not faith and IF it is a person it is not faith – and why? Well because faith must be free of said “((A))” according to the Critic’s fallacious definition of faith.

Silliness: The fallacious premise seems to be that the reality of the unknown/problem of the odd equations needed to get X into orbit is itself evidence that we have no evidence on how to proceed, that we are now, moving forward in the midst of this unknown, this problem, trusting our mathematics without any rational reason to do so.

That’s just uninformed….silliness.

Like Corrie ten Boom and Mathematics, we trust the known, that which we have good reason to trust, as we journey through various unknowns/problems. There’s no new data that is going to convince us that round-squares exist. Reason rejects absurdity. Should the “appearance” of a round-square show up, then, again, we trust the known, that which we’ve good reason to trust, and press forward, looking for the ins and outs and the why’s as to that appearance, knowing all along that, at some ontological seam somewhere, the reason(s) for the appearance will be found-out, unmasked…revealed.

Convergence:

When it comes to causal agents intentionally rearranging and manipulating nature’s fundamental building blocks in real time, we have good reasons to trust in the reality of those events. We “know” those events “happen”. We even hear of stories in which causal agents intentionally “un-do” subatomic X’s and rearrange them and invent elements / arrangements which as far as we know the universe has never, not once, seen before. The syntax of Science and the syntax of Scripture converge there, and demonstrably so. And the Christian always knew that such syntax regarding Causal Agents and the physical world would happen as he pressed through the hard problems and confusing unknowns. The Christian Metaphysic got it right from eons ago.

Why?

Because of the constantly repeated demonstrability of the rational and reliable content within the ontological history of becoming which has come to us through the ancient Hebrew with respect to Man and Cosmos – and because of the constantly repeated demonstrability of the rational and reliable content within the ontological history of becoming which has come to us through Christ with respect to Man and God.

Losing Faith & Finding Faith

The definition of losing faith: It turns out that Losing Faith In God too often sums to losing faith in Magic, in Presumption, and in people who sin far more often than it sums to losing Faith in anything of the Christian Metaphysic vis-à-vis Christ. Losing faith in God too often sums to losing faith in:

a. Magic
b. Presumption
c. People who sin

Therefore, losing faith in God is almost never void of some element of that trio (….magic, presumption, people who sin…) and that is telling. Whereas, we can say that Losing faith in God rarely sums to losing faith in:

a. The Christian Metaphysic vis-à-vis Christ

An interesting read is where Feser describes his journey out of Atheism. It’s about 7K words but worth it.

A brief excerpt:

“As Plotinus’s remark indicates, that does not mean that the will does not have a role to play. But that is true wherever reason leads us to a conclusion we might not like, not merely in matters of religion. And once you have allowed yourself to see the truth that reason leads you to, what reason apprehends is (given the convertibility of the transcendentals) as good and beautiful as it is real. If you find yourself intellectually convinced that there is a divine Uncaused Cause who sustains the world and you in being at every instant, and don’t find this conclusion extremely strange and moving, something that leads you to a kind of reverence, then I daresay you haven’t understood it. Of course, there are those whose heads and hearts are so out of sync that they cannot follow both at the same time. But we shouldn’t mistake this pathology for an insight into human nature……

…..Speaking for myself, anyway, I can say this much. When I was an undergrad I came across the saying that learning a little philosophy leads you away from God, but learning a lot of philosophy leads you back. As a young man who had learned a little philosophy, I scoffed. But in later years and at least in my own case, I would come to see that it’s true.” (…from http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/07/road-from-atheism.html …)

A little more: John Wright describes his own conversion. A brief and slightly [edited] paraphrase:

“My conversion was in two parts: a natural part and a supernatural part.

Here is the natural part: first, over a period of two years my hatred toward Christianity eroded due to my philosophical inquiries.

Rest assured, I take the logical process of philosophy very seriously, and I am impatient with anyone who is not a rigorous and trained thinker. Reason is the tool men use to determine if their statements about reality are valid: there is no other. Those who do not or cannot reason are little better than slaves, because their lives are controlled by the ideas of other men, ideas they have not examined.

To my surprise and alarm, I found that, step by step, logic drove me to conclusions no modern philosophy shared, but only this ancient and (as I saw it then) corrupt and superstitious foolery called [Christianity]. Each time I followed the argument fearlessly where it lead, it kept leading me, one remorseless rational step at a time, to a position [Christianity] had been maintaining….. That haunted me….”

The previous two links are also in the comment at https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/overcome-your-cognitive-bias-with-the-50-50-rule/#comment-4261347166

Lastly ~ Four Items:

1 of 4 || “The Definition of Faith”

That is the title of a specific comment which is at https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/overcome-your-cognitive-bias-with-the-50-50-rule/#comment-4261361856 ((…note that a few of the links **within** the comment/post go to STR’s old format and so do not open but they are extra content and not needed for the actual post/comment itself…)). The link should open on that specific link but if one must scroll then the comment opens with the following:

“The Definition of Faith

Faith just is evidenced based vis-à-vis leaning on Knowns/Evidence as we navigate various Unknowns/Uncertainties. That is looked at in the following excerpt from Welcome To Wonderland……..”

2 of 4 || What Would It Take To Give Up Belief In God?

Non-Theist: “This is clear when one asks them what evidence would cause them to abandon their beliefs. The answer is inevitably that nothing would ever cause the Christian to abandon his or her belief. That is the response of someone who is not willing to view their beliefs from a rational perspective, someone who is not willing to weigh new evidence to examine their beliefs.” (A. Ginn)

So then the reply is in the following zip code:

Trade away ultimate or cosmic logic for an ultimate or cosmic reductio ad absurdum?

How does one even “go about” doing “that”?

The necessary transcendentals regarding reality’s concrete furniture press in. Is there evidence which could cause me to give up my belief in logic? In reason? In love? Well of course not. What a misguided question. How would I even go about “giving up” the very being of reason itself — “qua irreducible reason” as it were? Or irreducible logic? Or irreducible love? That is to say, how would I even “go about” giving up my belief in the immutable contours of the real?   There just is no evidence which could cause me to disbelieve in the irreducible contours of — the irreducible <i>Image/Imago</i> of — those two inescapable “Eyes” of (a) brutally repeatable logic and (b) brutally repeatable love as reason herself thereby compels us onward and upward. Sight just is Logic||Love even as sight just is Reason||Reciprocity.

After all, it is through such that we even speak of sight.

I suppose this or that collocation of ultimate or cosmic reductio ab adsurdum-s would be an alternative, but then I could never know what such evidence would even look like nor could I even know such a thing given the deflationary truth values by which it must make its case in front of me, by which it opines and pleads and foists against the Necessary.

What would it take to trade away ultimate or cosmic logic for an ultimate or cosmic reducito ad absurdum? CAN one make such Trade? Of course not. OUGHT one make such a Trade? Of course not.

In fact, we couldn’t pull it off even if we wanted to.

Lots of folks try.  Its like watching one of those TV’s Funniest Home Video thingy-s…. there comes that point in the video when you want to cover your eyes, I mean you just KNOW that it’s going to be SO BAD, but at the last minute you peak, because you just KNOW that the punch line is on the way.

3 of 4 || “…merely a lack of belief…” 

Being Itself? Existence Itself? Logic Itself? Reciprocity in Being? Self/i-am/First-Person? One can deny those, sure, but it looks bizarre. And if one does not understand WHY/HOW denying Being/Existence/Person/Logic in fact IS denying the Christian God, perhaps see God vs. A God vs. Gods vs. The Gods vs. Sky Daddy vs. Santa Claus vs. Imaginary Friend vs. Being Itself vs. Existence Itself vs. Metaphysical Wellspring Of All Ontological Possibility at https://metachristianity.com/god-vs-a-god-vs-gods-vs-the-gods-vs-sky-daddy-vs-santa-claus/

And so? Well “…is merely a lack of belief…” can be true if, say, “Not-X” has X as “UFO’s”. But the nature of “Not-X” is radically different if X is, say, Existence-Itself//Being-Itself//Consciousness-Itself//Person-Itself//Logic-Itself ~ and so on. All logical consequences of Not-X must be owned. But of course such ownership is what we typically don’t see our Non-Theistic friends engage in, and, on that theme, two reminders should our Non-Theist friends attempt to navigate that phraseology while retaining such disingenuousness:

“It is not enough simply to remain indifferent to the whole question of God, moreover, because thus understood it is a question ineradicably present in the very mystery of existence, or of knowledge, or of truth, goodness, and beauty. It is also the question that philosophical naturalism is supposed to have answered exhaustively in the negative, without any troubling explanatory lacunae, and therefore the question that any aspiring philosophical naturalist must understand before he or she can be an atheist in any intellectually significant way. And the best way to begin is to get a secure grasp on how radically, both conceptually and logically, belief in God differs from belief in the gods.” ((—from The Experience Of God by D. B. Hart))

“Obviously, then, it is God in the former— the transcendent— sense in whom it is ultimately meaningful to believe or not to believe. The possibility of gods or spirits or angels or demons, and so on, is a subordinate matter, a question not of metaphysics but only of the taxonomy of nature (terrestrial, celestial, and chthonic). To be an atheist in the best modern sense, however, and so to be a truly intellectually and emotionally fulfilled naturalist in philosophy, one must genuinely succeed in not believing in God, with all the logical consequences such disbelief entails.…” ((—from The Experience Of God by D. B. Hart))

4 of 4 || Faith, Evidence, Hebrews 11, Trusting Knowns, Navigating Unknowns, and Faith “vs” Works

That is a kind of “Melting Pot” of multiple segues surrounding “Faith” comprised of multiple copy/pastes/links/comments and so on in a series of [Numbered Comments] and so on. Fair warning that it is tedious because it’s a melting pot with multiple links, some of which are to the Stand To Reason https://www.str.org older format which do not work, but if interested it is at https://metachristianity.blogspot.com/2018/04/faith-evidence-hebrews-11-trusting.html

 

—END—

The following is the essay titled “The Illusionist ~ On Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds” which is Chapter 10 out of the book Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest https://www.amazon.com/Theological-Territories-David-Bentley-Digest/dp/0268107181/

Before the copy/paste the following three items are added for related segues:

1 of 3 ~ “For just as air illuminated by the sun seems to be nothing else but light, not because it loses its own nature but because light predominates in it so that it is believed itself to be light, thus human nature united with God is said to be God totally, not because its nature ceases to be, but because it achieves participation in divinity so that God alone appears within it.” (attributed to Eriugena)

2 of 3 ~ In one place D.B. Hart comments, “The Cartesian picture, by contrast, was a chimera, an ungainly and extrinsic alliance of antinomies. And reason abhors a dualism…” and “…[Dennett] is content with the stark choice with which the modern picture confronts us: to adopt either a Cartesian dualism or a thoroughgoing mechanistic monism. And this is rather a pity, since in fact both options are equally absurd…” ~ and D.B.H. is correct there – and yet Dualism survives while Cartesianism does not survive – at least not in the way we tend to think of it and, so, see the following for why that is so: Creation Ex Nihilo, The Principle of Proportionate Causality, Seamelessness In Being From Pure Act To The Contingent And From I AM to Imago Dei https://metachristianity.com/creation-ex-nihilo-the-principle-of-proportionate-causality-seamelessness-in-being-from-pure-act-to-the-contingent-and-from-i-am-to-imago-dei/

3 of 3 ~ Consciousness, Emergence, Intentionality, Searle, Reason Atop The Irrational, And Naturalism’s Egregious Deficiency https://metachristianity.com/consciousness-emergence-intentionality-searle-reason-atop-the-irrational/

The following is Chapter 10 of the book Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest  and it’s title is “The Illusionist: On Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds”. *Note: paragraph breaks with occasional “quotes” are added for the sake of interest/reference as are a few bolded items.

Begin Quote/Excerpt

 

It seems to me that we have come this way before. Some of the signposts are new, perhaps — “Bacteria,” “Bach,” and so on—but the scenery looks very familiar, if now somewhat overgrown, and it is hard not to feel that the path is the same one that Daniel Dennett has been treading for five decades. I suppose it would be foolish to expect anything else. As often as not, it is the questions we fail to ask—and so the presuppositions we leave intact—that determine the courses our arguments take; and Dennett has been studiously avoiding the same set of questions for most of his career. In a sense, the entire logic of From Bacteria to Bach and Back (though not, of course, all the repetitious details) could be predicted simply from Dennett’s implicit admission on page 364 that no philosopher of mind before Descartes is of any consequence for his thinking. The whole premodern tradition of speculation on the matter—Aristotle, Plotinus, the Schoolmen, Ficino, and so on—scarcely qualifies as prologue. And this means that, no matter how many times he sets out, all his journeys can traverse only the same small stretch of intellectual territory. After all, Descartes was remarkable not because, as Dennett claims, his vision was especially “vivid and compelling” (in comparison to the subtleties of earlier theories, it was crude, bizarre, and banal) but simply because no one before him had attempted systematically to situate mental phenomena within a universe otherwise understood as a mindless machine.

“…Descartes was remarkable…because no one before him had attempted systematically to situate mental phenomena within a universe otherwise understood as a mindless machine….”

It was only thus that the “problem” of the mental was born. The scientific novum organum (as Bacon called it) that achieved its first systematic expression in the seventeenth century, with its ambition to perfect a method of pure induction, proposed to the imagination the idea of a “real” physical world hidden behind the apparent one, an occult realm of pure material causation, utterly devoid of all the properties of mind, most especially intentional purposes. From at least the time of Galileo, a division was introduced between what Wilfrid Sellars called the “manifest image” and the “scientific image”: between, that is, the phenomenal world we experience and that imperceptible order of purely material forces that composes its physical substrate. And, at least at first, the divorce was amicable, inasmuch as phenomenal qualities were still granted a certain legitimacy; they were simply surrendered to the custody of the immaterial soul. But mind was now conceived as an exception within the frame of nature. In the premodern vision of things, the cosmos was seen as an inherently purposive structure of diverse but integrally inseparable rational relations—the Aristotelian aitia or causae, for instance, which are nothing like the uniform material “causes” of the mechanistic philosophy—and so the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect. Hence the mind, rather than an anomalous tenant of an alien universe, was instead the most concentrated and luminous expression of nature’s deepest essence. This is why it could pass with such wanton liberty through the “veil of Isis” and ever deeper into nature’s inner mysteries. The Cartesian picture, by contrast, was a chimera, an ungainly and extrinsic alliance of antinomies. And reason abhors a dualism.

“….the mind, rather than an anomalous tenant of an alien universe, was instead the most concentrated and luminous expression of nature’s deepest essence. This is why it could pass with such wanton liberty through the “veil of Isis” and ever deeper into nature’s inner mysteries. The Cartesian picture, by contrast, was a chimera, an ungainly and extrinsic alliance of antinomies. And reason abhors a dualism…”

Moreover, the sciences in their modern form aspire to universal explanation, ideally by way of the most comprehensive and parsimonious principles possible. So, it was inevitable that what began as an imperfect method for studying concrete particulars would soon metastasize into a metaphysics of the whole of reality. The manifest image was soon demoted to sheer illusion, and the mind that perceived it to an emergent product of the real (which is to say, mindless) causal order. And so, it is just here, in this phantom space between the phenomenal and physical worlds, that the most interesting questions should probably be raised. But Dennett has no use for those. He is content with the stark choice with which the modern picture confronts us: to adopt either a Cartesian dualism or a thoroughgoing mechanistic monism. And this is rather a pity, since in fact both options are equally absurd.

Not that this is very surprising. After five decades, it would be astonishing if Dennett were to change direction now. But, by the same token, his project should over that time have acquired not only more complexity but greater sophistication. And yet it has not. For instance, he still thinks it a solvent critique of Cartesianism to say that interactions between bodies and souls would violate the laws of physics; but this, apart from involving a particularly doctrinaire view of the “causal closure of the physical” (the positively Laplacian fantasy that all physical events constitute an inviolable continuum of purely physical causes), clumsily assumes that such an interaction would constitute simply another *mechanical exchange of energy in addition to material forces. Moreover, Dennett’s approach has remained largely fixed through the years. Rather than a sequence of careful logical arguments, his method remains, as ever, essentially *fabulous: that is, he constructs a grand speculative narrative, comprising a disturbing number of sheer assertions, and an even more disturbing number of missing transitions between episodes. It is often quite a beguiling tale, but its power of persuasion lies in its sprawling relentlessness rather than its cogency. Then again, to be fair, it is at least consistent in its aims. No less than the ancient Aristotelian model of reality, Dennett’s picture is meant to be one in which nature and mind are perfectly congruent with one another and in which therefore the post-Cartesian dilemma need never rear its misshapen head. Rather, however, than attempt to explain nature in terms of a “mind-like” order of rational relations, as Aristotelian tradition did, Dennett seeks to do very nearly the opposite: to reduce mind and nature alike to a computational system emerging from “uncomprehending competences,” as he calls them—small, particulate functions wholly unaware of the larger functions that, in the aggregate, they accomplish—of the sort whose principle was first fully understood by Alan Turing. And those functions, as retained, combined, and developed by the slow, diffident, mindless designing hand of natural selection, are—like the hugely intricate ensemble of discrete lines of code hiding behind the illusory simplicity of the icons on a computer’s screen—the real engines of everything that happens, hiding behind the phenomenal simplicity of perceptible nature. In Dennett’s telling, it is all very obvious: under certain chemical and environmental conditions, life will emerge in time and develop organisms with large brains, and these organisms will of necessity be social organisms. And social organisms require mental activity to survive and flourish. For Dennett, all evolutionary developments occur *because they incorporate useful adaptations; he has no patience for talk of “spandrels” or fortuitous hypertrophies (such, say, as the sudden emergence of language) under the pressure of no evolutionary rationale at all. And, so sanguine is he in his certainty that necessity is sufficient explanation for *why things happen that he often fails to consider whether the things that he claims have happened are, strictly speaking, possible. For him it seems evident that in the right circumstances, in time, natural selection will generate and preserve ever more competences without comprehension until, at some point of cumulative complexity, certain ensembles of those competences will *become comprehension. Slowly, what we think of as self-awareness and reflective consciousness emerged from, and in fact remain wholly dependent upon, innumerable small, unconscious, discrete forces. Exactly how this happens, of course—how physical causality is wondrously inverted into phenomenal awareness—is never exactly clear; but for Dennett, once again, the distinction between the useful and the possible is a hazy one at best. And, in a sense, it hardly matters, since even the appearance of rational conscious agency, as something in addition to or formally distinguishable from those tiny competences underlying it, is for Dennett only a useful illusion; and, again, since usefulness explains all things—well, I shall return to this below.

“….in a sense, it hardly matters, since even the appearance of rational conscious agency, as something in addition to or formally distinguishable from those tiny competences underlying it, is for Dennett only a useful illusion; and, again, since usefulness explains all things….”

In any event, something happened, and then there was language, which (once more) was very, very useful, and therefore naturally emerged, under the pressure of the social need to communicate, out of originally quite meaningless sounds and gestures. And once there were minds using language, culture evolved, and brains began shaping the reality they inhabited far more rapidly than the previous dynamisms of natural selection ever had. Even so, however, the process was more or less the same: an algorithmic distillation and recombination of “uncomprehending competences.” Even the mental and cultural worlds were, it turns out, essentially emergent results of such competences rather than consciously designing or designed realities. They were the product of “memes,” fragments of cultural usage that colonized and slowly reconfigured anthropoid brains and societies, and that perished or survived according to the mindless logic of natural selection. And that—though agonizingly protracted over several hundred pages—is the tale Dennett tells. Were it not for a half dozen or so of those missing transitions that I mentioned above, some of which are positively abyssal in size, it would no doubt amount to something more than just a ripping yarn. But, as it stands, it is nonsense.

Admittedly, part of the problem bedeviling Dennett’s narrative is the difficulty of making a case that seems so hard to reconcile with quotidian experience; but that difficulty is only exacerbated by his fierce adherence to an early modern style of materialism, according to whose tenets there can be no aspect of nature not reducible to blind physical forces. For him, the mechanistic picture, or its late modern equivalent, is absolute; it is convertible with truth as such, and whatever appears to escape its logic can never be more than a monstrosity of the imagination. But then the conscious mind constitutes a special dilemma, since this modern picture was produced precisely by excluding all mental properties from physical nature. And so, in this case, physicalist reduction means trying to explain one particular phenomenon—uniquely among all the phenomena of nature—by realities that are, in qualitative terms, quite literally its opposite. Really, in this regard, we have progressed very little since Descartes’s day. The classical problems that mental events pose for physicalism remain as numerous and seemingly insoluble as ever. Before all else, there is the enigma of consciousness itself, and of the *qualia that inhabit it, since there is not—and probably can never be—any causal narrative capable of uniting the phenomenologically discontinuous regions of “third-person” electrochemical brain events and “first-person” experiences, or any imaginable science *logically capable of crossing that absolute qualitative chasm. Then there is the irreducible unity of apprehension, without which there could be no coherent perception of anything at all, not even disjunctions within experience.

“…there is the irreducible unity of apprehension, without which there could be no coherent perception of anything at all, not even disjunctions within experience…”

As (for example) Kant realized, this is probably an insuperable difficulty for materialism; it is a unity that certainly cannot be reduced to some executive material faculty of the brain, as this would itself be a composite reality in need of unification by some still more original faculty, and so on forever, and whatever might lie at the “end” of that regressus in infinitum would already have to possess an inexplicable prior understanding of the diversity of experience that it organizes. For, even if we accept that the mind merely represents the world to itself under an assortment of convenient fictions, this would involve a semeiotic translation of sense data into specific perceptions and meanings; and translation requires a competence transcending the difference between the original “text” and its rendition. This problem, moreover, points toward the far more capacious and crucial problem of mental intentionality as such: the mind’s pure directedness (such that all thoughts are always *about things), its interpretation of sense experience under determinate aspects and meanings, its movement toward particular ends, its power to act according to rationales that would appear nowhere within any inventory of antecedent physical causes—all of which indicates an irreducibly teleological structure to thought incongruous with a closed physical order supposedly devoid of purposive causality. Similarly, there is the problem of the semantic and syntactic structure of rational thought, whose logically determined sequences seem impossible to reconcile with any supposed sufficiency of the continuous stream of physical causes occurring in the brain. And then there is the issue of abstraction, and its necessary *priority over sense experience—the way, for instance, that primordial and irreducible concepts of causality and of discrete forms are required for any understanding of the world of events around us, or the way some concept of resemblance must already be in place before one is able to note likenesses and unlikenesses between things, or even the way in which the bare concepts of Euclidean geometry permit us to recognize their imperfect analogues in nature. And then, also, there are those more-than-abstract—in fact, *transcendental—orientations of the mind, such as goodness or truth or being in the abstract, which appear to underlie every employment of thought and will, and yet correspond to no concrete objects within nature. And so on and so forth.

Traditionally, most philosophical approaches to these issues have merely restated the problems without any real advance in clarity (theories of supervenience, for example) or have tried awkwardly to evade them altogether (neutral monism, mysterianism). Sometimes a certain fatigue with the inconclusiveness of simple reductionism has prompted vogues in more exotic naturalisms (say, materialist panpsychism or quantum theories of consciousness), but these simply defer the question to an atomic or subatomic level without in any way diminishing the enigma. In a sense, perhaps, Dennett should be commended for his fidelity to the purer reductionisms of early modernity. In its austere emergentism, his position is very near to eliminativism: whatever cannot be reduced to the most basic physical explanations cannot really exist. But, alas, his story does not hold together. Some of the problems posed by mental phenomena he simply dismisses without adequate reason; others he ignores; most, however, he attempts to prove are mere “user-illusions” generated by evolutionary history, even though this sometimes involves claims so preposterous as to verge on the deranged. And, in every case, most of his argument consists in a small set of simple logical errors. The most conspicuous is one I think of as the “pleonastic fallacy”: the attempt to explain away an absolute qualitative difference—such as that between third-person physical events and first-person​ consciousness—by positing an indefinite number of minute quantitative steps, genetic or structural, supposedly sufficient to span the interval. Somewhere in the depths of phylogenic history something happened, and somewhere in the depths of our neurological machinery something happens, and both those somethings have accomplished within us an inversion of brute, mindless, physical causality into, at the very least, the *appearance of unified intentional consciousness. Then also there is Dennett’s tendency to confuse questions about natural capacities for questions about their contents, as when he repeatedly mistakes the issue of intrinsic subjective qualitative consciousness for the issue of the extrinsic objective verifiability of the objects of consciousness, or as when he fails to distinguish between the mystery of rational thought as such and the simple aetiological question of how sophisticated practices of reasoning might have evolved. And then there is what one might call his “Narcissan fallacy”: to wit, the tendency to mistake the reflection of human intentional agency in mindless objects, such as computers, for something analogous to a separate instance of mental agency. And then, also, there is his frequent failure to discern the difference between the literal and the metaphorical…. But I am getting ahead of myself.

II

Dennett is an orthodox neo-Darwinian, in the most gradualist of the sects. This is a fair enough position, but the burden of any narrative of emergence framed in those terms is that the stochastic logic of the tale must be guarded with untiring vigilance against any intrusion by “higher causes.” But, where consciousness is concerned, this may very well be an impossible task. The heart of Dennett’s project is, as I have said, the idea of “uncomprehending competences,” molded by natural selection into the intricate machinery of mental existence. As a model of the mind, however, the largest difficulty this poses is that of producing a credible catalogue of competences that are not ontologically dependent upon the very mental functions they supposedly compose. Certainly Dennett fails spectacularly in his treatment of the evolution of language. As a confirmed gradualist in all things, he takes violent exception to any notion of an irreducible innate grammar, like that proposed by Noam Chomsky, Robert Berwick, Richard Lewontin, and others. He objects even when those theories reduce the vital evolutionary saltation between prelinguistic and linguistic abilities to a single mutation, like the sudden appearance in evolutionary history of the elementary computational function now called “Merge” (which supposedly, among other things, all at once allowed for the syntactic combination of two distinct semantic elements, such as a noun and a verb). Fair enough. From Dennett’s perspective, after all, it would be hard to reconcile this universal grammar—an ability that necessarily began as an internal faculty of thought, dependent upon fully formed and discrete mental concepts, and only thereafter expressing itself in vocal signs—with a truly naturalist picture of reality. So, for Dennett, language *must have arisen out of social practices of communication, rooted in basic animal gestures and sounds in an initially accidental association with features of the environment. Only afterward could these elements have become words, spreading and interplicating and developing into complex structures of reference. There *must then, he assumes, have been “proto-languages” that have since died away, liminal systems of communication filling up (pleonastically?) the interval between animal vocalizations and human semeiotic and syntactic capacities. Unfortunately, this simply cannot be. There is no trace in nature even of primitive languages, let alone “proto-languages”; all languages possess the full hierarchy of grammatical constraints and powers. And this is not merely an argument from absence, like the missing fossils of all those dragons or unicorns that *must have once existed. It is logically impossible even to reverse-engineer anything that would qualify as a protolanguage. Every attempt to do so turns out secretly to rely on the syntactic and semeiotic functions of fully developed human language. At the same time, Dennett is probably quite right about how immense an evolutionary saltation the sudden emergence of language would be. Even the simple algorithm of “Merge” involves, for instance, a crucial disjunction between “structural proximity” and “linear proximity”—between, that is, a hypotactic or grammatical connection between parts of a sentence, regardless of their spatial and temporal proximity to one another, and the simple sequential ordering of signifiers in that sentence—without which nothing resembling linguistic practice is possible; yet that disjunction can itself exist nowhere except in fully developed language.

Dennett, however, writes as if language were simply the cumulative product of countless physical ingredients. It begins, he suggests, in mere phonology. A repeated sound with some kind of increasingly conventional connection to, say, some exterior physical situation somehow “embeds” itself in the brain and creates an “anchor” or “collection point” where syntactic and semantic meanings can then “develop around the sound.” But what could this mean? Are semeiotic functions something like iron filings and phonemes something like magnets? What is the physical basis for these marvelous congelations in the brain? The only possible organizing principle for such meanings would be that very innate grammar that Dennett denies exists—and this would also seem to require distinct mental concepts. Not that Dennett appears to think the difference between phonemes and conceptual references an especially significant one. He does not hesitate, for instance, to describe the “synanthropic” aptitudes that certain organisms (bedbugs, mice, and so on) acquire in adapting themselves to human beings as “semantic information” that can be “mindlessly gleaned” from the “cycle of generations.” But there is no such thing as mindless semantics. True, it is imaginable that the accidental development of arbitrary prelinguistic associations between, say, certain behaviors and certain aspects of a physical environment might be preserved by natural selection and become beneficial adaptations. But all semantic information consists in the interpretation of signs, conventions of meaning in which signs and references are formally separable, and in which semeiotic relations are susceptible of combination in other, larger contexts of meaning. Signs are intentional realities, dependent upon concepts, all the way down. And between mere accidental associations and intentional signs there is a discontinuity that no gradualist—no pleonastic—narrative can span. Similarly, when Dennett claims that words are “memes” that reproduce “virally,” he is speaking pure gibberish. Words reproduce, within minds and between persons, by being intentionally adopted and employed.

Here, as it happens, lurks the most incorrigibly problematic aspect of Dennett’s project. The very concept of “memes”—Richard Dawkins’s irredeemably vague notion of cultural units of meaning or practice that invade brains and then, rather like genetic materials, thrive or perish through natural selection—is at once so vapid and yet so fantastic that it is scarcely tolerable as a metaphor. But a depressingly substantial part of Dennett’s argument requires not only that memes be accorded the status of real objects but that they also be regarded as concrete causal forces in the neurology of the brain, whose power of ceaseless combination creates most of the mind’s higher functions. And this is almost poignantly absurd. I suppose it is possible to think of intentional consciousness as having arisen from an improbable combination of purely physical ingredients (even if, as yet, the story of that seemingly miraculous metabolism of mechanism into meaning cannot be imagined); but it seems altogether bizarre to imagine intentionality as the product of forces that would themselves be, if they existed at all, nothing but acts of intentionality. What could memes be other than mental conventions, meanings subsisting in semeiotic practices? As such, their intricate interweaving would be not the source but rather the product of the mental faculties they inhabit; they could possess only such complexity as the already present intentional powers of the mind could impose upon them. And it is a fairly inflexible law of logic that no reality can be the emergent result of its own contingent effects.

“…it is a fairly inflexible law of logic that no reality can be the emergent result of its own contingent effects…”

This is why, also, it is difficult to make much sense of Dennett’s claim that the brain is “a kind of computer,” and mind merely an “interface” between the computer and its “user.” Admittedly, the idea that the mind is a kind of software is a fairly popular delusion just at the moment, but that hardly excuses a putatively serious philosopher for perpetuating it—though, I admit, Dennett does so in a distinctive way. Usually, when one is confronted by the computational model of mind, it is enough to point out that what minds do is precisely everything that computers do not do, and that therein lies much of a computer’s usefulness. Really, it would be no less apt to describe the mind as a kind of abacus. In the physical functions of a computer, there is neither a semantics nor a syntax of meaning. There is nothing resembling thought at all. There is no intentionality, or anything remotely analogous to intentionality or even to the illusion of intentionality. There is a binary system of notation that subserves a considerable number of intrinsically mindless functions. When computers are in operation, they are guided by the mental intentions of their programmers and users, and they provide an instrumentality by which one intending mind can transcribe meanings into electronic traces and another can translate those traces into meaning again. But the same is true of books when they are “in operation.” And this is why I spoke above of a “Narcissan fallacy”: computers are such wonderfully complicated and versatile abacuses that our own intentional activity, when reflected in their functions, seems at times to take on the haunting appearance of another autonomous rational intellect, just there on the other side of the screen. It is a bewitching illusion, but an illusion all the same. And, as I say, this would usually suffice as an objection to any given computational model of mind. But, curiously enough, in Dennett’s case it does not, because to a very large degree he would freely grant that computers only appear to be conscious agents; the perversity of his argument, notoriously, is that he believes the same to be true of us.

III 

For Dennett, the “scientific image” is the only one that corresponds to reality. The “manifest image,” by contrast, is a collection of useful illusions, shaped by evolution to provide a kind of “interface” between our brains and the world, and thus to allow us to interact with our environments.

“…For Dennett, the “scientific image” is the only one that corresponds to reality. The “manifest image,” by contrast, is a collection of useful illusions…”

The phenomenal qualities that compose our experience, the meanings and intentions that fill our thoughts, the whole world of perception and interpretation—these are merely how the machinery of our nervous systems and brains represents reality to us, for purely practical reasons. Just as the easily manipulated icons on a computer’s screen conceal the innumerable “uncomprehending competences” by which programs run, even while enabling us to use those programs, so the virtual distillates of reality that constitute phenomenal experience permit us to master an unseen world of countless qualityless and purposeless physical forces. Very well. In a sense, this is simply the standard modern account of how the mind relates to the physical order. The extravagant assertion that Dennett adds to this account, however, is that consciousness itself, understood as a real dimension of wholly first-person phenomenal experience and intentional meaning, is itself only another “user-illusion.” That vast qualitative abyss between objective physical events and subjective qualitative experience that I mentioned above does not exist; and, hence, that seemingly magical transition from the one to the other—whether genetic or structural—need not be explained, because it has never actually occurred.

“…The extravagant assertion that Dennett adds to this account, however, is that consciousness itself, understood as a real dimension of wholly first-person phenomenal experience and intentional meaning, is itself only another “user-illusion.” That vast qualitative abyss between objective physical events and subjective qualitative experience that I mentioned above does not exist; and, hence, that seemingly magical transition from the one to the other—whether genetic or structural—need not be explained, because it has never actually occurred…”

This whole notion that consciousness is an illusion is, of course, rather silly. Dennett has been making the argument for most of his career, and it is just abrasively counterintuitive enough to create the strong suspicion in many that it must be more philosophically cogent than it seems, because surely no one would say such a thing if there were not some subtle and penetrating truth hidden behind its apparent absurdity. But there is none. The simple truth of the matter is that Dennett is a fanatic: he believes so fiercely in the unique authority and absolutely comprehensive competency of the “third-person scientific perspective” that he is willing to deny not only the analytic authority but also the actual existence of the first-person vantage. At the very least, though, he is an intellectually consistent fanatic, inasmuch as he correctly grasps (as many other physical reductionists do not) that consciousness really is irreconcilable with a coherent metaphysical naturalism. Since, however, the position he champions is inherently ridiculous, the only way that he can argue on its behalf is by relentlessly, and in as many ways as possible, changing the subject whenever the obvious objections are raised.

For what it is worth, Dennett often exhibits considerable ingenuity in his evasions—so much ingenuity, in fact, that he sometimes seems to have succeeded in baffling even himself. For instance, at one point in this book he takes up the question of “zombies”—the possibility of apparently perfectly functioning human beings who nevertheless possess no interior affective world at all—but in doing so seems to have entirely forgotten what the whole question of consciousness actually is. He rejects the very notion that we “have ‘privileged access’ to the *causes and *sources of our convictions,” as though knowledge of the causes of consciousness were somehow germane to the issue of knowledge of the *experience of consciousness. And if you imagine you *know that you are not a zombie “unwittingly” imagining that you have “real consciousness with real qualia,” Dennett’s reply is a curt “No, you don’t”—because, you see, “Your only support for that conviction is the vehemence of the conviction itself” (363).

“….if you imagine you *know that you are not a zombie “unwittingly” imagining that you have “real consciousness with real qualia,” Dennett’s reply is a curt “No, you don’t”—because….”

It is hard to know how to answer this argument without mockery. It is quite amazing how thoroughly Dennett seems to have lost the thread here. For one thing, a zombie could not unwittingly imagine anything, since he would possess no consciousness at all, let alone reflective consciousness; that is the whole point of the imaginative exercise. And so, insofar as you are convinced of anything at all, whether vehemently or tepidly, and are aware of your conviction, you do in fact know with absolute certitude that you yourself are not a zombie. Nor does it matter whether you know where your convictions come from; it is the very state of having convictions as such that apprises you of your intrinsic intentionality and your irreducibly private conscious experience. Simply said, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious, because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it. But this confusion is entirely typical of Dennett’s position. In this book, as he has done repeatedly in previous texts, he mistakes the question of the existence of subjective experience for the entirely irrelevant question of the objective *accuracy of subjective perceptions and whether we need to appeal to third-person observers to confirm our impressions. But, of course, all that matters is that we have impressions at all. Moreover, and perhaps most bizarrely, he thinks that consciousness can be dismissed as an illusion—the fiction of an inner theater, residing in ourselves and in those around us—on the grounds that behind the appearance of conscious states there are an incalculable number of uncomprehending competences at work, in both the unseen machinery of our brains and the larger social contexts of others’ brains. In other words, because there are many unknown physical concomitants to conscious states, those states do not exist. But, of course, this is the very problem at issue: that the limpid immediacy and incommunicable privacy of consciousness is utterly unlike the composite, objective, material sequences of physical causality and seems impossible to explain in terms of that causality—and yet exists nonetheless, and exists more surely than any presumed world “out there.”

That, as it happens, may be the chief question Dennett neglects to ask: Why presume that the “scientific image” is true while the “manifest image” is an illusion when, after all, the scientific image is a supposition of reason dependent upon decisions regarding method, whereas the manifest image—the world as it exists in the conscious mind—presents itself directly to us as an indubitable, inescapable, and eminently coherent reality in every single moment of our lives? How could one possibly determine here what should qualify as reality as such? Dennett certainly provides small reason why anyone else should adopt the prejudices he cherishes. The point of From Bacteria to Bach and Back is to show that minds are only brains, and brains only aggregates of mindless elements and forces; but it shows nothing of the sort. The journey it promises to describe turns out to be the real illusion: rather than a continuous causal narrative, seamlessly and cumulatively progressing from the most primitive material causes up to the most complex mental results, it turns out to be a hopelessly recursive narrative, a long languid lemniscate of a tale, twisting back and forth between low and high—between the supposed basic ingredients underlying the mind’s evolution and the fully realized mental phenomena upon which those ingredients turn out to be wholly dependent. It is nearly enough to make one suspect that Dennett must have the whole thing backward. Perhaps the scientific and manifest images are both real, but then again perhaps *only the manifest image is. Perhaps the mind inhabits a real Platonic order of being, where ideal forms express themselves in phenomenal reflections, while the scientific image—a mechanistic regime devoid of purpose and composed of purely particulate causes, stirred only by blind, random impulses—is a fantasy, a pale abstraction decocted from the material residues of an immeasurably richer reality. Certainly, if Dennett’s book encourages one to adopt any position at all, reason dictates that it should probably be something like the exact reverse of the one he defends. The attempt to reduce the phenomena of mental existence to a purely physical history has been attempted before and has so far always failed. But, after so many years of unremitting labor, and so many enormous books making wildly implausible claims, Dennett can at least be praised for having failed on an altogether majestic scale.

 

End Quote/Excerpt

 

A unified field of apprehending joins the unity of consciousness as we navigate Third Person descriptions and First-Person experiences. The following is (in full) a Copy/Paste from the book “Roland In Moonlight” by David Bentley Hart (…Amazon https://www.amazon.com/David-Bentley-Hart/e/B001JRTRC0…). The excerpt is from section/chapter XXV entitled “The Plan For The Book” as DBH ponders a possible approach to a book dealing with these concepts.

Begin Quote/Excerpt [*Note: bold added]

XXV

2: The Plan For The Book

The text, as I now envisage it, will have five major divisions. Part I will be an account of the rise of the “problem of mind” as a result of the early modern triumph of the mechanical philosophy and, in time, of the late modern dominance of the philosophical naturalism that was its inevitable sequel. As inheritors of a picture of reality shaped by this mechanistic metaphysics, we today are confronted by an altogether preposterous dilemma when we attempt to make sense of the reality of unified consciousness or intentional mental acts or a host of other mental phenomena. Within the mechanical narrative, matter is mindless mass, and physical causality mindless force, and so the presence—or apparent presence—within nature of such things as, say, conceptual abstractions or volitions or final purposes creates a theoretical problem that seems to allow of only two possible solutions: either some version of Cartesian dualism (in which the body is a machine centrally operated by an immaterial homunculus called the “soul”) or a thoroughgoing mechanical monism (in which mind is an emergent result or epiphenomenon of unguided physical events). And naturally many materialist philosophers or neuroscientists assume that, if they can only dispose of the Cartesian soul once and for all, they will have by default established the supremacy of the physicalist position; and assume also that to accomplish this they need only find instances in which the brain operates without immediately conscious supervision on the part of any purely rational and cognizant agency within—moments, that is, when the homunculus appears to be asleep at the controls. For then, they imagine, they will have proved that everything, mind included, is only a form of mechanism after all, and no Wonderful Wizard is to be found on the other side of the screen, pulling the levers. The mechanistic paradigms within which they operate condemn them to an inescapable binary choice: if they are not to believe in a ghost mysteriously animating a machine then they must make themselves believe in a machine miraculously generating a ghost.

There is, of course, a history here. The extraordinary fruitfulness of modern scientific method was achieved, before all else, by a severe narrowing of investigative focus; and this involved the willful shedding of an older language of causality that possessed great richness, but that also seemed to resist empirical investigation. The first principle of the new organon was a negative one: the exclusion from scientific investigations of any consideration of possible formal and final causes, and even of a distinct principle of “life,” in favor of an ideally inductive method, supposedly purged of metaphysical prejudices, according to which all natural systems were to be conceived as mere machine processes, and all real causality as exchanges of energy between material masses. Everything physical became, in a sense, reducible to the mechanics of local motion; even complex organic order came to be understood as the purely emergent result of physical forces moving through time from past to future as if through Newtonian space. Everything came to be regarded as ultimately reducible to the most basic level of material existence, and to the mathematically calculable physical consequences of purely physical antecedent causes. And while at first many of the thinkers of early modernity were content to draw brackets around material nature, and to allow for the existence of realities beyond the physical—mind, soul, disembodied spirits, God—they necessarily imagined these latter as being essentially extrinsic to the purely mechanical order that they animated, inhabited, or created. Thus, in place of classical theism’s metaphysics of participation in a God of infinite being and rationality, these thinkers granted room only for the adventitious and finite Cosmic Mechanic or Supreme Being of Deism or (as it is called today) Intelligent Design Theory. And, in place of the spiritual soul of antique thought, they allowed for only Cartesian dualism’s “ghost in the machine.” But, of course, even the constrained ontological liberality of this compromise was unsustainable. Reason abhors a dualism. Any ultimate ground of explanation must be one that unites all dimensions of being in a simpler, more conceptually parsimonious principle, capable of reconciling any apparent antinomies. Soul and body could not continue indefinitely to coexist as utterly distinct principles in only accidental alliance, especially given that only the latter fell within the province of the new strictly inductive sciences. Thus, inevitably, what began as method soon metastasized into a metaphysics, almost by inadvertence. For a truly scientific view of reality, it came to be believed, everything—even mind—must be reducible to one and the same mechanics of motion. Those methodological brackets that had been so helpfully drawn around the physical order now became the very shape of reality itself; beyond them lay, by definition, absolutely nothing.

It was always something of a fantasy, of course. For one thing, even as a method, the mechanical model could extend only so far. Pure induction is an impossible ideal. In the life sciences, for instance, organisms can only very rarely be investigated without any hypothetical appeals whatsoever to purpose, or without treating organic structures as intentional systems; and only metaphysical prejudice dictates that this purposive language is no more than a useful and dispensable fiction. Moreover, before “higher causes” like form and finality could be excised from the grammar of the sciences, they had first to be radically misconstrued. Even such residual Aristotelian terminology as remained in the sciences had already, by the late sixteenth century, been mechanized, so to speak. Form and finality had come to be seen as physical forces or influences extrinsic to a material substrate that in itself was not the pure potentiality of prime matter but merely a universal, subtle, ductile, unarticulated physical substance. The elements of nature were not imagined, as they had been in the classical and mediaeval synthesis, as having an intrinsic disposition toward order or vital integrity; they were seen simply as inert ingredients upon which formal determinations were adventitiously impressed, under the external guidance of final causes that operated merely as factitious designs. And so, seen thus, form and finality soon came to seem not only superfluous suppositions, but little more than features of an inferior and obsolete mechanical model. One cannot, however, really reject something one does not understand.

Neither Aristotle’s concept of an “aitia,” nor any scholastic concept of a “causa,” actually corresponds to what we—following our early modern predecessors—mean when we speak of a “cause.” A better rendering of “aitiai” or “causae,” in the ancient or mediaeval sense, might be “explanations,” “rationales,” “logical descriptions,” or (still better) “rational relations.” The older fourfold nexus of causality was not, that is to say, a defective attempt at modern physical science, but was instead chiefly a grammar of predication, describing the inherent logical structure of anything that exists insofar as it exists, and reflecting a world in which things and events are at once discretely identifiable and yet part of the larger dynamic continuum of the whole. It was a simple logical picture of a reality in which both stability and change can be recognized and designated. And these aitiai or causae were intrinsic and indiscerptibly integral relations, distinct dimensions of a single causal logic, not separated forces in extrinsic relation to one another. A final cause, for instance, was an inherent natural end, not an adventitiously imposed design; and this was true even when teleology involved external uses rather than merely internal perfections (as in the case of human artifacts); it was at once a thing’s internal fullness and its external participation in the totality of nature. In a sense, a causal relation in this scheme is less like a physical interaction or exchange of energy than it is like a mathematical equation, or like the syntax of a coherent sentence. Admittedly, this is a picture of reality that comes from ages in which it was assumed that the structure of the world was analogous to the structure of rational thought. But, then again, this was an eminently logical assumption, if only because there appears to be a more than illusory or accidental reciprocal openness between mind and world, and because the mind appears genuinely able to penetrate the physical order by way of irreducibly noetic practices like mathematics and logic and systematic observation.

Part II will be a consideration of various difficulties that the modern picture of the world creates for the philosophy of mind. Once nature had been reconceived as essentially mindless, precisely through the methodological exclusion of anything analogous to mind from our understanding of the structure of physical reality, the attempt to reintegrate the phenomena of mental life into our picture of nature became entirely hopeless. And once every attempt at physical explanation has been exhausted (see below), only two possible courses appear to remain, both of which are arguably absurd in their own terms: either total eliminativism, according to which consciousness and all its properties are illusions; or a physicalist panpsychism, which understands consciousness as a kind of property simply present in all material states, in varying degrees of cumulative complexity.

Here, I shall begin by making it clear that current neurophysiological attempts to account for mental phenomena—while they may provide an ever more comprehensive and precise catalogue of correspondences between brain events and certain mental states— necessarily fail to disclose any plausible causal connection between those third-person descriptions and those first-person experiences. I shall then address many of the classic impediments to a physicalist philosophy of mind: qualia or qualitative consciousness as such, which is to say first-person sensuous intuition, immediate impressions, and self-awareness; abstract concepts, not only as features of thought, but as the indispensable conditions of thought; language and its irreducible syntactic and semantic properties, which it seems impossible credibly to explain in purely physical evolutionary terms; the syntax and semantics of acts of reason, or of any mental acts whose internal connections appear to be conceptual or logical rather than merely physical; the unified field of experience and thought, which seems impossible to reconcile with the composite nature of physical structures and functions; mental intentionality— intrinsic intentionality, to use the technical term—which for any number of reasons (principally, its irreducibly teleological structure) seems irreconcilable with a mechanical or physicalist account of mind.

This part of the book will also deal with the inadequacy— increasingly acknowledged even by “naturalist” philosophers of mind—of many of the standard attempts to close the gap between physical third-person descriptions and first-person descriptions of consciousness and thought. Often, in fact, these attempts at explanation turn out simply to be ways of restating the problem without solving it, as is the case with most theories of “supervenience.” At other times, they simply reduce first-person phenomena to irrelevancy without actually explaining anything, as in the case of “epiphenomenalism.” Sometimes, they are simply defective analogies, based on basic category errors, as in the case of “computational” models of mind. And, in general, there seems as yet to be nothing approaching a coherent account of how mental phenomena emerge from physical events (however closely associated with those events they may be).

In part, this is because of the inherently nebulous nature of the very concept of “emergence” or “emergent properties” as it is used in the sciences today, in either evolutionary biology or neuroscience. All too often, talk of “emergence” merely provides a convenient way of evading problems without appearing to have done so. It is, admittedly, a beguilingly simple idea—the notion that there are in nature composite realities whose peculiar properties and capacities emerge from the interaction of their elements, even though these properties and capacities do not reside in those elements themselves. An emergent whole, in other words, is more than—or at any rate different from—the sum of its parts; it is not simply the consequence of an accumulation of discrete powers added together in a sum, but the effect of a specific ordering of relations among those powers that produces something entirely new within nature. And this idea is quite true in a general sense; but it is also a limited truth in many crucial senses. For, if it is to close the devilish explanatory gap between mechanism and mind, the model of emergence employed must somehow entail the appearance of new physical realities that, even though they remain dependent upon the native properties of the elements composing them, nevertheless possess characteristics entirely irreducible to those properties. But this makes no sense. At least, as a claim made solely about physical processes, organisms, and structures in purely material terms it cannot possibly be true. From a physical perspective, emergent properties cannot be discontinuous from the properties of the prior causes from which they arise; anything, in principle, must be reducible, by a series of “geometrical” steps, to the physical attributes of its ingredients. Water, for example, is composed of two very combustible gaseous elements, hydrogen and oxygen, and yet it possesses the novel property of liquidity and a capacity for extinguishing fire. But, while these new properties are not identical with any properties resident in either hydrogen or oxygen molecules, they are most definitely reducible to those special molecular properties that, in a particular combination, cause hydrogen and oxygen to negate one another’s combustible propensities and gaseous structures. So long as this is all that is meant by “emergence,” then the concept is as inoffensive as it is obvious.

Problems arise, however, when the concept is asked to explain away causal gaps in nature that more closely resemble the difference between, say, the physical elements from which a computer is composed and that computer’s functions. True enough, a computer is composed wholly of silicon, metal, plastic, electrical impulses, and so forth, and yet its operations are not only not present in any of its discrete parts, but are qualitatively different from any mere aggregation of the properties of those parts. But this is because a computer’s functions do not emerge from its physical ingredients at all. What distinguishes its powers from those individually possessed by its various material elements is not any emergent property, but rather the causal influence of a creative intellect acting upon those elements from without. So, while it is true that nothing that characterizes a computer physically is anything more than a mathematically predictable result of certain physical antecedents, those operations that actually involve computing in the full sense have been imposed upon the computer’s physical constituents by a further, more eminent, formal causality (itself directed by a final causality). At the purely material level, whatever is truly emergent is also reducible to that from which it emerges; otherwise, “emergence” is merely the name of some kind of magical transition between intrinsically disparate realities.

Hence, as I have said, the two most extreme options for dealing with the problem of mind in the terms provided by the modern metaphysics of nature—total eliminativism and physicalist panpsychism—are really the only ones not precluded by the limits of the logic of emergence. But both, alas, suffer from conceptual and logical problems of their own. Eliminativism asks us to entertain the idea that consciousness can be an illusion despite the phenomenologically verifiable reality of consciousness as normally conceived, and despite the inconvenient reality that an “illusion of consciousness”—being an intentional state embraced within a unified field of apprehension and experienced by a self-aware affective subject— would have to be a “consciousness of illusion.” Logical circles tend not to advance one’s argument. Panpsychism, meanwhile, understood as a purely physicalist (rather than classically idealist) doctrine, answers no questions; it merely defers the question to the subatomic level, in the vain hope that it may grow so very small that it will vanish away altogether. But we end up with the same paradox: one and the same atom (say) possesses two contradictory aspects, each of which is the logical inversion of the other—in Kantian terms, the nomological and the pathological. One side of the thing (that bound by physical laws) is mechanistic and empirical, the other (that possessed of qualitative awareness) is teleological and transcendental. The interaction between the two sides is no less mysterious for being atomized. And this is no less true when panpsychism is supplemented by the quantitative “science” of Integrated Information Theory (as proposed by Giulio Tononi). There is, moreover, the not inconsiderable problem that consciousness is not really a “property” in any coherent sense, the way that mass or velocity is: an invariant “fact about” a discrete substance or event that may have different effects (in the case of mass, for instance, according to the degree to which it is subject to gravity), but that is otherwise simply another way of describing that substance or event. Consciousness is nothing like that. It exists not as a quality or mode or accident of something else, but only and always as a specific kind of act, phenomenologically describable but not reducible to any physical or intrinsic “state” apart from the activity itself. It exists, that is, as a kind of agency, which is to say that every event of consciousness is an action attributable to an agent. This consideration leads to:

Part III, which will attempt to ask the question of mind anew, this time from a more properly phenomenological point of departure. If we begin from an entirely unprejudiced examination of mental acts—what consciousness “does,” how intentionality “works,” how unity and diversity become manifest within the mind’s “field” of operation, and so forth—we find that there is no clear boundary between the contours of the mind’s operations and those of the world as it appears within consciousness. The conditions necessary for knowledge of the world and the conditions necessary for the world’s existence as an object of knowledge at any number of vital points seem insensibly to merge into a single reality. Most striking in this regard is the way in which the world, as perceived under the conditions of the mind’s necessary unity of apprehension, depends upon the mind’s constant intentional reference to a final horizon of intelligibility that can be characterized only as transcendental. Neither that simplicity nor that ultimacy is a reality that can be found within nature as a closed totality, and certainly neither appears consistent with any physicalist theory of the world; and yet only by virtue of both realities at once, in indissoluble unity with one another, does nature have any kind of comprehensible existence for us as a phenomenon available to the intending intellect. It is only between these two indispensable and enduring extra-natural poles—the unity of the apprehending mind, the transcendental finality of the intending mind—that nature takes shape as a distinct reality, at once infinitely diverse and irreducibly unified. Every movement of the conscious and intending mind toward any finite end is an act at once of recognition, evaluation, judgment, and choice, all of which are possible for the mind by virtue of its own more primordial, more tacit, more unremitting preoccupation with that transcendental horizon that gives all finite things their meanings and their identities for us. All the objects and moments of experience, and all their relations and disjunctions and coordinations and successions, and every meaning, conceptual possibility, or purpose attaching to them are available to the mind only as embraced within and illuminated by that anticipation of the ultimate object of desire (the good, the true, the beautiful…). And that horizon, obviously enough, consists in a set of abstract perfections that are, as absolute objects of the rational will, at once both noetic and ontological. They are, to revert to the terms of a very venerable metaphysical tradition, the “names of God”: words used to indicate (but not, certainly, describe) the most original and most ultimate ground of reality, which is at once infinite being and infinite mind. One need not believe, I imagine, that these concepts have an actual objective reference; but, even so, one must recognize that our minds possess a world that can be experienced, interpreted, and understood only in and by their implicit and inexhaustible engagement with a supernatural order of meaning. This being so, it seems only rational to grant that the reality of such an order would at the very least provide us with an explanation for the curious and otherwise inexplicable fact of the transparency of mind and world to one another. If, after all, that were nothing but an extrinsic relation, some kind of fortuitous harmony, then it would constitute the most remarkable—and yet the most ubiquitous and constant—coincidence of qualitative incommensurables imaginable. Why, then, ought we assume any real causal discontinuity between the world’s being and the mind’s knowing of the world? At some point, surely, it becomes impossible not to wonder whether the only properly empirical approach to the question of mental reality should begin with a radically different kind of methodological bracketing: one that suspends every presupposition regarding a real distinction between epistemology and ontology.

At least, we should never simply assume that being and consciousness are ever truly severable from one another. Could something exist, for instance, in such a manner that it could not be perceived or thought about in any way at all, not even by itself, even in principle? In what sense would it be distinct from absolute nothingness? It certainly seems reasonable to say that being is manifestation, that real subsistence is revelation, that to exist is to be perceptible, conceivable, knowable—and that, moreover, to exist fully is to be manifest to consciousness. If there were a universe in which consciousness did not exist, in what sense precisely would that universe itself exist? Certainly not as a fully articulated spatial and temporal reality filled with clearly discrete objects, like the universe that exists in our minds. The reality we find present in our thoughts, in which intensities and densities and durations and successions are arranged in such magnificently complex but diverse order, exists only relative to consciousness; at the phenomenal level—the level of reality as it appears to intentional awareness—nothing would exist at all. In itself, if it had any reality in itself, this “mindless” universe would be only a plenum or totality of indeterminate quantum potentialities. It would be something quite different from the extended reality of space and time known to us. Even then, it seems fair to say that if such a universe did in some sense exist, it would do so exactly to the extent that it could be known to consciousness of some kind. There is no such thing as ontological coherence that is not a rational coherence. There is a point then, arguably, at which being and intelligibility become conceptually indistinguishable. It is only as an intelligible order, as a coherent phenomenon, that anything is anything at all, whether an elementary particle or a universe; perhaps it is true that only what could in principle be known can in actuality exist. So, at any rate, we have to believe. The rational desire to know the truth of things, in every sphere, is sustained by a tacit faith in some kind of ultimate coincidence or convertibility between being and consciousness. That natural orientation of the mind toward a horizon of total intelligibility mentioned above—that natural intellectual appetite for truth— requires us to venture all our labors of understanding on the assumption that rational thought and coherent order are two sides of a single reality, or at least somehow naturally fitted to one another. If we believe that the structure of reality can truly be mirrored in the structure of our thinking, then we must also believe that there is an ideal or purely intelligible dimension of reality that really corresponds to the categories and concepts that allow us to understand the world. We must believe that being in itself is pure intelligibility.

Part IV will take this line of reasoning perhaps as far as it can go and attempt to demonstrate that every act of conscious, unified, intentional mind is necessarily dependent upon infinite mind— which is to say, God. If the argument of Part III is correct, then the whole of what we know as nature appears in the interval between two transcendental realities: the apperceptive unity of intentional consciousness and the teleological universality of being as total intelligibility. This is the structure of thought; and so the whole world of nature occurs between two poles that cannot be fitted within the naturalist picture. As Part II has argued, the logical and ontological priority of neither pole admits of a materialist solution, even though the material order is constituted as an intelligible totality only by the relation between them. Thus the physicalist continuum is broken open at both ends, experience of the “natural” proves to be the gift of “super-natural” knowledge, and a certain set of metaphysical questions inevitably pose themselves. Chiefly, we should ask whether this ordo cognoscendi [order of knowing] must be (as one ancient deduction of reason insists) an inversion of the ultimate ordo essendi, [order of being] and whether this relation between subjective unity of consciousness and its (gnoseological) end in the fullness of transcendent being is a glimpse—caught in the looking glass of rational reflection—of the real relation between transcendent being as original source and the subject as its (ontological) end.

If in fact world and mind really are open to one another in this way, then once more it seems we should accord a certain causal priority to mind over matter in our picture of reality. If the materialist understanding of nature were essentially correct, it would be difficult enough to account for the existence of consciousness; but it would be far more difficult still to say how consciousness, in all its exorbitant difference from the purposeless welter of physical causality, could actually capture the truth of physical reality in the exquisite trammels of its concepts. Yet it certainly seems that, in abstracting experience into various kinds of ideal content—formal, mathematical, moral, aesthetic, and so on—the mind really does extract knowledge from what would otherwise be nothing but meaningless brute events. In fact, reality becomes more intelligible to us the more we are able to translate it into purely mental concepts, and to arrange it under categories, and then to arrange our concepts under ever simpler, more comprehensive, more unconditioned concepts, always ascending towards the simplest and most capacious concept our minds can reach. To say that something has become entirely intelligible to us is to say that we have an idea of it that is both comprehensively simple as an explanatory principle and that also leaves no empirical or conceptual remainder behind. It is to say, in accord with so much classical and mediaeval thought, that the ideal and intrinsically intelligible dimension of things is not only a real property of their existence, but in some sense is identical with their existence.

What is an idea, however, other than the expression of a rational intentionality? And how, therefore, could being be pure intelligibility if it were not also pure intelligence? Surely, something has to be said for Bernard Lonergan’s famous argument that the “unrestricted intelligibility” of reality leads thought to God as the one “unrestricted act of understanding.” As the mind moves towards an ever more comprehensive and “supereminent” grasp of reality, it necessarily moves towards an ideal level of reality at which intelligibility and intelligence are no longer distinguishable: for what is the ideal other than the known? The mind can be a true mirror of objective reality because we assume that objective reality is already a mirror of mind. The ascent towards ever greater knowledge is, if only tacitly, an ascent towards an ultimate encounter with limitless consciousness, limitless reason, a transcendent reality where being and knowledge are always already one and the same, and so inalienable from one another.

Perhaps, then, the best definition of mind is “a restricted instance of that unrestricted act”: like light captured in and refracted by a prism, being—which is consciousness—expresses itself in the faceted finitude of our natures. But it is God in himself who is the logical order of all reality, the ground both of the subjective rationality of mind and the objective rationality of being, the transcendent and indwelling Reason or Wisdom by which mind and matter are both informed and in which both participate. If indeed to exist is to be manifest—to be intelligible and perceptible—and if to exist fully is to be consciously known, then God, as infinite being, is also an act of infinite knowledge. He is in himself the absolute unity of consciousness and being, and so in the realm of contingent things is the source of the fittedness of consciousness and being each to the other, the one ontological reality of reason as it exists both in thought and in the structure of the universe. Thus, when one looks inward, towards that vanishing point of unity that makes the whole of mental life possible, one looks—as all contemplative traditions insist—towards the source and ground of the mind, the simplicity of God, the one ground of both consciousness and being. More inward to consciousness than consciousness itself is that scintilla or spark of divine light that imparts life and truth to the soul; and the mind’s interior journey towards its own wellspring brings it to a place where it finds itself utterly dependent upon the sublime simplicity of God’s knowledge of all things in his knowledge of himself. And thus also, when one looks outward, towards the world, one looks towards that same source, that same unity of being and intelligibility. So, whether one looks outward or inward, the soul looks upon the soul; or, to say the same thing from the opposite angle, being looks upon being; and thus—in either case—one encounters God in his self-disclosure.

In short, the structure of all thought is a relation of the mind to God. In fact, teleologically considered, the mind is God, striving not only to see—but to become—infinite knowledge of infinite being, beyond any distinction between knower and known. Which may be one way of saying that, as the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad tells us, Ayam Ātmā Brahma: Ātman is Brahman. It may be that this is the first and most obvious of the truths of reason.

Thus Part V will argue that the only “science of mind” that could actually disclose the nature of the mental in its own intrinsic aspect would be something like the contemplative discipline proper to the great mystical traditions of the world’s religions. There can be no real science of mind that is not, in fact, a spiritual science. This part of the text, however, I cannot really summarize, except to say that it will draw on Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Platonist, and other contemplative sources to describe the real experience of a final coincidence of being and knowing in God or the transcendent ground of all: the experience, that is, of that place where “Hie ist gotes grunt mìn grunt unde mìn grunt gotes grunt” (as Eckhart says), and where nous finds itself at home in its divine source (as Plotinus says), and where one knows God to be at once interior intimo meo and superior summo meo (as Augustine says), and where delimited being (al-wujûd al-muqayyad) returns to its wellspring in the Nondelimited Being (al-wujûd al-mutlaq) of the divine light (as ibn Qunawi says), and where the “secret soul” (ruh sirr) within us is revealed as the eternal breath (ruh) of God, breathed into us in creation. It is here that the unity of mind, in its teleological co-extensiveness with all of reality, meets the unity of being, and we discover that the irreducibility of mind to physical causes and the irreducibility of being to physical events are one and the same irreducibility.

End Quote/Excerpt [*Note: bold added]

Related: Consciousness, Emergence, Intentionality, Searle, Reason Atop The Irrational, And Naturalism’s Egregious Deficiency https://metachristianity.com/consciousness-emergence-intentionality-searle-reason-atop-the-irrational/

END

Mind Body Interaction Problem? What Interaction Problem? There cannot be any such “problem” given Being’s Superseding Ontic Over Both Material and Non-Being. Being’s Ontic Weight supersedes the Ontic Weight of both Material and Non-Being just as the Ontic Ordering of Being||Material||Non-Being finds Being necessarily Ordered Ahead-Of/Logically-Prior-To ((which is distinct from Chronologically Prior)) both Material and Non-Being. The Ontological Map as it were is of the requisite transcendentals necessarily surviving the traversal/journey from the Necessary Being ||Pure Act || I-AM || Absolute Consciousness in the Downhill Ontic into/to potentiality || contingent consciousness || i-am || imago dei 

In a key sense we can say that ‘Dualism’ is ultimately ‘Monism’ because *Being*Itself* is the Root||Wellspring of the whole show. Singularity. How that unfolds is seen mostly through the Principle of Proportionate Causality but before getting to that it is worth adding relevant transcendentals that retain lucidity as we move from Creator to Created and any/all “interactions”  therein. With that in mind, see the following:

(1) Causality, Pantheism, And Deism https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/causality-pantheism-and-deism.html

(2) The Metaphysical Middle Man https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/01/metaphysical-middle-man.htm

(3) Recovering The Hierarchy Of Being ~ by David Oderberg  https://metachristianity.com/recovering-hierarchy-of-being-by-david-oderberg-transcript/

(4) Being’s Superseding Ontic Over Both Material and Non-Being https://metachristianity.com/beings-superseding-ontic-over-both-material-and-non-being/

(5) Creation ex Nihilo: The World Plus God is Not More Than God Alone – Eclectic Orthodoxy https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/02/10/creatio-ex-nihilo-the-world-plus-god-is-not-more-than-god-alone/

(6) Divine Freedom In Creating And Does God Change If He Creates? https://metachristianity.com/divine-freedom-in-creating-and-does-god-change-if-he-creates/

(7) Consciousness, Emergence, Intentionality, Searle, Reason Atop The Irrational, And Naturalism’s Egregious Deficiency https://metachristianity.com/consciousness-emergence-intentionality-searle-reason-atop-the-irrational/

Neither Dualism nor Monism — if Theistic vis-à-vis Christianity — find their respective explanatory termini in the mutable and/or the contingent. Which is to say their respective Meaning-Makers are not the Soul ((…not any *contingent mind/soul/consciousness/and so on…)). It is necessarily the case that all *definition* flows downhill, from the Necessary and into the Contingent. Therein *neither Dualism *nor Monism is “enough” vis-à-vis any explanatory terminus providing the [Necessary & Sufficient] with respect to Meaning-Maker.

Monism too faces this problem of Final Accounting vis-a-vis ANY Contingent terminus — hence the final futility of Idealism and Solipsism and the embedded Conscious Observer in the 4D Block and notice that this holds both in Monism and in Dualism ((and again Solipsism and Idealism)) vis-à-vis ANY contingent stopping-point vis-à-vis ANY supposed “metaphysical bubble” that is somehow immune to // isolated from that which Feeds All Possible Being||Fundamental-Nature(s) Into It. Whereas the Principle of Proportionate Causality finds all requisite distinctions traversing all such topography fully intact.  We can say that the Necessary Being || Absolute Consciousness does “Express” but that is not “Create” and any such wording ((express rather than create)) reads more like Pantheism or Panentheism and the Reducito of stopping there is that they both find our soul/mind/consciousness/being to be *non-contingent — and in fact “Necessary” – and obviously if that is true then we do not have a God but instead we have a god. Whereas – again – the Principle of Proportionate Causality finds all requisite distinctions traversing all such topography fully intact.

E. Feser’s description of the principle of proportionate causality ((…and notice that there is a “causality” in play…not “no-thing”// “no-cause” and so on…)) is from A First Without A Second at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/first-without-second.html as per the following:

“Now that which creates out of nothing is not limited by any such external factors, precisely because it is not modifying anything that already exists outside of it.  But neither can it be limited by any internal potentialities analogous to the limits on a sculptor’s skill.  For it is not *merely causing *a being of this or that sort to exist (though it is doing that too) – modifying preexisting materials would suffice to cause that – but also making it the case that *any *being *at *all *exists.  And only that which is not *a being among others but rather *unlimited being – that which is pure actuality – can do that.  The idea is perhaps best stated in Platonic terms of the sort Aquinas uses (in an Aristotelianized form) in the Fourth Way.  *To *be *a *tree or *to *be *a *stone is merely to participate in “treeness” or “stoneness.”  But *to *be *at *all – which is the characteristic effect of an act of creation out of nothing – is to participate in Being Itself.  Now the principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause.  And only that which just *is Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely *to *be *a *tree or *to *be *a *stone, but *to *be *at *all.  So only God – who just is pure actuality or Being Itself rather than a being among others – can cause a thing to exist *ex *nihilo”.

BOTH on Monism ((only this Monism being described here in/by the key sense of the seamlessness of Being vis-à-vis the Principle of Proportionate Causality)) AND on Dualism we find that “The Adamic” is not an entirely physical being. Adding Form to Material does add the Immaterial in the sense that Form sums to Abstraction/Immaterial and so Hylomorphic Dualism offers us something there – BUT – notice that “Form Of Material” is not where HD stops and we know that because most Hylomorphic Dualists ALSO affirm the Immaterial Being that persists without the Body/Corporeal ((…after the death of the body… as in “Survivalism” contrary to “Corruptionism” as per https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/03/so-what-are-you-doing-after-your-funeral.html …)).

Notice that Ex Nihilo is NOT contrary to experience and the reason Why/How that is the case is found in the Principal of Proportionate Causality. Without the PPC we are left with “From No-Thing By No-Thing With No-Thing” regarding Being-Itself || Existence-Itself – and so on – which is both fallacious and impossible. A brief discussion/excerpt looking at that:

Non-Theist: “Ex Nihilo is something from nothing”

Christian reply: No. It isn’t. That’s the error many make. There are two possible maps here regarding what is in play as we move from Pure Act (God) down into Potentiality/Actualization/Contingency/Created Order ~ 1. Being Itself. Existence Itself. Pure Actuality. Pure Act. Proportionate Causality or else 2. Nothing. You keep saying “2”. Why? You’ve been informed its “1” and hence you’re either not willing to interface with the *Christian claims/metaphysic or else you’re merely Straw-manning/misrepresenting.

Added context on the remarkable robustness afforded to the Christian Metaphysic in and by Creation Ex Nihilo || Principle of Proportionate Causality is described in three consecutive sections titled 1. “God Is More Intimate to Created Beings than They Are to Themselves” and 2. “After Creation, There Are More Beings but No More Being” and 3. “A Note on the Distinction between Essence and Existence” – those three sections are in the book Four Ages of Understanding — The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-first Century — by John Deely

Observation: Being||Existence gives us all logical//ontological possibility IF it starts with Pure Act and proceeds through the Principle of Proportionate Causality.

That holds firm even/especially within the semantic intent behind all First-Person Experience vis-à-vis “I-AM” || “i-am” and not only that but again the Christian is afforded the intellectual right to counter objections with the following: Mind Body Interaction Problem? What Interaction Problem? There cannot be any such “problem” given Being’s Superseding Ontic Over Both Material and Non-Being. Being’s Ontic Weight supersedes the Ontic Weight of both Material and Non-Being just as the Ontic Ordering of Being||Material||Non-Being finds Being necessarily Ordered Ahead-Of/Logically-Prior-To ((which is distinct from chronologically prior to)) both Material and Non-Being.

In a key sense we can say that ‘Dualism’ is ultimately ‘Monism’ because *Being*Itself* is the Root||Wellspring of the whole show – Seamless Singularity. And, again, lest we forget out steps, how that unfolds is seen mostly through the Principle of Proportionate Causality but before getting to that it is worth adding relevant transcendentals that retain lucidity as we move from Creator to Created and any/all “interactions”  therein and, so, see both Causality, Pantheism, And Deism at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/causality-pantheism-and-deism.html and also The Metaphysical Middle Man at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/01/metaphysical-middle-man.html

Consciousness? First Person Experience? I-AM//i-am? The Non-Theist must show how stacking up billions of layers of reality’s fundamental nature ((non-intentional/non-mind)) yields the fundamental nature of intentionality/mind and of course the key is that AT SOME POINT he faces a Death by 10K Equivocations as he moves FROM “[A]” over TO “[Non-A]”. All the Non-Theist, Theist, Christian, you/we/anyone has/haves are “metaphysical equivalents” vis-à-vis the SAME “Principal of Proportionate Causality” as it were, and, so Non-Theism gets “Emergence” as he moves from [A] to [Non-A] and that is why, at some point, all brands of Emergence force the Eliminative Maps akin to Churchland, Rosenberg, Dennett, and so on. Nature can’t break free of Nature just as Nature cannot beget fundamentally different Natures other than Nature.

Two Maps:

Map 1 ~ Christianity: Being||Existence begetting Being||Existence from Non-Being ((or rather “traversing non-being” etc…)) vis-à-vis the Principal of Proportionate Causality finds I-AM//i-am irreducibly and seamlessly intact. All logical//ontological possibility is found because it starts with Pure Act and proceeds in the Downhill Ontic in/by Creation Ex Nihilo. The result is immediately apparent: The First-Person Experience of Self / Intentionality / “i-am” / and all such semantic intent lands in Being Itself as Absolute Consciousness Itself as Irreducible Mind Itself as Reason Itself as The Great I-AM.

Map 2 ~ Non-Theism: Four-Fundamental-Forces ((or whatever)) from Four-Fundamental-Forces ((or whatever)) in/through the same concept of “the Principal of Proportionate Causality” land within Emergence as he moves from [A] to [Non-A] and that is why ((again)) at some point, all brands of Emergence force the Eliminative Maps akin to Churchland, Rosenberg, Dennett, and so on. Nature can’t break free of Nature just as Nature cannot beget fundamentally different Natures other than Nature. Eliminative and the First-Person Experience of Self / Intentionality / ”i-am” falls into Non-Theism’s illusory ends ((See Churchland, Rosenberg, Carroll, Etc., Etc.)).

We cannot coherently map anything NOT traversing Creation Ex Nihilo ((in this Christian sense, not the fallacy of No-Thing)) because BOTH the Christian AND the Non-Theist (Etc.) must avoid slipping into No-Thing/Magic and hence BOTH must satisfy their own respective “forms of/versions of” the PPC. Whether it’s God’s Decree of “Tree” or “Intentionality” or Non-Theism’s Emergence of “Tree” or “Intentionality”. Hence the First Person Experience of “i-am” is NOT subject to Non-Theism’s array of catastrophic||eliminative termini but instead, in Christendom, the ground of our own created being – as in Person, Self, the Irreducible Singularity of “I”/Me, and so on – is discussed in numerous places in the contexts of Being Itself, the Creative Decree, Ex Nihilo, Proportionate Causality, Divine Mind, Absolute Consciousness, Pure Act, Logos, and so on. Therein the Christian Metaphysic affords us a robust and seamless explanatory power to Map all requisite Ontic-Content ((so to speak)) as we move FROM Pure-Act/I-AM and INTO/TO Contingency/i-am ((and so on)).

Brief Tangentially Related Observation Distilled Into 5 Parts:

1 of 5: Pure Act has the *Capacity* to not MERELY “Freely Chooses” and not MERELY “to create” but to freely create many ontologically and irreducibly distinct X’s ((all logical/ontological possibility)) – as in Fundamental Nature*s* – *plural*. that is what we find in the syntax of “…the metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility….”. This matters in two other tangentially related discussions as per the following…

2 of 5: Non-Trinitarians cannot account for this when it comes to Pure Act and Capacity and so also then when it comes to irreducible distinctions between Minds vs. Rocks vs. Ontological Possibilities. Non-Trinitarians lack the Seamless Distinctions of full-on Trinitarianism. In part that is why Aristotle (A-Metaphysics) is widened ((not reduced/lessened, but widened)) to Aristotle-Thomistic (A.T. Metaphysics).

3 of 5: Non-Theism cannot account for ANY full-on ontic/irreducible distinctions when it comes to Minds vs. Rocks given ITS OWN ((Non-Theism’s)) specific metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility.

4 of 5: Only the Trinitarian Map finds Pure Act with the necessary Capacity amid the necessary Seamless-Distinctions required to abort all such Reductio’s.

5 of 5: In all of that we say “the ground of x” but notice that we mustn’t “equate” every “x”, which is to say it is not the case that X = X = X and so on as we move through differing “Fundamental Natures/Qualia/Ontic-Contents” IF we are within the Christian Map. We mustn’t equate the Decree of Gravity to the Decree of Tree to the Decree of Mind to the Decree of Quarks/Etc. because if the Christian does that then the Christian leaves us with God’s ‘Decree(s)’ ending up ‘Distinctionless’ and hence ‘Contentless’ — as the Christian finds there an incoherent Pure Act that can only “Create-Full-Stop” and which CANNOT “Create A and B and C and D and E” – not really – and that would end up making God a Decreer Of Distinction-Free//Content-Free Worlds – Hard Stop.

The explanatory terminus for our being is the explanatory terminus for our ontology and therein Decree = Logos = Being Itself = God = Pure Act within that Map’s contours. When we speak of Creation Ex Nihilo we are actually speaking of an ontology of the Principal of Proportionate Causality. All contingent things in being necessarily stream from/by Pure Act [Being] in what is necessarily a Downhill Ontic Descent ((Pure Act cannot move/create “Laterally” for such is to create God, nor can Pure Act move “Uphill” for such is Reductio)).  To “Reach Down” and then Pull Adam Up||Into Full Closure ((…the Perfection of whatever that being’s full decree is and so on…)) for all of that from A to Z is a Free Choice of Pure Act. Nothing is lost in either direction – not by Being-Itself in the Downhill Ontic Descent ((…Creating just is both Free & Being In Descent….)) nor by Being-Itself/Pure Act Reaching Down and Pulling X or Y or Z Up||Into Full Closure ((…the Perfection of whatever that being’s full decree is and so on…)).

Regarding Ex Nihilo we must point out that Ex Nihilo does NOT include *Non*Being*Itself* and we must also point out that we have to include “The Principle Of Proportionate Causality” as we “Map the Ontology of” all things “Adamic” as in Mankind/Conscious Observer and so on.  EVERY NUANCE of “Man” will traverse that map of Ex Nihilo.

Hence Being as Volition/Intention and/or Angels and/or Immaterial Intellects and so on are all possible. The Principle of Proportionate Causality funds such (all) Creative Acts. Any claim that God can’t Create those in this Possible World yields an Immaterial God void of said PPC/Act – in short, a god. The downhill path into the Adamic is from I-AM down into i-am // Imago Dei and that path is wide open for the Christian vis-à-vis the principle of proportionate causality ((…which is different than the principle of sufficient reason…)).

Non-Theism’s “Mind/Intentionality” survives only by foisting a kind of metaphysical isolation or bubble – which is logically impossible, Notice that neither the Material Property nor the fundamental nature of the Material Property are free of the fundamental nature of the Wider (Ultimate) Reality or “Nature”. The move of X produces Y is limited only by the Principal of Proportionate Causality and Logic’s Law of Identity, whether Theist or Non-Theist and in all of that our semantic intent when we speak of Mind vs. Rock vs. Whatever must have a rational terminus — one that provides metaphysical closure. The Non-Theist has not broken free of the PPC by asserting “Emergence!” with something like “i-am” if the fundamental nature of “i-am” ultimately violates the bulldog of Logic and her demands upon Proportionate Causality and upon Identity.

Earlier the following link was provided: Creation ex Nihilo: The World Plus God is Not More Than God Alone – Eclectic Orthodoxy https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/02/10/creatio-ex-nihilo-the-world-plus-god-is-not-more-than-god-alone/ and here it is perhaps helpful to give a brief excerpt from that:

“The above paragraphs deserve a rereading. “The world plus God is not more than God alone. God less the world is not less than God alone”—here is the key to the logic of divine trans­cendence. In response to the analytic theologians and theistic personalists who think of divinity as existing alongside creatures (God plus a creature = two existents), Allen would suggest that they have not yet begun to think *God.”

In Closing:

Recovering The Hierarchy Of Being ~ by David Oderberg ~ https://metachristianity.com/recovering-hierarchy-of-being-by-david-oderberg-transcript/

Being’s Superseding Ontic Over Both Material and Non-Being https://metachristianity.com/beings-superseding-ontic-over-both-material-and-non-being/

Divine Freedom In Creating And Does God Change If He Creates? https://metachristianity.com/divine-freedom-in-creating-and-does-god-change-if-he-creates/

Causality, Pantheism, And Deism at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/causality-pantheism-and-deism.html

The Metaphysical Middle Man at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/01/metaphysical-middle-man.html

Consciousness, Emergence, Intentionality, Searle, Reason Atop The Irrational, And Naturalism’s Egregious Deficiency https://metachristianity.com/consciousness-emergence-intentionality-searle-reason-atop-the-irrational/

 

End

Resources from many and diverse points of view are included here with the goal of avoiding a monolithic/monochromatic lens by providing a wide array of voices/vantagepoints.

Updated periodically ~ Currently 101 resources/links.

Top Black Christian Blogs https://blog.feedspot.com/black_christian_blogs/

Top Black Christian Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/black_christian_podcasts/

Racism & Racial Resources https://northpoint.org/racial-resources

This Human Race https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-KLqBhivI

Skin In The Game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRiTCavlXyc

Race, Privilege, And Perspective As A Black Man In The U.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaTGuySRPLQ

Anthony Bradley at https://www.dranthonybradley.com/ and at https://www.amazon.com/Anthony-B-Bradley/e/B002G8YUY6

Andre Henry https://linktr.ee/theandrehenry

Ally Henny https://allyhenny.com/

“Kingdom Race Theology: God’s Answer to Our Racial Crisis” by Tony Evans — Amazon via https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09DV3SQ8L/

ERACED at https://eracedbook.com which is from Pastor John K. Amanchukwu Sr. at https://johnamanchukwu.com/

Austin Channing Brown https://twitter.com/austinchanning

Owen Strachan https://twitter.com/ostrachan and at https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B002RFIPHQ

Woke Preacher Clips https://www.youtube.com/c/wokepreacherclips

Ibram X. Kendi https://www.ibramxkendi.com/

Black Calvinist http://blackcalvinist.com/

Center For Pastor Theologians https://www.pastortheologians.com and their release of “Confronting Racial Injustice: Theory and Praxis for the Church” which is available at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/1666737348

Racialism Posts https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/category/racialism/

“&” Campaign https://www.andcampaign.org/

Voddie Baucham https://www.voddiebaucham.org/

Bradly Mason https://alsoacarpenter.com/

Neil Shenvi https://shenviapologetics.com/

Lawrence’s Racial Impact/Cultural Meaning Test https://alsoacarpenter.com/2021/06/23/a-crt-informed-understanding-of-systemic-racism/

Rachel Ferguson https://www.rachelfergusononline.com/blog

Center For Cultural Apologetics https://centerforculturalapologetics.org/

United We Pray https://uwepray.com and at https://linktr.ee/praypod

Chloé Valdary Theory of Enchantment  https://theoryofenchantment.com/

Center For Biblical Unity https://www.centerforbiblicalunity.com/

Dante Stewart https://www.dantecstewart.com/

Critical Awareness: Critiquing Critical Theories –by Tim Cline. At https://criticalawareness.substack.com/ and at linktr.ee/tlloydcline

Metaphysics Of Race https://www.parableman.com/blog/metaphysics-of-race-series

Ekemini Uwan https://linktr.ee/sistatheology

Dr. Esau McCaulley https://esaumccaulley.com/

Faith For Justice https://www.faithforjustice.org/

The Front Porch https://thefrontporch.org/

From Death To Life at https://www.facebook.com/fromdeathtolifeus/

Dr. George Yancey https://www.georgeyancey.com/

Dr. Jemar Tisby https://jemartisby.com/

Theory Of Racelessness — at https://linktr.ee/TheoryofRacelessness/ with Dr. Sheena Mason https://twitter.com/SheenaMasonPhD/ — also note her book: Theory of Racelessness: A Case for Antirace(ism) (African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora) — Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Racelessness-Antirace-American-Philosophy-dp-3030999432/dp/3030999432/

The Raceless Gospel / Faith Seeking Understanding Without Race — at https://racelessgospel.com/ with Starlette Thomas https://Twitter.Com/Racelessgospel/

Philosophy of Race: Whether Constructionist Or Skeptic Liberation Demands Racial Eliminativism — by Jacoby Adeshei Carter and Sheena Michele Mason https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/whether-constructionist-or-skeptic

Just Thinking Podcast https://justthinking.me/podcast-home/

Thabiti Anyabwile https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/ and also at https://thefrontporch.org

Darrell B. Harrison https://deacondarrell.wordpress.com/ and at https://twitter.com/D_B_Harrison

Virgil Walker https://twitter.com/VirgilWalkerOMA

Kyle J. Howard https://kylejhoward.com/

Book Series: African American Philosophy And The African Diaspora https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088HHHZFN

Angel Adams Parham Ph.D. at https://angelparham.com

Dr. Anika T. Prather at https://drprather.com

Jeremy Pierce https://www.parableman.com/

Samuel Sey Slow To Write https://slowtowrite.com/

Sparrow Collective https://www.sparrowcollective.org/

Adam Coleman https://www.truidapologetics.com/

The Witness https://thewitnessbcc.com/

The Witness Women https://thewitnessbcc.com/category/relationshipsfamily/women/

The Witness Foundation https://thewitnessfoundation.co/

Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture https://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Critical-Theory-Unfolding-Culture-ebook/dp/B0B35VBD6H

Fire in the Streets: How You Can Confidently Respond to Incendiary Cultural Topics — by Douglas R. Groothuis at https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Streets-Confidently-Incendiary-Cultural/dp/1684513081

Walter Strickland PhD at https://walterstrickland.wordpress.com and see his book For God So Loved the World: A Blueprint for Kingdom Diversity as well as his book T&T Clark Handbook of African American Theology — Amazon Page is at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Walter-R.-Strickland-II/author/B00VEF0OGK

Truth’s Table https://www.truthstable.com/

Leonydus Johnson & Informed Dissent https://leonydusjohnson.com/

Southside Rabbi https://www.patreon.com/Southsiderabbi and at https://twitter.com/Ameen_HGA

Christopher Rufo https://christopherrufo.com

Eric Mason at https://twitter.com/pastoremase and at https://www.pastoremase.com/

Pastor Dwight McKissic, Sr. at https://twitter.com/pastordmack and at https://dwightmckissic.wordpress.com/

Free Black Thought https://www.freeblackthought.com

Topically Arranged Bibliography of Heterodox Black Thinkers — Compendium Of Free Black Thought https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRPj5vGVtEK2DZKMo6PZnb3EidgTmVwIqejuJ50_L5hxVyFMSsPruwobCK1YKvCMb53NLyMiwtHeMKO/pub

Journal of Free Black Thought: https://freeblackthought.substack.com

Stephen D. Morrison at https://www.sdmorrison.org/ and specifically his book on James Cone at https://www.sdmorrison.org/who-is-james-cone-and-why-he-matters/

“My Antiracism Resource” (Daniel Jury & others with multiple resources in/from multiple formats) https://www.myantiracismresource.com

Counterweight https://counterweightsupport.com/ 

Kris Williams || Kdubtru https://www.youtube.com/user/Kdubtru and at https://beacons.ai/kriskdubtru

Derryck Green https://www.derryckgreen.com/

The Substance https://plinkhq.com/i/1447929721 and at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-substance/id1447929721

CSBV || Center For The Study of Bible and Violence ((has helpful segues to this blog-post’s topic)) https://www.csbvbristol.org.uk/

John McWhorter https://www.nytimes.com/by/john-mcwhorter and at https://www.theatlantic.com/author/john-mcwhorter/ and at https://twitter.com/JohnHMcWhorter and at  https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/

AAPF & K. Crenshaw at The African American Policy Forum https://www.aapf.org/ with Kimberlé Crenshaw at https://twitter.com/sandylocks/ as well as her Amazon page at https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B00J18R0EQ/

Robert P. Jones || White Too Long https://robertpjones.substack.com

David Justice at https://www.profjustice.com and at https://twitter.com/DavidtheJust

The Faithful Church ~ Diana Lesperance at https://thefaithfulchurch.com/

A Biblical Critique of Secular Justice and Critical Theory — by Timothy Keller at https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/a-biblical-critique-of-secular-justice-and-critical-theory/

All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory by E. Feser https://www.amazon.com/All-One-Christ-Catholic-Critique/dp/1621645800

Critical Dilemma: The Rise of Critical Theories and Social Justice Ideology―Implications for the Church and Society – by Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer at https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Dilemma-Theories-Justice-Ideology_Implications/dp/073698870X/

Houston and the Permanence of Segregation: An Afropessimist Approach to Urban History – by David Ponton at https://www.amazon.com/Houston-Permanence-Segregation-Afropessimist-Approach/dp/1477328475/

William A. Darity, Jr., Samuel DuBois Cook professor of public policy, African and African American studies and economics, and an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS). Both [1] The Black Reparations Project: A Handbook for Racial Justice at https://www.amazon.com/Black-Reparations-Project-Handbook-Justice/dp/0520383818 and also [2] From Here to Equality, Second Edition: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century at https://www.amazon.com/Here-Equality-Second-Reparations-Twenty-First/dp/1469671204

APA (American Philosophical Association) Collection: Black Issues In Philosophy https://blog.apaonline.org/category/black-issues-in-philosophy/

Asian American Christian Collaborative https://www.asianamericanchristiancollaborative.com

Healing Conversations on Race: Four Key Practices from Scripture and Psychology https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Conversations-Race-Practices-Psychology/dp/1514003929

Pastor John K. Amanchukwu Sr. at https://johnamanchukwu.com/

Oxford University Press (OUP) Resources On Race And Diversity https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/race-and-diversity

—Segues—

SLAVERY.BIBLE  —In The Christian Metaphysic All Slavery Is Evil: https://metachristianity.com/SLAVERY-IN-THE-CHRISTIAN-METANARRATIVE-IS-DEFINED-AS-A-SWATH-OF-PRIVATIONS-MANY-PAINS/

RACISM.BIBLE  —Race, Racism, And Antiracism Resources

Scholastics Contra Racism by Edward Feser https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/09/scholastics-contra-racism.html

The Nelson Hackett Project https://nelsonhackettproject.uark.edu/

The Nelson Hackett Project/Documents https://nelsonhackettproject.uark.edu/the-documents/

The Religious Roots Of Abolition https://americainclass.org/the-religious-roots-of-abolition

American Abolitionists and Antislavery Activists — Conscience of the Nation http://www.americanabolitionists.com

Atheist/Non-Theist Tim O’Neill comments: “Like most things in history, the abolition of slavery was a gradual process and involved many factors. But if I were to single out one religious tradition that was most influential, it would be Christianity.” There are related segues from him ((…in his informative blog/website…)) in the following: https://historyforatheists.com/2020/01/tom-holland-dominion

Faith Seeking Understanding Thinking Theologically About Racial Tensions by Kevin DeYoung faith-seeking-understanding-thinking-theologically-about-racial-tensions-by-kevin-deyoung

Possible Recommendations:

• Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Racial-Division-Alternative-Colorblindness-ebook/dp/B09GPGZLSY
• How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09F7QTDH1
• The New Reformation: Finding Hope in the Fight for Ethnic Unity https://www.amazon.com/New-Reformation-Finding-Fight-Ethnic-ebook/dp/B08LKPX793
• Talking about Race: Gospel Hope for Hard Conversations https://www.amazon.com/Talking-about-Race-Gospel-Conversations-ebook/dp/B08ZMDSPJT
• Redemptive Kingdom Diversity: A Biblical Theology of the People of God https://www.amazon.com/Redemptive-Kingdom-Diversity-Biblical-Theology-ebook/dp/B08XLVGFBQ
• In Church as It Is in Heaven: Cultivating a Multiethnic Kingdom Culture https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0BLD1Y4DG/

 

Main Part 1 of 5

Old Testament violence brings out several peculiar lines in the proverbial sand.  Some Christians ((and most narratives of Non-Theistic Critics)) construct a metaphysic as if God draws lines at Babies or at Women or at Non-Combatants rather than at All Human Beings All The Time in All Possible (Adamic) Worlds. For some others it is the case that “brutally bashing” or “killing” Adult Males “in war” ((…or whatever Sails the latest Normative Winds happen to be filling…)) is somehow found under the umbrella of “The” “Good/Beautiful/Whole/Ideal” in these Moral Lines that God supposedly “Moves In / Affirms / Likes / Calls His Eternal Ideal” but, then, this same group of Christians ((not uncommon of course)) reaches up into “thin-air” and pulls down a second “umbrella” for more “brutally bashing” or “killing” at Women and at Children and at Babies and we are told that this “second” “umbrella” is somehow “different” than the FIRST Umbrella. The FIRST umbrella (we’re told) was of “The” “Good/Beautiful/Whole/Ideal” while this SECOND Umbrella is (we’re told) of “The” “Morally Bad/Ugly/Lacking/Non-Ideal” and so this second umbrella has finally reached (apparently) the level of “Offensive” vis-à-vis our own frail and mutable world-contingent Moral Sentiments.

Even more mysterious, theologically speaking, is the following:  When it comes to O.T. Judgement and Judgment in general we have these Umbrellas which are self-contradicting when we navigate the following question:

IS Christ / WAS Christ (Golgotha/Cross) in fact *necessary* to avoid the equivalent “bad outcome” ((Judgment // Final Loss of ALL things Adamic)) with respect to Judgements and the ontological Ends of Man’s Privation and the ontological Ends of Days and the Ends of Cities and Nations and the Ends of Worlds upon Worlds – literally?   Had Christ NOT pressed through vis-à-vis Cross/Golgotha then what about all of those “NON-COMBATANTS & BABIES” in the “O.T. Judgment and/or Wars”? Are all of those human beings NOT a swath of “All Things Adamic”?  Had Christ NOT pressed through would all of those human beings NOT be under the Umbrella of “Judgment” and “Final Loss”?  WHAT are we really distinguishing when we press upon “OT War” and “Christ” and “Judgement” and “All Things Adamic”?

Can our Maps (our Umbrellas) here retain coherence through the Landscape of Pre-Eden through to Eden through to Sinai through to Christ through to Eternal Life? Recall that the Physical Body does not Begin/End/Define “Life”. Physicalism fails for many reasons and we must be careful not to equate the Physical Body to the Whole Person as we unfold our Maps from Pre-Eden to Eden to Sinai to Christ to Eternal Life. Is there a difference between Judging/Ending ANY life of ANY age of ANY sex in Israel or in Canaan and Judging/Ending AN ENTIRE WORLD? One more time: Had Christ NOT pressed through is it the case that all of those human beings would NOT be under the Umbrella of “Judgment” and “Final Loss”?  WHAT are we really distinguishing when we press upon “OT War” and “Christ” and “Judgement” and “All Things Adamic”?

Another Catch or Nuance or Glitch: At bottom it is often “physical painlessness” that we need to see in order for our Moral Conscience to tolerate God as the Beginning and End of our Being, to tolerate God in Judging/Ending/Taking All-Things at every level of “reality” — from the level of the Individual to the Household to the City to the Nation to the Nations to the WORLD to ALL WORLDS.  Notice what we just did: God can be “Being Itself” but only “If Physicalism” is the beginning and end of our Moral Map.

Now let’s take that further and see if the Cross of Christ is forfeited:

Akin to Enoch and Elijah ((some say eventually the Second Coming and/or New Creation etc.)) being “taken” but without traversing physical death there is something in us that intuits or that “is willing to tolerate God’s Judgement” if it takes that form such that the “Painless Death Of Non-Combatants In The O.T” is where the line is for this group of Christians and Non-Theistic Critics.  Our intuition there is not wrong. It’s just incomplete. Why? Because Death *is* an Enemy and Death *is* something which God will *end*/*destroy*.

In fact:

[Death] is the #1 Killer in the World.

Therefore Eternal Life — *and* *nothing* *less* — is the #1 Dissolution of our #1 Problem.

IN FACT — BUT FOR Eternal Life there is no Ontic Resolution ((Closure)) of the #1 Killer in the World.

There is more on that brief syllogism in Part 3 but in the meantime, continuing here: Scripture defines Suffering and Pain as Evil ((Privation, A Lack of Good, and so on)) but notice the problem: we still have two umbrellas and, so, we are STILL okay with “brutally bashing” “Adult Male” “Combatants” as somehow part of “The” “Good/Beautiful/Whole/Ideal” and, so, with our Two Contradictory Umbrellas we are somehow okay with one group of Human Beings outside of Painless Deaths and/or outside of the archetype of Enoch and Elijah ((some say eventually the Second Coming and/or New Creation etc.)) because that group of Bashing is somehow part of “The” “Good/Beautiful/Whole/Ideal”. Keep reading:

Notice where our approval of War/Bashing/Judgment/Etc. for SOME Human Beings but not OTHER Human Beings places the Cross of Christ.  In this odd Metaphysic there is Proper Judgement after all ((Adult Males, Combatants)) and it is upon those Souls – upon some Human Beings after all – and therefore for THAT “Group” of Souls ((Adult Males, Combatants)) the Out-Pouring of Christ brings mere Redundancy after all – for some Human Beings after all – and – so – notice – we have ended up with a disjointed (incoherent) set of ontological metrics.

Idolatry’s Key: There are four modes or “Maps” by which we displace Christ off of His Throne and reduce the Cross to Unnecessary and transform Christ to mere Redundancy and typically we find A1 and A2 happening together (but not always) or else we find B1 and B2 happening together (but not always). The “not always” feature is a fact of the matter and that is why they are instead subdivided into four “approaches” or “postures” towards unpacking the Old Testament rather than just two, in the hopes that we can capture more of the landscape:

(A1) We Approve of All Judgement/Etc. in the OT as The Beautiful/Good/Whole/The-Ideal.

(A2) We say OT Sinai/Law/Judgment is The Good/Lovely/Whole/The Ideal ((hence we are equating it to Christ/Cross)).

(B1) We Approve of SOME Judgment in the OT as The Beautiful/Good/Whole/Ideal AND ALSO we find SOME Judgement as The Bad/Evil/Non-Ideal.

(B2) We say we don’t need Law/Sinai/Judgement AT ALL / EVER ((hence we obviously don’t need Christ/Cross either)).

None of those are coherent. All expunge Christ. All define Brutally Bashing and/or War/Etc. of SOME Human Beings as “The” “Good/Beautiful/Lovely/The-Ideal”. All make Christ/Cross either Unnecessary or else Redundant for SOME Human Beings.

In other words, they all sum to Idolatry. Notice that the typical arguments find some Christians and Non-Theistic Critics in, say, A1/A2 and the second group of Christians and Non-Theistic Critics in B1/B2 and they are typically fussing against one another. Notice that MOST “fussing” between Pro-Folks/Con-Folks is in that form of “A vs. B” there and so ends up incoherent and disjointed because both are guilty of affirming a Metaphysical Map which they both insist the other needs to repent of and/or correct. That is because they are both in the business of finding something Good/Beautiful/Lovely/The-Ideal inside of what God||Scripture clearly defines as Privation ((Evil, A Lack of Good)).

Notice still more disjointed “A vs. B” postures in the following: Badly Bashing and/or War/Etc. can be part of “The” “Good/Beautiful/Whole/Ideal” but NOT IF it is found in motion among All-Ages and NOT IF it is found in motion regarding All-Of-Nation-X. We have to follow through because we are approaching the same Maps in “Genocide” which in the end (in most forms) reduce to the horrifically immoral maps of the B1/B2 batch of maps which in fact condones SOME “brutally bashing/etc.” for SOME Human Beings as “The” “Good/Beautiful/Lovely/The-Ideal”. Some Christians ((and most narratives of Non-Theistic Critics)) construct a metaphysic as if God draws lines at Babies or at Women or at Non-Combatants or at Nations or at Tribes rather than at All Human Beings All The Time in All Possible (Adamic) Worlds.

Our Map of “All Things Adamic” must not forfeit bits and parts as we move from Pre-Eden into Eden into Privation into Sinai into Christ into Eternal Life.

One more time:

Our Map of “All Things Adamic” must not forfeit bits and parts as we move from Pre-Eden into Eden into Privation into Sinai into Christ into Eternal Life.

Our map must have room for a Trio, namely for Judgement and for The Adamic’s Pathology/Privation/Culpability and for Christ/All-Sufficiency. A rather long sentence about that Trio is as follows:

Scripture defines Sinai as the Ministry of Death wholly unable to deliver the Means to Moral Excellence nor the Ends of Moral Excellence and, then, we ALSO know that EVEN GIVEN that fact if we ever expunge Judgement from the O.T. we ALSO expunge the Necessity of Christ from our Metaphysic.

IF we “get rid of all OT Judgement” we get rid of Christ – BUT WAIT! Don’t we Map Christ as The Good/Lovely/Whole/The-Ideal? Yes, we do. But isn’t Mapping All Judgement in the OT as The Beautiful/Good/Whole/The-Ideal what forces us into Idolatry by making Christ merely Redundant? Yes. When we see OT Judgment and War and our lives ending what are we seeing? Is Sinai and all of that O.T “stuff” the same as the Cross? No. If Christ is necessary, and He is necessary, well then what of “All Things Adamic”? We have to keep going into the following:

Challenge: How is Judgment different than Judgment? That’s not a Typo. Does Judgement in the body vs. Judgment out of the body have different “Means”? Different “Ends”? For Adults vs. Babies? Of course not. In All Possible Adamic Worlds the Means/Ends of the Perfection of Being ((…meaning of Man’s Being, into/unto Man’s final felicity and true good…)) are the same whether we are moving exiting Eden into Eternal Life or whether we are exiting Privation into Eternal Life.

The Edenic is no different than Privation when we speak of Man’s/Adam’s full and final Need to Drink of All-Sufficiency and of All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring as the full and final Means/Solution by which the Ends of Man’s Wholeness are in fact actualized ((Perfection of Man’s Being / Moral Excellence / The-Ideal)). But we (Adam in Eden) did not move from The Edenic into Eternal Life. Instead we moved from The Edenic into Privation, and, so, while the Means/Ends are unchanged the location and nature of application do change. And, so, from within privation, briefly recall the following:

Idolatry’s Key: There are four modes or “Maps” by which we displace Christ off of His Throne and reduce the Cross to Unnecessary and transform Christ to mere Redundancy:

(A1) We Approve of All Judgement/Etc. in the OT as The Beautiful/Good/Whole/The-Ideal.

(A2) We say OT Sinai/Law/Judgment is The Good/Lovely/Whole/The Ideal ((hence we are equating it to Christ/Cross)).

(B1) We Approve of SOME Judgment in the OT as The Beautiful/Good/Whole/Ideal AND ALSO we find SOME Judgement as The Bad/Evil/Non-Ideal.

(B2) We say we don’t need Law/Sinai/Judgement AT ALL / EVER ((hence we obviously don’t need Christ/Cross either)).

Surpassing A1A2 / B1B2 And Leaving Them Behind:

There is a Third Option ((C1/C2 and so on to continue the same analogy)) to escape those Errors of Idolatry and to achieve Coherence/Lucidity/Moral Closure but first recall in those first two ((A1A2 and B1B2)) as already described, Christ is found to be either Unnecessary or else Redundant ((see previous discussion)). Also recall that in both of those ((both A1/A2 and B1/B1)) we find a horrific moral landscape in which SOME Bashing of SOME Human Beings (Adult Males??)  (Combatants??) is supposedly part of “The” “Good/Beautiful/Whole/The-Ideal” and SOME Bashing of SOME Human Beings (Non-Male? Non-Adult?) is supposedly part of “The” “Bad/Evil/Non-Ideal”. For example:

Old-English Literalists get many things wrong which is why they not only think Genocide is actually “there” in the OT but they also in part affirm that Genocide ((the Genocide they mistakenly think they see there)) as Good/Lovely/The-Ideal.

Others insist “But not the Women and Children because THAT would be BAD but the Adult Men can be Brutally-Bashed / War / Judgment and so on because THAT is Good/Lovely/Beautiful/The-Ideal”.

Others try to FICTIONALIZE EVERY BIT OF OT VIOLENCE or at least “the really, really bad parts” and they too are obviously in the A1A2 and B1B2 groups as well.

Others insist that Brutal Bashing / Judgment/War etc. is part of “The” “Good/Beautiful/Lovely/The-Ideal” but “Not If” we find it in “Genocide”. Notice that this too reduces to the horrifical moral maps of the A1A2 and B1B2 groups as well. Some Christians ((and most narratives of Non-Theistic Critics)) construct a metaphysic as if God draws lines at Babies or at Women or at Non-Combatants or at Nations or at Tribes rather than at All Human Beings All The Time in All Possible (Adamic) Worlds.

So, again that Third-Option to escape those Key Error of Idolatry vis-à-vis Christ/Cross and to achieve Coherence/Lucidity/Moral Closure:

(C1) We simply AGREE with Scripture and define Sinai and All Judgement in the OT ((…all vectors short of Christ…)) as the Ministry of Death, as that which Lacks the Means to Moral Excellence, lacks the Ends of Moral Excellence, lacks therefore The Good/Whole, lacks the Beautiful, lacks the Lovely, lacks the Ideal — as that which is [Bracketed] within [Privation] which is to say that which is occurring within the Ontological [Margins] of what just is [Evil] — as that which houses [Vectors] and in all possible permutations all available vectors come up short — as that which houses various [Contours] which God in fact [Hates].  And so then pushing that through we have this: Once the O.T. and N.T. both affirmed ((and they both did/do)) that Sinai’s 600++ Commands contain contours that God Hates we formally ((metaphysically)) lost all justification for lingering back in the Maps of A1/A2 and B1/B2.

The confusion comes because we believe something like this: “More and More and More Really Good Laws can in principle possibly mean/actualize the Resolution of Evil”.  The Church makes the same error there as the Un-Churched and tries to define “Sinai” as convertible with/for  “Christ/Cross/All-Sufficiency Himself Poured Out” when in fact Sinai is what God in part Hates. Recall that God is under no illusions that our Physical Bodies somehow Begin/End our Life and our Narrative. Recall that God is not a Physicalist. Recall that God is not a Legalist. Instead God is the Ultimate Realist ((C.S. Lewis?)). Hence God Comes In Christ reconciling the world to Himself. The OT looks at Sinai’s Floor and Ceiling and Margins and speaks of a Far-Better Up Ahead Yet To Come:

“In the OT, because Christ had not yet entered history to take the penalty of sin for us, every man bore the full penalty himself. Thus, whenever you see an OT crime punished with death, that’s God’s blunt way of telling us it’s a mortal sin. It is the archetype of moral teaching. Without the OT’s clear portrayal of sin and its effects, it is way too easy to forget why we need a savior and what He saves us from.” (from X’s @LunacyandClaret)

If one tries to make the argument that Sinai’s 600++ Commands and that whole landscape is the Means/Ends/Archetype of Moral Excellence, one contradicts scripture because Scripture tells us it isn’t. We cannot get there without a wider lens. Our shifting Normative margins are helpful and informative but they can never take the place of our Ontology – they can never be definitive. The error some make is conflating Sinai for God’s Eternal Ideal ((Best/Ideal)). Yet Scripture defines Life/Wholeness as from Another Source ((All Sufficiency Himself Poured Out)) while Sinai sums to an Ontology of Restraining Death not of Giving-Life. Scripture also tells us that God hates various parts of Sinai ((…and, sure, once THAT cat is out of the bag all definitions swarm against the oh-so-many anti-intellectual straw-men of Sinai-Full-Stop….)). Regarding Sinai, well there is a whole swath of metaphysical real estate that can be written about what Sinai IS and ISN’T and WHY God Hates parts of it and WHY that “Ministry of Death” lands as that which “Restrains Death” rather than “Gives-Life” and WHY that which can only Restrain Death never can Give-Life.

Off-Topic Digression:

Notice that Adam’s need to drink the cup of All-Sufficiency is the same regardless of his choice among Eden’s Two Possible Worlds ((Eternal Life / Privation)). The “Edenic” was not yet Eternal Life and the radical change in ontological status to move FROM Eden INTO Eternal Life requires the SAME “Means” of [Incarnation] and all of the language of Pour||Drink amid God||Man. That is why we find the SAME categories of radical change in ontological status as we move FROM Eden INTO Privation and/or also as we move FROM Eden INTO Eternal Life and/or as we move FROM Privation INTO Eternal Life – But that’s all a different discussion ((see Duns Scotus perhaps)).

End brief off-topic digression.

Recall that we are still in “Main Part 1 of 5” and we used “Main” to differentiate those five Main Sections from smaller “Sub-Parts” within them, for example the following:

Our Moral Intuition Affirms Scripture’s Meaning Makers. Here’s Why:

Sub Part 1 of 4:

The concept of “Meaning Makers” and perhaps in particular Scripture’s Meaning Makers may sound odd and so for some clarification which may help add a framework for this section on moral intuition see the following PDF:

Scripture’s Meaning Makers And Slavery And Any Topic Whatsoever at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/scriptures-meaning-makers-and-slavery-and-any-topic-whatsoever.pdf

And so with that as a basic backdrop we can move into the following ~

Key Question on Christ:

Is/Was Christ necessary to avoid the equivalent “Bad Outcomes” of Death and Destruction with respect to Judgements and the Ends of all Privations and the Ends of Days and the Ends of Worlds and the Ends of All Worlds – and so on – as we discuss the OT?  DO you simultaneously say (1) without God we don’t end well (2) BUT STILL we ought not find both Man & World (and all that is in said World) Ending-Badly-Without-God? DO you simultaneously say (1) But for All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring/Infilling we as contingent and mutable beings cannot avoid Fragmentation and Death (2) BUT STILL we ought not find both Man & World (and all that is in said World) experiencing Fragmentation and Death when they do NOT have All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring/Infilling?

A brief discussion between Is-Nuanced & Not-Nuanced:

• Is-Nuanced: “Does the Old Testament define Just-War as Good?”
• Not-Nuanced: “Yes. Justice is Good.”
• Is-Nuanced: “God then means to retain such War as part of Man’s Final Felicity, his True Good, his eschatological terminus?”
• Not-Nuanced: “No of course not.”
• Is-Nuanced: “But you said Scripture/God calls it Good, so…..”
• Not-Nuanced: “Yes but, well God can want war maybe?”
• Is-Nuanced: “Actually He hates Evil, and He tells us MT Sinai is is shaped around Hard Hearts and Restrains Death wholly unable to Give Life, even as Scripture describes God’s Law as Good.
• Not-Nuanced: “So it’s a contradiction.”
• Is-Nuanced: “It’s not and in fact it’s the Full-On All-Bad vs. Full-On All-Good you think you are defending but are in fact rejecting. To call His Law Good even as He calls His Law deficient, lacking, unable to give life, shaped around Hard Hearts, and far worse, well, there is a distinction there but those who don’t read “Whole” “Metanarratives” are unable to see what it is and how it is.”

Observation:

That’s the typical brief discussion and we find (there) that analytics which are not nuanced lead to Not-Nuanced’s inability to see the distinction that is inextricably embedded in the facts, and which Is-Nuanced is taking the time to delineate.

Notice again that we find that those who call for blame upon God are in the end themselves calling an X Beautiful when God calls that same X Ugly – and so those folks actually insist on a Heaven filled with Just-War – and all sorts of other (Ugly) “Eternal Ideals” (“Good“) which they unwittingly defend. Notice all of that reduces to Atheism/Non-Theism. Why/How mere atheism etc.? Well that’s straightforward:

Sub Part 2 of 4:

Scripture is clear in how it defines the Two Mountains one being MT Sinai and the other MT Zion — commandments surrounding Privation are said to be (1) bent around the odd shapes of Hard Hearts and that (2) they can only Restrain Death even as we are told (3) that they can never Give Life, and, we are also (4) told there is a Far-Better up ahead. It is at the distinction between MT Sinai vs. MT Zion where we come upon the Primacy of Christ.

Atheism comes into play at that juncture — the juncture where we discover that MT Zion is shaped around the Good and Life’s Eternal Stream while MT Sinai is bent around the shapes of Hard Hearts and Death’s Restraint.

That all converges into a subtle thorn which slowly morphs into an unexpected catastrophe:

Bear with me here as this is a long sentence but the chain of absurdities is unbroken:

Those who condemn Scripture’s Meaning Makers – or God’s Own definitions – end up condemning MT Zion in order to retain MT Sinai — because that Mountain holds Good & Just Carnage — because Just War is Good — and those folks want “the good” — and so they condemn God for providing the Perfect, the Beautiful, The-Good (MT Zion) — which is to say they end up condemning a Heaven that is free of both Just War and Unjust War (in a manner of speaking) even as they settle for the Ugly and for Privation and – it gets worse – they even fuss over swaths of the [zip code] God has named [Mud] in a bizarre competition to see which part of Mud is “Bad” because it is “More Muddy!” and which part of Mud is “Beautiful” because it is “Less Muddy!”

That unfortunate trainwreck of a scene inside of Mud is the Ceiling of Atheism/Non-Theism (Moral Ontology/different topic).

An unfortunate part is that we actually want to call some carnage Good (Just-War) when in fact scripture defines all of it as simply more of the pains of our Privation. To obsess that War be Just so that God can be Good is to insist God calls ANY war His Eternal Eschatological Ideal ((Man’s True Good, his Final Felicity)). But God calls all of it Ugly. It is only our Moral Hubris that seeks to call some carnage Beautiful/Good. Again:

God calls all of it Ugly. It is only our Moral Hubris that seeks to call some carnage Beautiful/Good.

God disagrees because He has none of it in His eschatological revelations.

Just-War is not part of Man’s Final Felicity.

Just-War is not part of Man’s True Good.

Notice the following result/problem of the aforementioned hubris on our part:

We can’t wrap our concrete un-nuanced thinking around the fact that MT Sinai is defined as both Good and Bad, as both Protective and Limiting of Moral Good and so we carry a Falsely-Dichotomous-Thinking into the Old Testament (and New Testament far too often). The result is obvious in that we fail to agree with the God of the Whole Bible Who defines all of war as being contained within the box called Evil/Privation. MT Sinai was never the Means. Only MT Zion can do the Ontic Work. God Himself is the Gospel. The criticisms against God “because Old Testament violence” are ontologically thin and survive only by avoiding Scripture’s wider metanarrative. The criticisms seeking to call some parts of carnage Good are ontological dead-ends ~ because ~ we can never pull that off ~ because ~ eschatology is going to force radical category changes in all of our definitions ~ which means ~ we would have been using the wrong Meaning Makers ~ which means ~ Scripture’s Meaning Makers align with our moral intuitions as MT Zion dissolves MT Sinai and eschatological closure approaches. Therefore our Final Meaning Makers are all found in Being/Existence as Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving ~ which is to say the Trinitarian Life and ~ thereby ~ we arrive at the affirmation of our Moral Intuitions:

God Himself is Man’s Final Felicity.

God Himself is Man’s True End.

God Himself is the Gospel.

God Alone always was our only Hope.

God Alone always has been the Only Good.

Recall from earlier the Key Question on Christ:

Is/Was Christ necessary to avoid the equivalent “Bad Outcomes” of Death and Destruction with respect to Judgements and the Ends of all Privations and the Ends of Days and the Ends of Worlds and the Ends of All Worlds – and so on – as we discuss the OT?  DO you simultaneously say (1) without God we don’t end well (2) BUT STILL we ought not find both Man & World (and all that is in said World) Ending-Badly-Without-God? DO you simultaneously say (1) But for All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring/Infilling we as contingent and mutable beings cannot avoid Fragmentation and Death (2) BUT STILL we ought not find both Man & World (and all that is in said World) experiencing Fragmentation and Death when they do NOT have All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring/Infilling?

Meanwhile: Most of us find that our Moral Intuition affirms Scripture’s Meaning Makers and therefore condemns any metrics which call MT Sinai God’s Eternal Good/Whole/Ideal just as our Moral Intuition affirms MT Zion vis-à-vis the Primacy of Christ.

We KNOW Just-War is Evil, and we hope to NEVER see it EVER again, and, because we are not Atheists we rationally outreach all of it and rationally claim that MT Zion is shaped around the Good and Life’s Eternal Stream while MT Sinai is shaped around Hard Hearts and Death’s Restraint. That’s how Scripture defines the Two Mountains. To insist that that we are to find MT ZION inside of MT SINAI is to disagree with God which means we are left defining Swaths of War’s Carnage as Beautiful/Ideal and we are left defining Christ as Unnecessary and Redundant and defining Adam-In-Innocence as having NO NEED for that Other Tree and that Eternal Stream Who tells us that His Name is Life and Truth. The Two Trees of Life and Truth are our common Enemy’s best Play upon Adam — upon us and that enemy is till tripping us up with the WHAT and the WHO. Which Mountain is which? Which Tree is which? Who is Where?

Sub Part 3 of 4:

Adam stands in Eden as Innocent. Not Perfected yet, but Innocent. He still Lacks. He still comes up short of Eternal Life. Innocence is wonderful, and, yet, to claim that Adam in Eden only loses the Fullness of Man if and when Adam falls/sins in Eden, is to make a claim that leaves us valuing Man and/or Innocence as that which drives the Calculus into Eschatology’s Closure.

Therefore, a kind of test:

“…But I am not looking for what the lens of CHRISTIANITY says I am only looking for what THE BIBLE says….”

What are Scripture’s Meaning Makers? CAN one give a rational reply there? Arbitrary margins for where in the text one starts or stops looking for definitional meaning makers? The reply to that “But I am not looking for…” item is in Scripture’s Meaning Makers And Slavery And Any Topic Whatsoever at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/scriptures-meaning-makers-and-slavery-and-any-topic-whatsoever.pdf

Let’s say Man Falls and Christ never comes and God’s decision is to withhold Redemption, Re-Creation, and so on. What happens to every single human being when God is subtracted from them?

Do they go to Heaven? If so: How? By being declared Innocent? The way Adam stood in Eden, Innocent, and void of Eternal Life? Think It Through:

In the hypothetical here God has freely chosen to withhold… what? A Legal Decree of Innocent? How does “Innocent” change the problem for Adam? Or does God withhold HIMSELF? Is it the case that God can and does say “I am Life, Truth, The Resurrection…” (etc.)? Well of course. He is what Adam needs. Not Innocence-full-stop. Why? Well because Innocence-full-stop can’t do the required Ontic Work of Eschatological Closure (…Deification, The Participatory, and so on…). Why? Because “My Innocence” is not “All-Sufficiency-Himself” aka God.

When we make Christ Unnecessary, or Redundant, or both we have fallen into a misguided Ontology of Man, God, and Eschatology.

Scripture defines MT Siani as a Taskmaster that is shaped and bent around Hard Hearts as it functions to restrain Death. There is nothing in MT Sinai that will follow us when we are brough to MT Zion.

And yet those who opine that God must grant “My Innocence” the Power to Create Ex Nihilo such that God is Unnecessary and Redundant (both in Eden and so again on Golgotha) are in fact pleading to have a little-h heaven filled with Some-Swaths of War’s Carnage both Just and Unjust even as they also plead to have a little-h heaven that values all of us based on Height and Sex and Age and Station such that in their little-h heaven’s War/Carnage there will only by Good/Just Carnage.

The folks making those complaints are unwittingly declaring Christ to be both Unnecessary and Redundant. They in fact declare that God can remove Himself from the Calculus and we will get along fine, as long as God first Decrees us Innocent before He leaves. That all converges and spills out in various forms of the following:

Atheists: “Why the Cross? Why not just forgive?”

Christian Reply: Oh, wow. Well, at least it’s a good question. And an interesting question. Basically, well, really it is all quite simple but the fact… that… you… have… to… ask… means…. So here is what we are going to do – let’s register you for the following:

• Logic 101
• Ontology 101
• Contingent-Mutable-Little-b-being-101
• Immutable-Necessary-Big-B-Being 101
• Little-b-bible 101
• Big-B-Bible 101

Sub Part 4 of 4:

Given all of the above so far, notice who CAN trust Moral Intuition and who CANNOT trust Moral intuition as we navigate Privation’s Many Pains. Notice ALSO what it means that SO FAR ALL OF SCRIPTURE’S OWN DEFINITIONS regarding those Two Mountains absolutely and fully comport with Christ and Christ Crucified and THEREBY our own Moral Intuition regarding Being||Existence Itself as Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving is ALL OVER AGAIN affirmed (Trinitarian Life). Just the same, notice who it is so far who has Moral Intuitions that CAN’T be trusted as all of the previous items converge.

Before moving into the next section it is worth repeating two short items:

“In the OT, because Christ had not yet entered history to take the penalty of sin for us, every man bore the full penalty himself. Thus, whenever you see an OT crime punished with death, that’s God’s blunt way of telling us it’s a mortal sin. It is the archetype of moral teaching. Without the OT’s clear portrayal of sin and its effects, it is way too easy to forget why we need a savior and what He saves us from.” (from X’s @LunacyandClaret)

And:

Terrible Outcomes: Is/Was Christ necessary to avoid the equivalent “Bad Outcomes” of Death and Destruction with respect to Judgements and the Ends of all Privations and the Ends of Days and the Ends of Worlds and the Ends of All Worlds – and so on – as we discuss the OT?  DO you simultaneously say (1) without God we don’t end well (2) BUT STILL we ought not find both Man & World (and all that is in said World) Ending-Badly-Without-God? DO you simultaneously say (1) But for All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring/Infilling we as contingent and mutable beings cannot avoid Fragmentation and Death (2) BUT STILL we ought not find both Man & World (and all that is in said World) experiencing Fragmentation and Death when they do NOT have All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring/Infilling?

Brief Reminder:

“…But I am not looking for what the lens of CHRISTIANITY says I am only looking for what THE BIBLE says….”

What are Scripture’s Meaning Makers? CAN one give a rational reply there? Arbitrary margins for where in the text one starts or stops looking for definitional meaning makers? The reply to that “But I am not looking for…” item is in Scripture’s Meaning Makers And Slavery And Any Topic Whatsoever at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/scriptures-meaning-makers-and-slavery-and-any-topic-whatsoever.pdf

NEXT SECTION:

Before looking at Genocide and how it is that we don’t find such in Scripture a brief look at Just War and Abortion:

Just War CAN be justified and YET simultaneously be a swath of Privation’s Pains (Lack/Evil).  Is Just War something we want to see MORE of? Of course not. Is Abortion something we want to see MORE of? Of course not. Even Pro-Choice folks hope for zero abortion. If we do not have a metaphysic by which we can describe both items as items which will NOT be part of Man’s Final Felicity then we are left trying to handle things that are Ugly AS-IF they are Beautiful.  Example Scenarios:

In a discussion there was the topic of Just War and also Abortion and we arrived in part at something like:

“Christianity says pro-life and also says just wars are possible and both of those premises equate to Oppression and therefore I am leaving Christianity and switching to Pantheism.” (by “Javow”)

In reply to Javow the following observations had to do with Pantheism’s Yield:

First, lets look at two false premises:

1. Abortion is a swath of the Good and the Beautiful in the sense that we ought desire [More].
2. To say we ought-desire-less Abortion entails ought-not-abort, and that equals Oppression.

Notice that our own changing legal codes pro or con are irrelevant to the metaphysical conclusion with/against those two premises. That is to say that those two premises are either true or false regardless of whichever legal code we posit. So then we arrive at the following:

Javow stops at the legal code and investigates no further: It is Oppression vs. Abortion Full-Stop. Javow cannot label them both as Bad/Evil — else self-negation || contradiction at the level of their own *metaphysic*. Unbeknownst (perhaps?) to Javow is the fact that Pantheism will lead them to conclude that Abortion (itself) is an Ought-Not or possibly to conclude that Abortion (itself) is a swath of All-Is-Good — and simultaneously —Pantheism will lead them to find that the “Freedom-From” “Ought-Not-Abort” is itself Good/Beautiful and therefore the inverse of Ought-Not-Abort is an Evil and Oppression.

Key: notice that in all of those swirling options we find eternally colliding ontological equals in what sums to a full-on permanence of metaphysical armistice. That is what Pantheism yields i.e. the terminus is the Trio of “All Is Good” “Because” “All Is God”.

Juxtaposing that analogy to the analogy of Just War:

Just War is both Just and also a swath of Privation/Ugly/Evil. It ends oppression but is itself Privation. We don’t “Desire To See More Just War” because even though it is Just, it is in fact a swath of our current Pains of Privation and by Privation we find of course [Evil]. Or we can say this: Just-War won’t be a swath of Man’s True Good — of Man’s Final Felicity.

It’s good to label oppression as evil, but one cannot coherently do so if one is unable to describe the other swaths as evil as well — else — one is forced into handling something Ugly as if it were Beautiful. One needs a metaphysic *quite *unlike Pantheism. The Christian Metaphysic funds the intellectual right to make that claim because All-Is-Not-God//Good//Ideal. At the end of the line Pantheism fails to get there.

Whereas:

David Bentley Hart describes the aforementioned eternally colliding ontological equals || Metaphysical Armistice in the following quote, but, first, to introduce that quote is the following observation:

Metaphysical Armistice:

All such Non-Theistic paradigms finally or cosmically leave us within what just is a metaphysical armistice amid eternally colliding ontological equals and thereby we’ve no means by which to find any (ontic) moral *distinction*. “Being” is conceived of as “….a plain upon which forces of meaning and meaninglessness converge in endless war; according to either, being is known in its oppositions, and oppositions must be overcome or affirmed, but in either case as violence….”

David Bentley Hart describes such views and notes that – on simplicity – on beauty – on goodness – it is not “Totality”, nor is it “Chaos”, nor is it distinction achieved only by violence among converging ontological equals, but rather it is the compositions of the triune where all vectors of being ultimately converge. “Nietzsche prophesied correctly: what now always lies ahead is a choice between Dionysus (who is also Apollo) and the Crucified: between, that is, the tragic splendor of totality and the inexhaustible beauty of an infinite love.”

His book, “The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth” in part explores such contours. A brief excerpt:

Begin Quote:

Within Christian theology there is a thought – a story – of the infinite that is also the thought – the story – of beauty; for pagan philosophy and culture, such a confluence of themes was ultimately unthinkable. Even Plotinian Neoplatonism, which brought the Platonic project to its most delightful completion by imagining infinity as an attribute of the One, was nonetheless compelled to imagine the beauty of form as finally subordinate to a formless and abstract simplicity, devoid of internal relation, diminished by reduction to particularity, polluted by contact with matter’s “absolute evil”; nor could later Neoplatonism very comfortably allow that the One was also infinite being, but typically placed being only in the second moment of emanation, not only because the One, if it were also Being, would constitute a bifid form, but because being is always in some sense contaminated by or open to becoming, to movement, and thus is, even in the very splendor of its overflow, also a kind of original contagion, beginning as an almost organic ferment in the noetic realm and ending in the death of matter.

Christian thought – whose infinite is triune, whose God became incarnate, and whose account of salvation promises not liberation from, but glorification of, material creation – can never separate the formal particularity of beauty from the infinite it announces, and so tells the tale of being in a way that will forever be a scandal to the Greeks. For their parts, classical “metaphysics” [rather than rigorous metaphysics] and postmodernism belong to the same story; each, implying or repeating the other, conceives being as a plain upon which forces of meaning and meaninglessness converge in endless war; according to either, being is known in its oppositions, and oppositions must be overcome or affirmed, but in either case as violence: amid the strife of images and the flow of simulacra, shining form appears always only as an abeyance of death, fragile before the convulsions of chaos, and engulfed in fate. There is a specular infinity in mutually defining opposites:

Parmenides and Heracleitos gaze into one another’s eyes, and the story of being springs up between them; just as two mirrors set before one another their depths indefinitely, repeating an opposition that recedes forever along an illusory corridor without end, seeming to span all horizons and contain all things, the dialectic of Apollo and Dionysus oscillates without resolution between endless repetitions of the same emptiness, the same play of reflection and inversion. But the true infinite lies outside and all about this enclosed universe of strife and shadows; it shows itself as beauty and as light: not totality, nor again chaos, but the music of a triune God. Nietzsche prophesied correctly: what now always lies ahead is a choice between Dionysus (who is also Apollo) and the Crucified: between, that is, the tragic splendor of totality and the inexhaustible beauty of an infinite love.

End quote.

Next Section:

Genocide and other topics converge and so the following Two-Streams discussion is helpful:

Joshua: Genocide Or A Tale Of Two Time Streams? – by Colin Green via https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/joshua-as-genocide-or-a-tale-of-two-time-streams-by-colin-green.pdf

Genocide again enters this essay and again we recall that Old English Literalists believe Genocide is found in the texts of the OT but most do not find it there, while others simply reduce it all to Fiction ((…Joshua is a fiction invented way back then by local Israel/Canaan factions in order to consolidate both Narrative and Influence in their favor way back then, and so on)). All of which is again to say Genocide did not happen but in THAT example it is for THAT reason, and so on. Meanwhile others find the historicity valid and aim for an exegeses informed both by history and by forensics focusing on linguistic/writing tools.  Regardless, while most agree Genocide did not happen, the goal HERE is NOT to defend that conclusion/exegesis ((…see links at the end of essay for some items that may help with that topic…)).

Rather, the goal HERE is to press the “Okay What IF Genocide” and then point out a few key problems with Moral Metrics there. First, as already alluded to, if one is going to insist that SOME Brutal Bashing / Judgment/War etc. is part of or can be part of “The” “Good/Beautiful/Lovely/The-Ideal” but “Not If” we find it in “Genocide” then one is going to insist on a Moral Map which itself also reduces to the horrifical moral maps of the A1A2 and B1B2 groups. Again some Christians ((and most narratives of Non-Theistic Critics)) construct a metaphysic as if God draws lines at Babies or at Women or at Non-Combatants or at Nations or at Tribes rather than at All Human Beings All The Time in All Possible (Adamic) Worlds.

Ending Evil:

Evil is a Deficiency of Being. A Hollow. The only thing that can fill a hollow void of Being is Being Itself. So too in Eden should Man find Eternal Life he will find that in his own Self there is but (Non-Culpable) Need and the only thing that can eternally fill that Self-Insufficiency (Need) is All-Sufficiency – and so on, and so on in All Possible (Adamic) Worlds. All Metaphysics but Christianity get those Key Metaphysical Truths wrong/muddied up. Hence Ending Evil/Death can only come into focus vis-à-vis All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring as the ONLY possible mode by which “Being Itself” can “Pour into” the “Vacuum/Hollow” that is “Privation” and recall that “Privation” is another term for “The Deficiency Of Being”.

WHAT are we supposed to be distinguishing here regarding Christ? Where does Sinai End and Christ Begin? Is Christ mere Redundancy? Is Christ the last 5% to finish the deal? The Christian Metaphysic DOES posit an ontological End of Privation. But what are we actually distinguishing?

Genocide becomes a snowball effect regarding our own Moral Tolerance because it STARTS with errors mentioned earlier and then snowballs. In that Snowball we start with SOME version of A1/A2 and B1/B2 finding SOME version of SOME Bashing of SOME Human Beings as SOMEHOW within “The” “Good/Beautiful/Whole/The-Ideal”. Meanwhile, contrary to the Snowball, God/Scripture defines every bit of it as the Metaphysic of Man in Privation and all the necessary floors/ceilings thereof.

The Snowball example that we typically see is a “False Dichotomy” where part of that Moral Tolerance for SOME etc. ((…which is error….)) is pitted against or juxtaposed up against some OTHER form of Privation/Evil and, then, the person who juxtaposes those two items  stomp their feet “As If” the Moral Fault is located where it is not and “As If” their OWN Moral Map is NOT fatally found in A1/A2/B1/B2.

Example Of Snowball:

“If genocide is always wrong and if rape is always wrong then why is one-time genocide given a pass?”

Problem 1: Notice the aforementioned approval of SOME brutal-bashing as “The” “Good/Beautiful/Lovely/The-Ideal” that was required in one of the earlier errors just to get to the point of even positing that (false) dichotomy. So the evolving Snowball is already immoral on its own premises — well not on its OWN premises but according to God/Scripture which finds ALL ((…not just SOME…)) Bashing beneath the Umbrella of “Privation”.

Problem 2: From there there’s the obvious Category problem in which God does in fact Judge All Lives and All Sexes and All Ages and All Cities and All Nations and All Worlds. As in — Literally. God is NOT a Physicalist NOR a Legalist BUT God is the Ultimate Realist. As in — Literally.

Problem 3: Notice in both 1 and 2 that God in Motion vis-à-vis Judgment against “A Man” or “A Family” or “A Nation” or “Israel” or “Canaan” or “World” or “Universe” ALL entail ALL the SAME metrics.

Problem 4: How is any of THAT in the same Ontic Category as Rape?

Most realize that Genocide is not “there” but the question is moot because (1) AT MOST we find God in Motion vis-à-vis Judgment against “A Man” or “A Family” or “A Nation” or “Israel” or “Canaan” or “World” or “Universe” and because (2) those ALL entail ALL the SAME metrics and because (3) to even make the complaint in the first place means one has already moved into the Immoral by embracing Brutal-Bashing of SOME Human Beings as The-Good ((see previous discussions)) and because (4) one is left thereby with a disjointed set of ontological metrics — almost akin to the Fundamental Indifference/Capricious/Chaos found in the Ultimate Meaning-Makers of various brands of Non-Theism/Atheism, and because (5) one’s own maps make Christ Redundant and/or Unnecessary for SOME Human Beings.

Briefly: See the following excerpt from www.Slavery.Bible which is Slavery In The Christian Metanarrative Is Defined As A Swath Of Privations Many Pains Therefore The Christian Metanarrative Cannot Have A Pro Slavery Verse Much Less A Pro Slavery Any-Thing at https://metachristianity.com/slavery-in-the-christian-metanarrative-is-defined-as-a-swath-of-privations-many-pains/ as it not difficult to understand what Scripture means by its own “utterly destroy” and the reason why is because Israel receives the SAME punishment from God and we observe the following:

Begin Excerpt:

“….Israel’s own occupation of the land was conditional; Israel too would be “..utterly destroyed..” if it engaged in the defiling practices of the Canaanites (Lev. 18: 25– 28 ). Indeed, later the Israelites would be judged— removed from the land through exile— because they violated the terms of the covenant….”

And yet notice that Israel is not “the-proverbial cancer” and, also, still again Israel is not “In-Genocide-Like-Fashion-Utterly-Destroyed-By-God” in that “exile”. But what about “Utterly Destroyed?” That happened to Israel? Well yes. “THAT” did happen and that Promise WAS kept in that God DID “utterly destroy” Israel and such was vis-à-vis that proverbial Exile. Israel is absorbed into other nations, alive and well, overcome, conquered, retaining their identity in many senses, losing it in many senses. Neither the facts of history, nor the actual metanarrative, nor ancient biblical and extra-biblical “linguistics” support any sort of “Full-Stop” appeal to “….like a cancer…” nor to any “Full-Stop” appeal to what any of us mean by “genocide” because, again, Israel gets the SAME PROMISE of “utterly destroyed” carried out ON THEM as they practice their Faith under their various rulers and have their various cities and so on all under their various rulers. That is why/how Canaanite populations and interactions are still in the later narratives of the Old Testament long after these earlier narratives. History, Scripture, and Fact affirm what modernity describes as “Regime Change” and not what modernity describes as “Genocide”.  Regarding the “why/how” behind the fact that all such violence, even Justified War, is defined by Scripture as Ugly/Bad see www.BibleViolence.com which goes to Deficiency Of Being, Old Testament Violence, The Metaphysic Of Privation, And Christ Crucified https://metachristianity.com/old-testament-violence-the-metaphysic-of-privation-and-christ-crucified/

End Excerpt.

Briefly Perhaps Recall: Joshua: Genocide Or A Tale Of Two Time Streams? – by Colin Green via https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/joshua-as-genocide-or-a-tale-of-two-time-streams-by-colin-green.pdf

Briefly Perhaps Recall: Scripture’s Meaning Makers and Slavery and Any Topic Whatsoever  https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/scriptures-meaning-makers-and-slavery-and-any-topic-whatsoever.pdf

Briefly: See the section inside of https://metachristianity.com/god-sending-lying-spirits-god-n-sending-evil-spirits-n-abraham-n-isaac/ which begins with” GENOCIDE? AMALEKITES? CANAANITES? — for a brief look at why Genocide criteria are NOT met.

Briefly: See “Part 4: Moral Dilemmas And No Good Options” at https://metachristianity.com/god-sending-lying-spirits-god-n-sending-evil-spirits-n-abraham-n-isaac/

Briefly: See the section within https://metachristianity.com/divine-command-theory-collapses-into-a-metaphysical-absurdity/ which begins with the bolded Back To The Moral Dilemma and continues a few paragraphs and does not “end” until the next (unrelated) “formal” section which begins with the bolded Meta-Christianity 101, day 1, lesson 1: God’s Will from A to Z

Before moving into Part 2 and Part 3 a brief reminder of four key errors:

(A1) We Approve of All Judgement/Etc. in the OT as The Beautiful/Good/Whole/The-Ideal.

(A2) We say OT Sinai/Law/Judgment is The Good/Lovely/Whole/The Ideal ((hence we are equating it to Christ/Cross)).

(B1) We Approve of SOME Judgment in the OT as The Beautiful/Good/Whole/Ideal AND ALSO we find SOME Judgement as The Bad/Evil/Non-Ideal.

(B2) We say we don’t need Law/Sinai/Judgement AT ALL / EVER ((hence we obviously don’t need Christ/Cross either)).

None of those are coherent. All expunge Christ. All define Brutally Bashing and/or War/Etc. of SOME Human Beings as “The” “Good/Beautiful/Lovely/The-Ideal”. All make Christ/Cross either Unnecessary or else Redundant for SOME Human Beings. In other words, they all sum to Idolatry. They DISAGREE with God Who does not draw lines at Babies or at Women or at Non-Combatants but rather He draws them at All Human Beings All The Time in All Possible (Adamic) Worlds. NONE of it is “Good” and therein ((discussed elsewhere)) none of it is actually condoned within the Christian Metaphysic.

—Main Part 2 of 5—

Before proceeding, see these for context: www.Slavery.Bible and at www.BibleViolence.com as well as https://metachristianity.com/reason-reality-golden-thread-reciprocity and then Part 2 of 5 as follows:

Justified ≠ Good Justified War ≠ Good. In absolute terms. At least in the Christian Metaphysic.

No one Hopes for MORE or Wants MORE “Justified War/Justified Killing/Etc.” WHY? Because Justified ≠ Good/Lovely. One can agree with Scripture’s definitions of War and Sinai as Privation and therefore ipso facto deficient in Good and therein ‘Evil’ ((Evil as Privation vis-à-vis the Deficiency of Good/Being)). It’s not like we “hope” for “more” “Justified War” merely because it’s Justified ((…obviously Non-Theism provides no ontic terminus for such closure…)).

Most don’t believe O.T. Genocide happened and so the Critic is eventually forced to resort to criticizing some version of Modernity’s sense of Justified War. The Christian narrative defines all of that as Privation (Lack/Deficiency) including Justified War. Notice in all wars we observe that “vulnerable non-combatants” are killed and so the premise that killing vulnerable non-combatants is evil reduces to the simple premise that all war is evil even if justified. So far so good. Scripture defines ALL Vectors “within” Privation as Evil – and we don’t like that – because hubris wants to rank and layer – but Privation just is Non-Whole, Non-Ideal, “The-Good-Minus-Something” ((…that is why Sinai/Law never can be the “Means” to Moral Excellence nor the “Ends” that are Moral Excellence…)).

“It’s Not The War It’s The Suffering” again leaves us off base as per the following:

So, for that hypothetical we take it one step up to a justified war but this time with some sort of ((for the sake of discussion)) “perfect and painless targeting” so that there is a hypothetically ‘Painless-War’ and we ask what we find there. Well? Well we find yet again that THAT TOO is still Evil as it is necessarily still stuck beneath the Ceiling of the Pains of Privation ((see earlier discussions)). STILL STUCK. One is STILL with those TWO Umbrellas described at the start and so one is STILL somewhere amid A1/A2/B1/B2.

And, so, GM’s Quote on Sinai/Law vs. Condone vs. Tolerate is helpful there/here— see attached picture here:

Quote:

“This is part of the problem of this whole conversation. One half is to accurately describe what was going on in the Old Testament…. and one is the moral vision of the Old Testament as a whole. It’s absolutely vital to understand that the Mosaic law was not God’s ideal, it was God working with a certain people group in a certain cultural context to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant of bringing a certain kind of blessing to the world (a savior and kingdom of God). That the law was not God’s ideal is apparent in the narrative of the development of the law, God explicitly saying so through Jeremiah and Jesus himself saying that they were granted laws, not because they are good in of themselves, but were accommodations to the hardness of their hearts, and asking more of them would have been futile. And so on. The perfectly egalitarian human relationships of Genesis 2 is the ideal moral paradigm of the Old Testament….. ……the overarching argument involves the necessity to point out that none of this is representative of God’s ideal. You make a huge jump from tolerance to endorsement from God’s perspective that doesn’t take into account the moral vision of the biblical narrative……. the job of the critic is to demonstrate the premise of God’s future-oriented, creation repairing agenda as a falsehood, and that the Sinai covenant represents His ideal for all mankind, forever. Until the critic does that, trying to force “endorse” into the key hole of temporary, forward looking tolerance [of things we’re told He hates] is dialectical wishful thinking……”

End quote (by GM).

Similar topography is discussed in the following: Biblical Argument Against Slavery, by Colin Green which is at both https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/biblical-argument-against-slavery-by-colin-green-post-copy.pdf and also at https://gettingtothetruthofthings.blogspot.com/2020/07/gods-complaint-against-slavery-in.html

Once again — from Genesis to Revelation — the Metaphysic is Evil as Privation — and therein no one Hopes/Wants for More “Justified War/Killing/Etc.” WHY? Because Justified ≠ Good/Lovely.

It’s all Lacking because all Permutations/Combinations of Privation are Lacking. All available vectors deliver Moral Lack.

Given THAT Christian fact-set ((Justified is NOT Beautiful/Good/Etc.)), we find the following too often being said about someone:

“Bad Event X happened and So-&-So actually believes X is a GOOD outcome…how terrible of So-&-So to think X is “Good”!”

To say that about So-&-So when So-&-So believes Scripture ((and therefore rejects the aforementioned A1/A2/B1/B2)) is to speak something untrue about So-&-So. Because AT MOST what So-&So would/could say is that X is the result of a TERRIBLE situation with TERRIBLE OPTIONS. To not include all of the above when speaking of So-&-So one would either be Lying and/or 2. Straw-manning and/or Uninformed.

Some dishonest Non-Theists ((and at times Christians/others)) pretend with “But I just don’t “get it”….” when it comes to those hard ontological distinctions between Justified, Legal, Good, Lovely, Non-Ideal, Ideal, and so on. Perhaps because they don’t believe in the existence of those full-on ontological distinctions and so reject Christianity and if so that’s fine because then perhaps Cosmic Indifference is their only Currency — perhaps because Unintelligible Chaos and the Finally Illusory Self is their Final Terminus for all possible semantic intent. And so on. BUT informed folks CAN do better because of the following:

Informed folks CAN weight “Privation” and “Logical Necessity” and so on into the entire semantic body of all things Old Testament and/or Evil and/or Justified War ((Etc./Etc.)) as Justified ≠ Good/Beautiful/Whole. In God’s Economy the terms {Evil-Should-Not-Be} & {Could-Have-Been-Otherwise} are true broadly speaking regarding the pains of Privation and NOTICE THE RESULT: Justified War Ought Not Have Been / Need Not Have Been and “Event X” is NOT “Good” but ONLY a Logically Necessary TERRIBLE situation with Logically Necessary TERRIBLE OPTIONS which have Logically Necessary Floors and Ceilings regarding Yesterday, Life, Death, Tomorrow, and how it relates to the Perfection of our Being vis-à-vis Man’s True Good, Man’s Final Felicity.

That is in part why at every Evil witness we witness Vectors Short of Christ and we are right to Intuit/Say {Need-Not-Have-Been} & {Evil-Should-Not-Be} & {Could-Have-Been-Otherwise} & {Better Is Man Christ} and so on. The Two Possible Worlds streaming out of Eden ((Eternal Life & Privation)) are not the topic of this thread but in either case the “Means” to get “out” of either Eden or Privation are the SAME and the “Ends” of Eternal Life viz-a-vis the Perfection of Being ((Man’s Being in the sense of Creaturely Perfection)) are the SAME, although that’s a different topic. All of this is in part why Divine Command Theory or “DCT” or “Divine Command Theory” collapses into a logical absurdity as we track its own endpoints across Logical Impossibility and The Good and Reason’s Obligation and Reason’s final terminus and reality’s irreducible or concrete furniture vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life. As per https://metachristianity.com/slavery-in-the-christian-metanarrative-is-defined-as-a-swath-of-privations-many-pains/

—Main Part 3 of 5—

((A)) Killing X Is Morally Wrong

((B)) Man Killing X Is Morally Wrong

((C)) God Killing X Is Morally Wrong

A = B = C if and only if conditions of evil persist through all three actualities. But a problem for “A = B = C” arrives:

[Death] is the # 1 Killer in the World.

Therefore Eternal Life — *and* *nothing* *less* — is the # 1 Dissolution of our # 1 Problem.

In fact — BUT FOR Eternal Life there is no Ontic Resolution ((Closure)) of the # 1 Killer in the World.

UN-Natural:

“Death is strange and unnatural. We desire permanence, as we should. But here, what should last doesn’t. People we know leave. The shock of it tells us that this shouldn’t be the norm but it is for now. But there is coming a day when even death will die…” ((from https://twitter.com/JackieHillPerry/status/1171595500254093312?s=20))

But for eternal life all termini fail to find closure. We begin to see one more reason how Atheism fails to justify Moral Objectivism as all available termini of all available possibilities/permutations begin and end outside of Life/Mind/Reason/Love and so on. More generally we find another reason why it is that “Taking Life” is necessarily wrong for ANY Contingent Being – which is simply because that agent cannot Fully Fund anything akin to The End Of Death Itself nor can that agent Fully Fund anything akin to Eternal Life.

Question: When Life is STOLEN/TAKEN what, exactly, is stolen/taken? What is the “Loss”? What is the “Harm”? If God cures one of cancer today and then that same person dies of “Natural” ((it’s actually quite UN-natural)) “Causes” in ten years, what was Gained/Lost?

To know what is lost, what is gained, and so on we must know something about “From where does the Right To Life come?” What is it about “Human Life” that has weight in our ontology? Recall that the larger question of whether or not A = B = C ? given ((A)) Killing X Is Morally Wrong and ((B)) Man Killing X Is Morally Wrong and ((C)) God Killing X Is Morally Wrong.  As it turns out A = B = C if and only if conditions of evil persist through all three actualities. Where is there a Right To Life? The following quote/excerpt helps focus the lens:

Begin Quote:

Ben ((Non-Theist)) asked this: “How do you get from points #1-5 to concluding that “the capacity for future autonomous activity is then the criterion of the possession of a right to life”?

Here’s the closest Ben comes to a criterion of personhood. He repeated it a couple of times. Here’s the first rendition: “I’m hesitant to say it is a human being, though, because typically by that term we mean a human which has been born, and/or which possesses a mind.”

Like the other paragraphs from which I gleaned what I called “Bens List”, this is two parts red herring and one part mistake. Let’s look… for starters we should note that it is not the case that this is what we mean. If it were what **we mean, then **we wouldn’t be arguing.

Also, being born or unborn is a red herring. Here’s a goofy thought experiment to illustrate the point:

Suppose that in addition to humans, there were two other intelligent species on the planet. One, the Roomans, are marsupials. Rooman joeys are born very quickly after fertilization occurs. When born the joey looks/acts like a grub/maggot & latches itself onto its mother’s teat in her pouch where it continues to develop for a good long time, eventually poking its head out of the pouch at intervals to say “Hi” & then disappearing again.

The second non-human species are called the Titans, after the Greek legends. Like the Titans of legend, titan children stay in their mother’s womb (though not because their father refuses to let them out) until they are fully formed, able to speak, and make moral choices. Some titan fetuses even enter into contracts in utero.

Given current moral sensibilities, there would be significant debate about whether newborn rooman joeys have a right to life, and no debate at all about whether late stage titan fetuses have rights. Of course, pro-life advocates would support the right to life for all at all stages of development. But clearly, the mere fact of birth would have no bearing in any case.

So it is the possession of a mind that seems crucial here. But there are plenty of creatures that have minds, but that have no right to life (or to anything else for that matter). The common housefly comes to mind. Chickens also. So it is not just the presence of a mind that matters either.

Now, at this point, we could note that there is nothing left to Ben’s criteria. But let us be charitable. Let us suppose that Ben was thinking of a creature with a certain *kind* of mind. One that has a certain degree of complexity such that it can have moral rights. I had glossed that earlier by saying that we are looking for *autonomy*. I see no reason not to continue with that gloss. But the problem, as noted in earlier posts, is that the mere **presence of autonomy isn’t enough. Anesthetized people do not exhibit autonomy, but it is still murder to deliberately kill them without cause.

So what is it that allows us to say of unconscious people that, although we have no evidence of current autonomy, they still count? Now, if the heavens opened and the voice of God spoke telling me that a 2×4 is autonomous, I’d think twice about laying into it with my Skill-saw. But barring a divine revelation, there are really only two candidates I can use to tell me that a mind is present even though the being in question is unconscious and exhibits no signs of autonomy:

#1 They used to exhibit autonomy in the past

#2 Under normal conditions, it is highly likely that they will exhibit autonomy in the future.

But item #1 won’t work as a criterion for the simple reason that is true of corpses.

And item #1, even if it was of any value (which it isn’t) certainly could not work by itself. You’d still need item #2. The reason is that item #1 does not apply to one-year olds (for example). But no one wants to say that one-year olds have no right to life. If they don’t have a right to life then there is no such thing as a right to anything.

So it must be item #2 that allows us to extend the rights of autonomy to the unconscious. And it is also quite obvious that that is how we extend the rights of autonomy to one-year olds as well.

But item #2, as already noted, applies to unborn humans at all stages of development, but not to corpses, ununited sperm-egg pairs, still living detached human body parts, chickens and so on.

END QUOTE/EXCERPT ((…from the comment section of https://str.typepad.com/weblog/2012/11/the-moral-pro-life-case.html))

That apparent logical necessity then runs into the following apparent logical necessity:

It’s Logically necessary that ALL people/bodies/souls are Harvested by “Being Itself”/God because EVERY Body/Soul/Life is by logical necessity going to traverse the end of itself AND because again by logical necessity God or Being Itself is the One Who alone contains and brackets that “traversal”.  It can’t “not be” and that is because our own very being itself just does have its actuality/concrete-ontology in and from and by God / Being Itself. There is (necessarily) no such thing as a Person or Man or Woman or Child who does NOT come to the End of his/her own self/being with respect to Being, Time, & Circumstance and, there, traverse that specific boundary.

Death is a Problem on all fronts. What is different in the Old Testament regarding Ends & Death? Just as now so too we find that Sinai/Law/Commands are not “An End” nor “Ends” and do not bring us to Scripture’s point of closure. The Christian Metaphysic does posit an ontological End to “Man In Privation” but notice that God never Ends Life ((the body’s Deaths isn’t our End)). WHAT then are we actually “distinguishing” here when we speak of “Ending Life” and “Wrong” and “It’s Wrong To Take Life”? Where is the Evil/Wrong there? What can be Taken? What can be Given? Recall from the excerpt on the Right To Life “….#2 Under normal conditions, it is highly likely that they will exhibit autonomy in the future….”

Now Remove Pain: Recall the earlier hypothetical of the Painless War in which millions are killed and recall that that is STILL stuck beneath the Ceiling of Privation’s Pains. It’s not enough (given the Christian Metaphysic) because EVEN without Pain the entire state of affairs is STILL defined (in the Christian Metaphysic) as Insufficiency, as Lacking Moral Excellence, and so on. Non-Theism of course finds no closure while, further Upstream, all such Pains of Privation find not only dissolution but closure (in the Christian Metaphysic).

Also recall from the excerpt on the Right To Life “….#2 Under normal conditions, it is highly likely that they will exhibit autonomy in the future….” It’s a bit tedious to read but the esoteric contours of God, Omni, Concurrentism, Death, Life, Being, Harvest, and Continuity may converge as briefly described in, “Wasn’t There Pain And Suffering In Egypt’s First Born?” at https://metachristianity.com/wasnt-there-pain-suffering-in-egypts-first-born/

**IF we are assuming Non-Universalism THEN what are we distinguishing there between “War” and “Heaven/Hell” when it comes to first demanding and at last finding Closure/Coherence/Good?

**IF we are assuming Universalism THEN what are we distinguishing there between “War” and “Heaven/Hell” when it comes to first demanding and at last finding Closure/Coherence/Good?

**IF we are assuming Conditional Immortality THEN what are we distinguishing there between “War” and “Heaven/Hell” when it comes to first demanding and at last finding Closure/Coherence/Good?

[Death] is the #1 Killer in the World. Therefore Eternal Life — *and* *nothing* *less* — is the #1 Dissolution of our #1 Problem. IN FACT — BUT FOR Eternal Life there is no Ontic Resolution ((Closure)) of the #1 Killer in the World.

“Death is strange/unnatural. We desire permanence & we should. What should last doesn’t. People we know leave. This isn’t the Norm. There is coming a Day when even Death will die.”

BUT FOR Eternal Life there is no Ontic Resolution ((Closure)) of the #1 Killer in the World.

To close Part 3 of 4 is the following:

Saying “Some Say The Bible Condones Slavery/Racism” *vs* Saying “I Say The Bible Condones Slavery/Racism” https://randalrauser.com/2019/11/blame-the-victim-conservative-christianity-and-a-culture-of-shaming-women/#comment-4706516949  *NOTE that this specific link is from a discussion about a common pattern of some who are forever first asserting “But The Bible Condones Slavery” and then when pushed on details and consistency they pull back to “But The Bible Says Such & Such” and then when pushed on details and consistency they pull back to “Well okay but SOME SAY it says and/or but SOME SAID it says….”

—Main Part 4 of 5—

Christianity Lands In: “…in all possible worlds we cannot find the morally good vis-à-vis The-Good over inside of Sinai’s “means” and “ends” vis-à-vis executing homosexuals…”

Over 20 Centuries of linguistics in and of Christendom and nearly a century of linguistics in and of Messianic Judaism (etc., etc.) affirm that Trajectory regarding the Final Insufficiency of Sinai ((…what scripture defines as the “Ministry of Death” as it only can “restrain death” yet never can “give life”…)) and the anemic shouts of “Laws, Laws, & More Laws!” and regarding the ONLY logically possible resolution of ANY Privation of Good/Being — namely All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring ((…although that is a different topic…)).

Do you ((…the proverbial “you” as per, say, Non-Theist, Atheist, and whatever the case may be…)) think it was the morally good vis-à-vis The-Good to execute homosexuals? Yes or no? The Christian does *not*. Capital Punishment of folks for sex outside of marriage (which includes homosexual sex) or if we pretend ((…as in lie to ourselves/others…)) that ONLY Same Sex Sex is in that swath then this: Killing Gays and so on. The Christian disagrees with Sinai’s execution of folks for sex outside of marriage (which includes homosexual sex) because of the moral facts presented in Scripture’s Old & New Testaments. As in — the Christian metaphysic ((…see www.Slavery.Bible and also www.BibleViolence.com …)). WHY is it that Non-Theists per their **Non-Theism** do *not* factually ((…Ontic/Irreducible Moral Facts…)) disagree with the Old Testament’s execution of homosexuals while the Christian *does*? ((…obviously the Non-Theist in his heart/conscience WANTS to agree with the Christian here, but his “—ism” fails to give him the ontic reach…)) Before going further, the following context is too often missing from definitions:

“….I’m often asked why the sin of homosexuality is singled out. The answer is simple: it’s not. Scripture identifies it as merely one type of sexual activity that’s prohibited. There are several others. But it’s important to back up a bit to understand the context….” (Alan Shlemon)

There is that and, given all that has been said here so far, there is Non-Theism’s inability to reach that Irreducible Golden Thread of Being vis-à-vis Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life ((…see https://metachristianity.com/reason-reality-golden-thread-reciprocity..)) and therein the Non-Theist *per* *his* *Non-Theism* ((…per his “ism” and NOT per his own conscience, in which he agrees with the Christian…)) does NOT disagree with the afore mentioned executions of Gays in any (ultimately) factual, ontic mode as we never find Non-Theism appeal to anything other than (ultimately) illusory transcendentals.

And, so, to the Non-Theist we ask: Why don’t you disagree with said executions? I mean except by your mutable, frail, and finally indifferent ontic? It’s almost as if you believe — at bottom — that indifference is the end or terminus of the rational reply — of reason’s reply.

For The Non-Theist Trying Hard To Believe In Your Own Non-Theism:

Do you think it was the morally good vis-à-vis The-Good to execute homosexuals? Yes or no? The Christian does *not*. Is Sinai the Means & Ends of Moral Excellence? Scripture states it is not and never can be. Moral Excellence isn’t found there – neither in Means nor in Ends. Now, since you want to agree with the Christian with respect to the metaphysical claim “…in all possible worlds we cannot find the morally good vis-à-vis The-Good over inside Sinai’s “means” and “ends” vis-à-vis executing homosexuals…” we can begin with a brief excerpt of a longer quote which will be provided in whole afterwards:

Begin Excerpt:

“….I’m not accusing you of taking something for granted without arguing for it. I am accusing you of something worse: deliberate intellectual fraud. I am accusing you of persistently deploying universal terms which have been rendered entirely problematical on your own account, as if they still meant what they once did in a moral universe populated by natural kinds and furnished with teleologically derived normative standards…. It’s just all too precious…..”

End excerpt.

We’ll leave to the side the Non-Theist’s insistence that there is NO such thing akin to “…reality’s irreducible concrete furniture vis-à-vis Timeless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Ceaseless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Irreducible Moral Facts…” and so on for of course they are correct GIVEN their non-theism. But that is not the topic here. Instead, the topic is the following quote from which the above excerpt was taken:

Begin Quote:

You stated this, “Isn’t the problem of justification always going to be a shell game? You can always find where I’m dropping a premise, taking something for granted without arguing for it …”

I’m not accusing you of “dropping a premise” or taking something for granted without arguing for it. I am accusing you of something worse: deliberate intellectual fraud.

I am accusing you of persistently deploying universal terms which have been rendered entirely problematical on your own account, as if they still meant what they once did in a moral universe populated by natural kinds and furnished with teleologically derived normative standards.

It’s just all too precious.

Now, I understand, as the relative newcomers here might not always, that the nihilist dance routine, and the refrain that it is better to huckster the crowd than to pester about the ultimate, is in fact your operating premise. But, and it’s a big ugly butt as they say, if you took your own claim of epistemic humility seriously, you would keep this truth about your method at the forefront, and refuse to engage in pseudo-arguments which are in principle incapable of any kind of resolution because of the built-in problems of equivocation; problems of which you are perfectly aware, and have in fact placed there.

Thus, when you launch off on these rhetorical diversions, one can only conclude that these speech acts of yours are base and cynical attempts to simply exhaust those who don’t quite get the meta-narrative which lies behind and informs and shapes your surface efforts.

What you need to do, in order to be “truly authentic”, is to admit to yourself and to everyone else, why that kind of consistent honesty is so dangerous to those taking your stance; and why, unless relentlessly pressed, you seek to avoid it.

By the way, and for what it is worth; I don’t wish to leave the impression that I imagine there is some functional equivalence between the concept of a tautology and a spandrel. I was – probably obviously – implying the prosaic image of a cluster of tautological statements giving an appearance of a meaningful structure or system when stacked and leaned up against each other at various angles … the resultant spaces providing the necessary illusion for pattern projecting subjects to go on to … etc …

You know, and in adverting to the paragraph two above, there is in fact, something profoundly “metaphysical” in that diversionary, dissembling tactic. Something, as you have I believe yourself admitted as anti-logocentric. Something which at the deepest and most profound level takes deceit, and manipulation, to be at the very heart of a “life strategy”

It almost reminds me of … well … the paradigm or myth escapes me at the moment. But I am sure it will come to me eventually…….

….. [ ] …….You replied, “This feels too all-or-nothing to me …”

You will be glad to know that you need not feel that way, since that is not what I was suggesting.

I was stating outright that given your epistemological bracketing of and placing aside systems of truth in favor of a kind of “pragmatism”, and given your adoption of a rotarian program of arguing rhetorically, rather than logically and categorically, you should try admitting this upfront, rather than having it squeezed out of you.

It would be an interesting experiment to observe what would happen if you were to say to someone: “Now, what I am saying is not to be taken as universally true, or even true in your case, but I wish you to accede to my request because it makes me feel better and serves my interests even if it does not, yours.”

It would be akin to the Churchlands whom I mentioned earlier, admitting upfront that they had no minds but that they nonetheless wished (insofar as there was a they that could “wish”) had registered an impulse which caused them to try and modify your brain state and thus affect your behavior. Not that there was, as they would be the first to stipulate, any real “purpose” to it.

I am challenging you to give up using traditional moral language in a deceptive and purely rhetorical manner and to adopt a more transparent and less time-wasting mode of interfacing: or, to at least always admit upfront that what you are doing is wheedling, rather than arguing in any traditional sense. I’m challenging you to drop the camouflage as a matter of principle, and not wait for it to be forcibly stripped from you.

I’m challenging you to admit that your “arguments” are not arguments in any reals sense but attempts to produce emotional effects in others, and thereby modify their behaviors in a way which you find reinforcing.

How far do you think you might be able to get in this project in that open manner and without the camouflaging rags of a habit you have long thrown off?

And if you cannot get by in that manner, what does it say regarding your essential life project, and the role of deception in it?

You mention the post-moderns. Perhaps you would like to share some of the broader implications of an explicitly anti-logocentric anthropology.

End quote. (by DNW)

—Main Part 5 of 5—

The nature of the “Perfect X” is contingent on [The Nature Of X]. So the argument from imperfection collapses into argument against temporal becoming, not against God. “…thinking of God as a moral agent and thus our father is wrong-headed…” (Brian Davies/?) When that one-liner is expunged of other lines and/or when that/any theologian is weighted over scripture’s “entire metanarrative” we realize the following problem when discussing the Fatherhood of God:

First: “The Good” is no more “a” moral agent than “Being Itself” is “a” “being”. Hence God as “a” “moral agent” and/or as “a” “moral agent father” is far too sloppy to be meaningful. Secondly: Moral Agent, Heavenly Father, Creator, and Earthly Father are four *different *categories. Neither is fully embedded in the other. So again using those as exchangeable is far too sloppy to be meaningful.

All Definitions must traverse and survive the Trinitarian Life, which is to say all Meaning-Makers, all Syntax, and all Definitions must traverse and survive the unique Christian Metaphysic wherein we find Being Itself as Timeless Reciprocity || Ceaseless Self-Giving.

Ultimately Life is in self-giving, in reciprocity. Ultimately wholeness is in self-giving, in reciprocity. The Christian’s Metaphysical terminus in Being as Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving affirms and comports with our metrics, concerns, and brutally repeatable moral experience even as Non-Theism’s embrace of Being as Timeless Indifference & Ceaseless Non-Distinction inevitably contradicts the Non-Theist’s own ((and our own)) metrics, concerns, and brutally repeatable moral experience.

It’s inexplicable — even pathological — that anyone would see a child with cancer and find nothing metaphysically / irreducibly / factually objectionable about that ((vis-à-vis Moral Objectivism vis-à-vis Ought-Not-Be)). That’s one of the many reasons the Christian metaphysic comports with reality. The starvation of the child is irreducibly evil and we all perceive said evil. Our perception here presents one of many proofs in an ontology of evil which Non-Theism cannot retain — with the horrific result that Non-Theism begins and ends all commentary here with Indifference. The horrific evil which exists is precisely that — it is irreducibly horrific and it is irreducibly evil. Anyone who has witnessed cancer knows/perceives this. It is, painfully, undeniable. Non-Theism’s terminus of Indifference? Well that fails, even internally. Reason’s terminus and Love’s terminus BOTH affirm that the Evil is not illusion but instead sums to an Ontic/Fact of Evil. Anyone who has witnessed such a sight perceives this. It is — on point of fact — undeniable. Yet the Non-Theist will, eventually, at some “fundamental nature” “somewhere”, deny that. Said denial is, well, horrific. Non-Theism at times attempts to appeal to Schellenberg but that thesis only has an ability to retain the temporal and mutable — while the Actual & Irreducible remain out of reach. On charity let’s grant to Schellenberg’s map the stuff of Enabling, Enabler, Rationalization, Self-Deception, Confirmation Bias, Etc., as all well documented — and on charity let’s grant — Schellenberg finding that God ought fix the gaps there. The result is that his map still fails as it rearranges old, well known pieces in the PoE because Temporal Becoming is the only complaint Schellenberg’s map retains — a *temporary *problem. But Temporal Becoming ((Space-Time/Etc.)) ((and thereby the many pains of our current privation)) is *emergent* — it is not *irreducible* — hence it is not *ontological* — hence it is not ontologically *binding* upon Christianity’s *Means* & *Ends*.

We are Social Beings for an ontic reason – as it is the case that our own being begins and ends within the contours of a full-on metaphysical Full-Stop as per the Necessary Being – that is to say within the contours of Being Itself. The term “Normal” and the term “Moral Excellence” cannot have a semantic intent which begins or ends outside of Reality as per Reality’s Concrete Furniture and in the Christian Metaphysic we find that we are to be the living Imago Dei created off of the Blueprint of Being Itself as Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life. The Christian Metaphysic is in the end a thoroughly Trinitarian metaphysic and, therein, we find that “Being” in fact “is” Being Itself in Timeless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Irreducible Diffusiveness of Being in totum. It is that Terminus at which we find The Always & The Already, that which is ceaselessly Beneath and Above – namely Timeless Reciprocity & Necessity as on Ontic Singularity – that is to say – Love & Necessity as an Ontic Singularity.

It is there that we find in the Christian metaphysic the intellectual and moral grounds for affirming the term, “Love Himself” vis-à-vis the A and the Z of the Trinitarian Life with respect to the Divine Decree of the Imago Dei and all that necessarily comes with “that”. That is to say, it is there that we find nothing less than the immutable love of the Necessary Being – and all that comes with “that”. That is to say, it is there in nothing less than Being that we find The Always and The Already constituting Being as Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Ontic Diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum, and all that necessarily comes with “that”.

It is THAT explanatory terminus which is reality’s rock-bottom, reality’s irreducible substratum – the A and the Z of every Possible Ontic, of every Possible Sentence – of all Possible Syllogisms.

“[The] very action of *kenosis* is not a new act for God, because God’s eternal being is, in some sense, *kenosis* — the self-outpouring of the Father in the Son, in the joy of the Spirit. Thus Christ’s incarnation, far from dissembling his eternal nature, exhibits not only his particular *proprium* as the Son and the splendor of the Father’s likeness, but thereby also the nature of the whole trinitarian *taxis*. On the cross we see this joyous self-donation *sub*contrario*, certainly, but not *in*alieno*. For God to pour himself out, then, as the man Jesus, is not a venture outside the trinitarian life of indestructible love, but in fact quite the reverse: it is the act by which creation is seized up into the sheer invincible pertinacity of that love, which reaches down to gather us into its triune motion.” (David Bentley Hart)

Once again: All Definitions must traverse and survive the Trinitarian Life, which is to say all Meaning-Makers, all Syntax, and all Definitions must traverse and survive the unique Christian Metaphysic wherein we find Being Itself as Timeless Reciprocity || Ceaseless Self-Giving.

Mapping:

The key to the meaning of any verse comes from the paragraph, not just from the individual words, and then the key to the meaning of any paragraph comes from the chapter, not just from the individual paragraphs, and then the key to the meaning of any chapter comes from the specific book, not just from the individual chapters, and then the key to the meaning of any individual book in Scripture comes from the Whole Metanarrative that is [Scripture] and not just from the individual books, and then the key to the meaning of the Metanarrative comes from logical lucidity vis-à-vis ontological referents in a specific Metaphysic, not just from [The-Bible], and then the key to the meaning of the Map that is the Metaphysic comes from the Terrain that is the Trinitarian Life and not just from the Metaphysic, and that Terrain sums to Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-a-vis Processions vis-a-vis the Trinitarian Life even as robust explanatory power on all fronts teaches us that just as it is incoherent to say “Physics” somehow “Comes-From” that physics book over there on the shelf, so too it is incoherent to say that Metaphysical Naturalism or that the Christian Metaphysic either does or “can in principle” somehow “Come-From” ANY-thing that reduces to a World-Contingent Explanatory Terminus.

Overlapping Segues:

NOTE: Some of the hyperlinks within the following essays/comments and in a few other places in the content here will go to STR’s ((https://www.str.org/)) old format an read as “error” but, not to worry as (1) the theme/content can stand on its own without those added items and (2) they are being left in as “place-holders” because the threads are still in disqus format and perhaps when time permits they will be updated.

• Biblical Argument Against Slavery, by Colin Green at both https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/biblical-argument-against-slavery-by-colin-green-post-copy.pdf and at https://gettingtothetruthofthings.blogspot.com/2020/07/gods-complaint-against-slavery-in.html
• “David Bentley Hart, Divine Violence, and the Figurative Interpretation of Scripture” at https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2022/07/04/david-bentley-hart-divine-violence-and-the-figurative-interpretation-of-scripture/
• Divine Command Theory Collapses Into A Metaphysical Absurdity | Meta Christianity
• “Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with Benedict XVI and St. Thomas Aquinas” — at Amazon with https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Passages-Bible-Engaging-Scripture/dp/0813221560/ and also a PDF discussion at https://www.academia.edu/38427540/Violence_Is_Incompatible_with_the_Nature_of_God_Benedict_Aquinas_and_Method_C_Exegesis_of_the_Dark_Passages_of_the_Bible/
• Jesus Loves Canaanites: Biblical Genocide in the Light of Moral Intuition —by Randal Rauser https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Loves-Canaanites-Biblical-Intuition/dp/1775046249
• Love, Reason, Reality, And The Golden Thread Of Reciprocity | Meta Christianity
• Slavery In The Christian Metanarrative Is Defined As A Swath Of Privations Many Pains Therefore The Christian Metanarrative Cannot Have A Pro Slavery Verse Much Less A Pro Slavery Any Thing | Meta Christianity
• Objective And Irreducible Evil Exists Therefore Objective and Irreducible Good Exists Therefore God Exists | Meta Christianity
• God Sending Lying And Evil Spirits? Abraham And Isaac? Cyrus And Isaiah 45:7? The Greater Good Fallacy? | Meta Christianity

NOTE: Some of the hyperlinks there and in a few other places in the content here will go to STR’s ((https://www.str.org/)) old format an read as “error” but, not to worry as (1) the theme/content can stand on its own without those added items and (2) they are being left in as “place-holders” because the threads are still in disqus format and perhaps when time permits they will be updated. Many of those specific links for that specific comment ((…Saying “Some Say The Bible Condones Slavery/Racism” *vs*…)) are from the following threads within their respective comment sections:

• https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/believing_biblical_doctrines_requires_humility_not_arrogance/
• https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/if_naturalistic_evolution_is_true_people_are_not_equal/
• https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/force_is_required_to_override_belief_in_reality/#comment-3027550452

Old Testament Slavery A Brief Look at the Jewish Law of Manumission

—By David M. Cobin

PDF: a-brief-look-at-the-jewish-law-of-manumission-by-david-m-cobin

Source: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2988&context=cklawreview

Related Themes:

[1] Deficiency Of Being, Old Testament Violence, The Metaphysic Of Privation, And Christ Crucified https://metachristianity.com/old-testament-violence-the-metaphysic-of-privation-and-christ-crucified/

[2] Slavery In The Christian Metanarrative Is Defined As A Swath Of Privations Many Pains Therefore The Christian Metanarrative Cannot Have A Pro Slavery Verse Much Less A Pro Slavery Any Thing https://metachristianity.com/slavery-in-the-christian-metanarrative-is-defined-as-a-swath-of-privations-many-pains/

 

End

Christianity and Slavery: Does It Mean Jesus Isn’t Good After All? https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2020/08/christianity-and-slavery-does-it-mean-jesus-isnt-good-after-all/

How Good Was Jesus if He Didn’t Eliminate Slavery? http://gettingtothetruthofthings.blogspot.com/2020/10/how-good-was-jesus-if-he-didnt.html

Scripture’s Meaning Makers and Slavery and Any Topic Whatsoever at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/scriptures-meaning-makers-and-slavery-and-any-topic-whatsoever.pdf

Disappointing: Seidensticker’s Atheist Critique Not Even Semi-Serious After All https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2020/09/disappointing-seidenstickers-atheist-critique-not-even-semi-serious-after-all/

Biblical Argument Against Slavery, by Colin Green at both https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/biblical-argument-against-slavery-by-colin-green-post-copy.pdf and at https://gettingtothetruthofthings.blogspot.com/2020/07/gods-complaint-against-slavery-in.html

Jennifer Glancy And Slavery In The Pauline Churches – A Curious Case (…looking at Glancy’s Slavery In Early Christianity…) in PDF here at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/review-of-glancys-slavery-in-early-christianity-by-colin-green.pdf as well as at https://gettingtothetruthofthings.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-strange-case-of-jennifer-glancy-and.html

‘In the image of the Image’ Gregory of Nyssa’s Opposition to Slavery by Adan Couchman https://www.amazon.com/Image-Gregory-Nyssas-Opposition-Slavery-ebook/dp/B0CBNHC6FN/

The Whole Humanity Gregory Of Nyssa Critique Of Slavery In Light Of His Eschatology – by David Bentley Hart the-whole-humanity-gregory-of-nyssa-critique-of-slavery-in-light-of-his-eschatology-by-david-bentley-hart

Does The Bible Teach That Slaves Can Be Beaten And Mistreated?  http://gettingtothetruthofthings.blogspot.com/2020/12/does-bible-teach-that-slaves-can-be.html

Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. on Being, Non-Being, & The Summum Bonum Of Life https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/okay-so-laura-ingalls-wilder-was-a-racist-now-what/#comment-4300257193

Christianity’s Anti-Slavery Narrative Isn’t Exactly “New” News ((…including Philemon…)) https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/okay-so-laura-ingalls-wilder-was-a-racist-now-what/#comment-5031811299

Paul’s Letter To Philemon: Manumission Or What? —by Colin A. Green via PDF at both http://jgrchj.net/volume18/JGRChJ-18_Green.pdf and also here at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/pauls-letter-to-philemon-manumission-or-what-by-colin-green-pdf.pdf

Segues Amid Racism In America & Social Justice https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/okay-so-laura-ingalls-wilder-was-a-racist-now-what/#comment-4993890642

First-Century Anti-Racism vis-à-vis The Book of Acts https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/force_is_required_to_override_belief_in_reality/#comment-3027550452

In The OT & NT Faith Outdistances Both Biology And Sin https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/force_is_required_to_override_belief_in_reality/#comment-3017575605

Faith Is The Offense That Outreaches Both The Outsider & The Infidel https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/do_christians_and_muslims_worship_the_same_god/#comment-3426344202

WVW: Does the Bible Support Slavery – Leviticus 25:44-46 https://www.bibledingers.com/post/wvw-does-the-bible-support-slavery-leviticus-25-44-46

Historian or Assyriologist who supposes Scripture condones slavery? See the PDF of Scripture’s Meaning Makers and Slavery and Any Topic Whatsoever at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/scriptures-meaning-makers-and-slavery-and-any-topic-whatsoever.pdf

A Secular Jew Makes A Surprising Discovery About Christians And American Slavery https://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2019/04/17/secular-jew-makes-surprising-discovery-about-christians-and-american

Ten Reasons the Bible Has It Right on Slavery https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2014/08/ten-reasons-the-bible-has-it-right-on-slavery

On Christianity and Slavery: You Would Think… https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2013/02/on-christianity-and-slavery/

Metaphysics Of Race (9 Part) Series: https://www.parableman.com/blog/metaphysics-of-race-series

Slavery’s Only Absolute – Ceaseless – Antithesis: Trinity ((…a bit esoteric but writing has to be fun sometimes…)) https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2014/08/ten-reasons-the-bible-has-it-right-on-slavery/#comment-104642

The Christian Metanarrative Defines Slavery As A Swath Of Privation’s Many Pains Therefore The Christian Metanarrative Cannot Have A “Pro-Slavery” Verse Much Less A “Pro-Slavery” Any-Thing https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/okay-so-laura-ingalls-wilder-was-a-racist-now-what/#comment-5031847118

See: BibleViolence Deficiency Of Being, Old Testament Violence, The Metaphysic of Privation, And Christ Crucified  https://metachristianity.com/old-testament-violence-the-metaphysic-of-privation-and-christ-crucified/

Saying “Some Say The Bible Condones Slavery/Racism” *vs* Saying “I Say The Bible Condones Slavery/Racism” https://randalrauser.com/2019/11/blame-the-victim-conservative-christianity-and-a-culture-of-shaming-women/#comment-4706516949  *NOTE that this specific link is copy/pasted a few paragraphs down from here. It is from a discussion about a common pattern of some who are forever first asserting “The Bible Condones Slavery” and then when pushed on details and consistency they pull back to “The Bible Says Such & Such” and when pushed on details and consistency they pull back to “Well but SOME SAY it say….” And so on.

See: RACISM.BIBLE  —Race, Racism, And Antiracism Resources

Scholastics Contra Racism by Edward Feser https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/09/scholastics-contra-racism.html

The Nelson Hackett Project https://nelsonhackettproject.uark.edu/

The Nelson Hackett Project/Documents https://nelsonhackettproject.uark.edu/the-documents/

The Religious Roots Of Abolition https://americainclass.org/the-religious-roots-of-abolition

American Abolitionists and Antislavery Activists — Conscience of the Nation http://www.americanabolitionists.com

Atheist/Non-Theist Tim O’Neill comments: “Like most things in history, the abolition of slavery was a gradual process and involved many factors. But if I were to single out one religious tradition that was most influential, it would be Christianity.” There are related segues from him ((…in his informative blog/website…)) in the following: https://historyforatheists.com/2020/01/tom-holland-dominion

Preaching Deliverance to the Captives: Particular Baptist Sermons on the Abolition of the Slave Trade — by Matthew Roe at https://www.amazon.com/Preaching-Deliverance-Captives-Particular-Abolition/dp/100893254X

The Bible Against Slavery: An Inquiry Into the Patriarchal and Mosaic Systems on the Subject of Human Rights —by Theodore Dwight Weld at https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1440046336  and also at https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1975745507

Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible? — by Isaac Allen at https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Sanctioned-Bible-Isaac-Allen-ebook/dp/B0082RZQIY

A Condensed Anti-slavery Bible Argument — by George Bourne 1780-1845 — at https://docsouth.unc.edu/church/bourne/menu.html and also at a PDF at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/condensed-anti-slavery-bible-argument-by-george-bourne-1780-1845.pdf and also at https://www.amazon.com/condensed-anti-slavery-Bible-argument/dp/B002YT8P48

The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754-1783: An Annotated Critical Edition — by David L. Crosby at https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/080715475X

To Preach Deliverance to the Captives: Freedom and Slavery in the Protestant Mind of George Bourne, 1780–1845 — at https://www.amazon.com/Preach-Deliverance-Captives-Protestant-Antislavery-ebook/dp/B07Z8FC326

“Is The Bible Pro Slavery?” from Gavin Ortlund Excerpts of his YouTube Video – at PDF at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/is-the-bible-pro-slavery-from-gavin-ortlund-excerpts-of-his-youtube-video.pdf

The Misreading of Slave Passages in the Bible – Part Two – by Ben Witherington ((…this is a multi-part series with more than two parts but Part 2 is placed here as a general reference…)) which is at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2023/08/01/the-misreading-of-slave-passages-in-the-bible-part-two/

Avoiding An Obvious Category Error — The following quote is from “Christianity and Slavery: Does It Mean Jesus Isn’t Good After All?” —by Tom Gilson at https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2020/08/christianity-and-slavery-does-it-mean-jesus-isnt-good-after-all/

“…We’d started out talking about whether Christ was good, and I let myself be sidetracked into talking about whether Christians are good…”

ALSO NOTE: Some of the hyperlinks there and in a few other places in the content here will go to STR’s ((https://www.str.org/)) old format an read as “error” but they are being left in as “place-holders” because the threads are still in disqus format and perhaps when time permits they will be updated. Many of those specific links for that specific comment ((…Saying “Some Say The Bible Condones Slavery/Racism” *vs*…)) are from the following:

• https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/believing_biblical_doctrines_requires_humility_not_arrogance/
• https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/if_naturalistic_evolution_is_true_people_are_not_equal/
• https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/force_is_required_to_override_belief_in_reality/#comment-3027550452

—Primer 1 of 3:

From “GM” is the following for the larger context on the topic of “Slavery” and one of the ways “Sub-Narrative” vs. “Meta-Narrative” can never be conflated in any coherent sense:

Quote:

“This is part of the problem of this whole conversation. One half is to accurately describe what was going on in the Old Testament…. and one is the moral vision of the Old Testament as a whole. It’s absolutely vital to understand that the Mosaic law was not God’s ideal, it was God working with a certain people group in a certain cultural context to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant of bringing a certain kind of blessing to the world (a savior and kingdom of God). That the law was not God’s ideal is apparent in the narrative of the development of the law, God explicitly saying so through Jeremiah and Jesus himself saying that they were granted laws, not because they are good in of themselves, but were accommodations to the hardness of their hearts, and asking more of them would have been futile. And so on. The perfectly egalitarian human relationships of Genesis 2 is the ideal moral paradigm of the Old Testament….. ……the overarching argument involves the necessity to point out that none of this is representative of God’s ideal. You make a huge jump from tolerance to endorsement from God’s perspective that doesn’t take into account the moral vision of the biblical narrative……. the job of the critic is to demonstrate the premise of God’s future-oriented, creation repairing agenda as a falsehood, and that the Sinai covenant represents His ideal for all mankind, forever. Until the critic does that, trying to force “endorse” into the key hole of temporary, forward looking tolerance [of things we’re told He hates] is dialectical wishful thinking……” End quote (by GM).

—Primer 2 of 3:

The Christian Metanarrative Defines Slavery As A Swath Of Privation’s Many Pains Therefore The Christian Metanarrative Cannot Have A “Pro-Slavery” Verse Much Less A “Pro-Slavery” Any-Thing. “Sub-Narratives” never can “become” “Meta-Narrative”. The key to the meaning of any verse comes from the paragraph, not just from the individual words, and then the key to the meaning of any paragraph comes from the chapter, not just from the individual paragraphs, and then the key to the meaning of any chapter comes from the specific book, not just from the individual chapters, and then the key to the meaning of any individual book in Scripture comes from the Whole Metanarrative that is [Scripture] and not just from the individual books, and then the key to the meaning of the Metanarrative comes from logical lucidity vis-à-vis ontological referents in a specific Metaphysic, not just from [The-Bible], and then the key to the meaning of the Map that is the Metaphysic comes from the Terrain that is the Trinitarian Life and not just from the Metaphysic, and that Terrain sums to Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-a-vis Processions vis-a-vis the Trinitarian Life even as robust explanatory power on all fronts teaches us that just as it is incoherent to say “Physics” somehow “Comes-From” that physics book over there on the shelf, so too it is incoherent to say that Metaphysical Naturalism or that the Christian Metaphysic either does or “can in principle” somehow “Come-From” ANY-thing that reduces to a World-Contingent Explanatory Terminus.

—Primer 2 of 3 Continued:

The following is described as “continued” because it is a topic that fits well withing the concept of the Whole of Scripture aka The Christian Metaphysic and how that is so often expunged from folks who conclude that scripture condones slavery. Part of that is why these early sections are still a “Primer” as they have to do with “critical thinking” if we mean to “map reality” and so then we come to the following PDF:

Scripture’s Meaning Makers and Slavery and Any Topic Whatsoever at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/scriptures-meaning-makers-and-slavery-and-any-topic-whatsoever.pdf

Before moving into Primer 3 perhaps the following latticework vis-a-vis logical identity, semantic architecture, epistemological content, and metaphysically irreducible termini:

Scripture’s© Singular® Metanarrative© & Thematic® Lines© find no Malleability in the Epicenter as all definitions and meaning-makers must survive the traversal and demands of Being-Itself as Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-a-vis the Trinitarian Life. Ultimately our Meaning and Life and Wholeness in Existence converge in the Singular Terminus of Self-Giving ||| Reciprocity. Non-Theism’s terminus in Being as Irreducible Indifference and Terminal Non-Distinction contradicts all that we call *sight* even as our terminus in Trinitarian Being as Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving affirms all that we call *sight*.

—Primer 3 of 3:

Divine Command Theory breaks down and collapses into a logical absurdity as we follow through with its premises and push through to their endpoints as we traverse 1/ Logical Impossibility and 2/ The Good and 3/ Reason’s Obligation and 4/ Reason’s final terminus and 5/ reality’s irreducible or concrete furniture vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life. Such preliminary premises are required to expose the error of some of our Non-Theist friends in their treatment of “Moral Excellence” outside of our own perfection of being. Ontology obviously beats rhetoric and we find therefore that anyone who equates ((1)) the pains of Privation vis-a-vis all things Adamic ((…slavery for example and etc…)) to ((2)) The Good // The Moral Ideal of Timeless and Eternal Kingdom Metrics ((…the perfection of being…)) is theologically and metaphysically and emotionally uninformed. Evil is not a positive substance but is instead a deficiency of substance ((Being, Good, Etc.)) — Evil is therein a Hollow or Vacuum of said substance — and that is Evil in the sense of “The Privation of The Good”  — as “The Good Minus Something”. The Christian Metanarrative Defines Slavery as Privation’s Pain **therefore** The Christian Metanarrative Cannot Have a “Pro-Slavery-Verse”. Our Non-Theist friends too often go about their criticism of the Christian Metaphysic by selectively expunging both reality as it actually is and also expunging the Christian’s metaphysical landscape of Privation. Perhaps the assumption is that doing so is going to help their premise/premises do (real/ontic) work but of course one cannot invent Non-Christian landscapes and then claim one is exposing problems with Christian premises. Regarding Divine Command Theory ((DCT)), first, recall the “NOTE” earlier about the various Links which go to “error” and then see related context on DCT in Divine Command Theory Collapses Into A Metaphysical Absurdity — at https://metachristianity.com/divine-command-theory-collapses-into-a-metaphysical-absurdity/

Irreducible Consequences of Primers 1 & 2 & 3

We are Social Beings for an ontic reason – as it is the case that our own being begins and ends within the contours of a full-on metaphysical Full-Stop as per the Necessary Being – that is to say within the contours of Being Itself. The term “Normal” and the term “Moral Excellence” cannot have a semantic intent which begins or ends outside of Reality as per Reality’s Concrete Furniture and in the Christian Metaphysic we find that we are to be the living Imago Dei created off of the Blueprint of Being Itself as Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life. The Christian Metaphysic is in the end a thoroughly Trinitarian metaphysic and, therein, we find that “Being” in fact “is” Being Itself in Timeless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Irreducible Diffusiveness of Being in totum. It is that Terminus at which we find The Always & The Already, that which is ceaselessly Beneath and Above – namely Timeless Reciprocity & Necessity as on Ontic Singularity – that is to say – Love & Necessity as an Ontic Singularity.

It is there that we find in the Christian metaphysic the intellectual and moral grounds for affirming the term, “Love Himself” vis-à-vis the A and the Z of the Trinitarian Life with respect to the Divine Decree of the Imago Dei and all that necessarily comes with “that”. That is to say, it is there that we find nothing less than the immutable love of the Necessary Being – and all that comes with “that”. That is to say, it is there in nothing less than Being that we find The Always and The Already constituting Being as Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Ontic Diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum, and all that necessarily comes with “that”.

It is THAT explanatory terminus which is reality’s rock-bottom, reality’s irreducible substratum – the A and the Z of every Possible Ontic, of every Possible Sentence – of all Possible Syllogisms.

The Shocking ‘Slave Bible’ ~ Parts Were Deleted to Manipulate Slaves:

• https://www.museumofthebible.org/newsroom/slave-bible-exhibit-examines-use-of-religion-in-colonial-period
• https://www.museumofthebible.org/exhibits/slave-bible
• https://archive.org/details/selectpartsholy00unkngoog/page/n5/mode/2up

F. Sanders commented on that: “I’ve spent some time with this terrible 1807 American “Slave Bible” in the last year or so. It’s a perverse document that sets itself a hard editorial task: If you hand the Bible to slaves, which parts do you need to omit in order to keep it “safe?”

Our Non-Theist friends may not see the relevance of that (sinful) move by Christians expunging Scripture’s *actual* Metanarrative. Leviticus is removed entirely, which reveals the comical sloppiness of the Non-Theist’s exegeses who seem unable to read more than a few verses at a time. More informed Christians who knew the Wider/Actual “Meta-Narrative” of Scripture see “Leviticus” and REMOVE it with the goal of HIDING parts of Scripture which encourage thoughts of Fairness, Liberation, Justice, Freedom, Covenant Value vis-à-vis God transcending Tribe/Biology, and so on, and so on.

It’s a simple fact: Sub-Narratives never can “become” Meta-Narrative. “But Leviticus! But Sinai!” is fine to work off of, but again that is a common manifestation of a failure of basic reading comprehension:

“When I said “arbitrary,” I was referring to the idea that the interpretation of the verses is some kind of arbitrary choice—as if both options were equally valid. They’re not, for the reasons I explained. And my point from the beginning has been that only a person who did not understand the Bible as a whole, including all the background information of the Law, could use the verses that way. No honest English reader could read the Bible as a whole and come up with their interpretation. The verse says what it says as part of a specific narrative, not as some kind of stand-alone fortune cookie. It’s not my apologetic. I didn’t make up the rules of reading comprehension.” (by Amy Hall)

Reading Comprehension and Catcher In The Rye:

Critics will often point to Mt. Sinai’s Law, describe something in it, and then this: Full-Stop. Well, given that method we can, in reply, suggest that they take any book like, say, The Catcher In The Rye. Let’s say in paperback it had 300 pages. So the Critic, to repeat the method by which he treats Sinai, would do the following — Take out pages 1-50 and then leave pages 51-99 and then also remove pages 100-300. Then base every definition and every sub-narrative solely on pages 51-99. That’s not Catcher In The Rye, but, instead, it is [Catch] “Full Stop”. Scripture or the bible is much larger and so they would want to rip out the 1st 300 pages of a book, read 10 pages, rip out the last 500 pages, & then weave for us a tale all about what the book says about such & such. And? Well on the basic rules of reading comprehension that is either uninformed or else dishonest.

The following is a quote of “A fuller extract from Gregory of Nyssa on the evils of slavery” by Roger Pearse at  https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2019/01/24/a-fuller-extract-from-gregory-of-nyssa-on-the-evils-of-slavery/

Begin R. Pearse Quote:

A few years ago I found online an extract from Gregory of Nyssa against slavery which I wrote about here.  Today I came across the full text of the translation, and the passage is rather longer than I had thought, and well worth giving in full.

The passage appears in the Homilies on Ecclesiastes, homily 4.  Gregory is working his way through the text of Ecclesiastes, and the various ways in which Solomon attempted to fill his life with stuff, rather than with God.  In Ecclesiastes 2:7 he starts listing his possessions, which include slaves.

Note that the biblical Greek text on which Gregory commented is sensibly translated at the head of the passage, as it is not always the same as our modern texts which are based on the Hebrew.

Ecclesiastes 2:7 –

I got me slaves and slave-girls, and homebred slaves were born for me, and much property in cattle and sheep became mine, above all who had been before me in Jerusalem….

334.5. We still find the occasion for confession controlling the argument. The one who gives an account of his doings relates one after another almost all the things through which the futility of the activities of this life is recognized. But now he reaches as it were a more serious indictment of things he has done, as a result of which one is accused of the feeling of Pride. For what is such a gross example of arrogance in the matters enumerated above – an opulent house. and an abundance of vines, and ripeness in vegetable-plots, and collecting waters in pools and chanelling them in gardens – as for a human being to think himself the master of his own kind? I got me slaves and slave-girls, he says, and homebred slaves were born for me.

Do you notice the enormity of the boast? This kind of language is raised up as a challenge to God. For we hear from prophecy that all things are the slaves of the power that transcends all (Ps 119/118,91). So, when someone [p335] turns the property of God into his own property and arrogates dominion to his own kind, so as to think himself the owner of men and women, what is he doing but overstepping his own nature through pride, regarding himself as something different from his subordinates?

335,5. I got me slaves and slave-girls. What do you mean? You condemn man to slavery, when his nature is free and possesses free will, and you legislate in competition with God, overturning his law for the human species. The one made on the specific terms that he should be the owner of the earth, and appointed to government by the Creator – him you bring under the yoke of slavery, as though defying and fighting against the divine decree.

335,11. You have forgotten the limits of your authority, and that your rule is confined to control over things without reason. For it says Let them rule over winged creatures and fishes and four-footed things and creeping things (Gen, 1,26). Why do you go beyond what is subject to you and raise yourself up against the very species which is free, counting your own kind on a level with four-footed things and even footless things? You have subjected all things to man, declares the word through the prophecy, and in the text it lists the things subject, cattle and oxen and sheep (Ps 8,7- 8). Surely [p336] human beings have not been produced from your cattle? Surely cows have not conceived human stock? Irrational beasts are the only slaves of mankind. But to you these things are of small account. Raising fodder for the cattle, and green plants for the slaves of men, it says (Ps 1041 103,14). But by dividing the human species in two with ‘slavery’ and ‘ownership’ you have caused it to be enslaved to itself, and to be the owner of itself.

336,6.  I got me slaves and slave-girls. For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God? God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness (Gen 1,26). If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Rom 11,29). God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?

336,20. How too shall the ruler of the whole earth and all earthly things be put up for sale? [p337] For the property of the person sold is bound to be sold with him, too. So how much do we think the whole earth is worth? And how much all the things on the earth (Gen 1,26)? If they are priceless, what price is the one above them worth, tell me? Though you were to say the whole world, even so you have not found the price he is worth (Mat 16,26; Mk 8,36). He who knew the nature of mankind rightly said that the whole world was not worth giving in exchange for a human soul. Whenever a human being is for sale, therefore, nothing less than the owner of the earth is led into the sale-room. Presumably, then, the property belonging to him is up for auction too.  That means the earth, the islands, the sea, and all that is in them. What will the buyer pay, and what will the vendor accept, considering how much property is entailed in the deal?

337,13. But has the scrap of paper, and the written contract, and the counting out of obols deceived you into thinking yourself the master of the image of God? What folly! If the contract were lost, if the writing were eaten away by worms, if a drop of water should somehow seep in and obliterate it, what guarantee have you of their slavery? what have you to sustain your title as owner? I see no superiority over the subordinate [p338] accruing to you from the title other than the mere title. What does this power contribute to you as a person? not longevity, nor beauty, nor good health, nor superiority in virtue. Your origin is from the same ancestors, your life is of the same kind, sufferings of soul and body prevail alike over you who own him and over the one who is subject to your ownership – pains and pleasures, merriment and distress, sorrows and delights, rages and terrors, sickness and death. Is there any difference in these things between the slave and his owner? Do they not draw in the same air as they breathe? Do they not see the sun in the same way? Do they not alike sustain their being by consuming food? Is not the arrangement of their guts the same? Are not the two one dust after death? Is there not one judgment for them? a common Kingdom, and a common Gehenna?

338,14. If you are equal in all these ways, therefore, in what respect have you something extra, tell me, that you who are human think yourself the master of a human being, and say, I got me slaves and slave-girls, like herds of goats or pigs. For when he said, I got me slaves and slave-girls, he added that abundance in flocks of sheep and cattle came to him. For he says, and much property in cattle and sheep became mine, as though both cattle and slaves were subject to his authority to an equal degree.

The Greek text translated is that in the modern Gregorii Nysseni Opera (GNO) series, (volume 5), and page and line numbers are indicated.

The translation itself is by the excellent Stuart G. Hall, and Rachel Moriarty.^[1]  The latter contributes a preface indicating that unfortunately the translation has been tampered with in order to make it “gender neutral”.  The translation of the homilies is followed by a series of useful studies, and I could wish that others adopted such a format.

It’s obvious, in context, that Gregory is not preaching an abolitionist sermon, but an expository one.  He’s not calling for the institution of slavery to be abolished.  Indeed his hearers might not have been prepared for anything that radical.  But Gregory is worrying away at the idea.  The germ of the idea that led to abolition is present.

Useful to have this, and it is perhaps not as well-known as it might be.

—End R. Pearse Quote—

“The Bible Condones Slavery”

Not when we read WHOLE metanarratives. Even Slave Owners in the 18th/19th centuries knew they had to remove huge slices of the Old Testament in order to carve out and hide God’s Wider definitions of Good/Ideal (…see the earlier section headed with The Shocking ‘Slave Bible’ ~ Parts Were Deleted to Manipulate Slaves etc…).

Two more examples: 

First:

Biblical Argument Against Slavery, by Colin Green at both https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/biblical-argument-against-slavery-by-colin-green-post-copy.pdf and at https://gettingtothetruthofthings.blogspot.com/2020/07/gods-complaint-against-slavery-in.html

Second:

The following is a Copy/Paste of https://randalrauser.com/2019/11/blame-the-victim-conservative-christianity-and-a-culture-of-shaming-women/#comment-4706516949  It is from a discussion about a common pattern of some who are forever first asserting “The Bible Condones Slavery” and then when pushed on details and consistency they pull back to “The Bible Says Such & Such” and when pushed on details and consistency they pull back further to “Well but SOME SAY it says….” And so on.  NOTE: Some of the hyperlinks there and in a few other places in the content here will go to STR’s ((https://www.str.org/)) old format an read as “error” but they are being left in as “place-holders” because the threads are still in disqus format and perhaps when time permits they will be updated. Many of those specific links for that specific comment are from the following:

• https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/believing_biblical_doctrines_requires_humility_not_arrogance/
• https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/if_naturalistic_evolution_is_true_people_are_not_equal/
• https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/force_is_required_to_override_belief_in_reality/#comment-3027550452

The Copy/Pastes is fairly long so it will begin and end with Centered Headers to make its Start/Stop transitions distinct from its internal copy/paste/excerpts and so on:

—Begin Copy/Paste Of “Some-Say-Said vs. It Says” —

— SOME SAID vs. IT SAYS — You never tell us. That is why your comments at http://disq.us/p/25qc3ut and at http://disq.us/p/1f368wg are worth taking a look at a tenth-ish time — for despite going to seminary you still don’t seem able to progress past fairly basic intellectual concepts when it comes to WHAT your actual claim IS with respect to A through G as per the following:

*A. Racism
*B. Scripture
*C. Pastor Martin Luther King Jr.’s exegetical conclusion on (a) vs. (b)
*D. Exegetical Error

*E. Your observation of “But Some Christians Have Used A-Verse To Condone Racism”
*F. Your possible/apparent claim that Scripture DOES in fact Condone Racism/Slavery/Etc.
*G. Your possible/apparent claim that you are NOT claiming “F” that but rather you are MERELY only trying to point out “E” ((…“But Some Christians Have Used A-Verse To Affirm Racism”…))

You never tell us if you mean “F” or if you mean “G”. Why not? Well — let’s be clear/precise:

For years now your pattern is the same as you come roaring in going on and on about how Scripture condones / likes / defines-as-good the stuff of Racism/Slavery/Etc. but then when pushed on the fact that Narrative / Meta-Narrative / Sub-Narrative actually matter you “sort-of” pull back from what WOULD sum to such a bold exegetical commitment on your part with things like “…I specifically made a point that they were verses that some other people understand mean that….and that’s all….”. That would work if it were not for what you then predictably do next and so another “but-then” cannot be avoided. So but then in the next breath you continue chastising Christians who affirm Pastor Martin Luther King Jr.’s exegetical conclusion as-if-they-are-getting-it-wrong and/or as-if-they-are-being-dishonest.

Well which of those many and varied and sloppy half-attempts of yours is it?

It’s been years and you still can’t stop that same Dancing-Hedge routine. So far in THIS thread you’ve not addressed [A] http://disq.us/p/25oj10q nor your earlier hints that Good Christians really ought to CONDONE folks waking into Gay Bars and mass-shooting Gays as per [B] http://disq.us/p/25ok6zs and as per its request for clarification on that point with “Feel free to correct any errors Etc.” in this thread’s http://disq.us/p/25phwro — and by the way you have not yet replied to the actual questions in that which is therefore our [C] http://disq.us/p/25phwro — nor have you replied to [D] http://disq.us/p/25qm045

You opine along the line of “…..but there are or have been different conclusions within Christendom….” and YET you’ve not replied to the content in [E] http://disq.us/p/25qm045 which asks specifically about that.

Instead you shout “Dishonest!” and, so, that brings us to the list under review – namely:

*A. Racism
*B. Scripture
*C. Pastor Martin Luther King Jr.’s exegetical conclusion on (a) vs. (b)
*D. Exegetical Error

*E. Your observation of “But Some Christians Have Used A-Verse To Condone Racism”
*F. Your possible/apparent claim that Scripture DOES in fact Condone Racism/Slavery/Etc.
*G. Your possible/apparent claim that you are NOT claiming “F” that but rather you are MERELY only trying to point out “E” ((…“But Some Christians Have Used A-Verse To Affirm Racism”…))

Before we get to what must be the tenth time addressing your Favorite-Dishonest-Christian-Racism-Link in that thread of 257-ish comments, two simple questions:

[1] Who got it right with respect to Scripture and Racism? Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. *OR* the various misuses and abuses housed within the sins of various Christians and Non-Christians? NO ONE disagrees with the fact of those abuses and misuses, but you seem to think we are being dishonest when we FAIL to find PRO-Racism verses in Scripture’s ANTI-Racist metanarrative. But HOW is that dishonesty on our part even possible and WHY did you choose that term (dishonest) to describe that FAILURE on our part? Can we SAY what a verse SAYS for you with some examples you may like to list? Give any example you would like. Think it through. PRO-Racist verses CANNOT be found in an ANTI-Racist metanarrative…. and as such as per the link http://disq.us/p/1f368wg you provided within that thread’s 257 comments, don’t count on me to just dance to evasive questions and thereby indirectly help anyone dial-up any other implicit or explicit conclusion about what ANY “verse” in fact SAYS.

[2] Who got it right with respect to defining what God Tolerates vs Condones: Those who define terms in and by the premise of, “Sinai is God’s Ideal for Mankind” (…such as in your constant appeals to Moses/Law…), or, instead, others who define those same terms by the premise of, “Sinai is not God’s Ideal for Mankind”? Thousands of years of both (a) Messianic Jews and (b) Christians both converge “there” with respect to Sinai/Tolerate/Condone ((…as per the necessary Means/Ends related to the Perfection of Being / of the Adamic…as alluded to in earlier comments in this thread…)).

That was half-ish from-ish http://disq.us/p/1hzzaho btw for reference. Of course again you never flat out tell us as one who has graduated seminary whether or not you mean to stop at “F” or else “G” from the earlier list.

Speaking of “general/basic” questions, the following excerpt asks a few more which have been long-standing with respect to your general pool of fallacious sound-bites:

Still beating the drums of Sinai Full Stop, eh? After all these years too. Why? Hair as Glory of Woman “vs” Woman as Glory of Man and all of that “as-if” Men are not allowed to wear real hats on their real heads? Why? I thought you went to seminary, yes? Didn’t they discuss basic metaphysics? Category errors? Contingent vs. Necessary?

Also — Did you ever imply that *Christians* ought *not* find a moral problem ((given Christianity)) with going into bars and mass shooting Gays?

If so then apparently nothing has changed wrt your exegetical elimitivism. Or was that someone else there at STR….? Feel free correct any error on that premise and/or person who floated it ((Etc.)).

Did you ever imply that “a verse” is enough to define Racism as The Good via your own exegetical argument beyond your usual [someone once said so]?

You went to seminary, yes? Surely then you must actually believe that one of several interpretations gets closer than the others to “X” — whatever you believe “X” on Christianity “is” vis-à-vis the Cruciform Lens ((…or vis-à-vis the body of Scripture and so on…)).

Or is this all merely still you continuing your yesteryear shouts about how / why Christians ought not mind mass-shooting / open-firing in Gay Bars? Or was that someone else & not you? Been awhile so perhaps the recall is imprecise. Feel free to correct any errors Etc.

While you’re at it perhaps you can explain why thousands of years of Messianic Jews & Christians converge with Scripture defining Sinai as lacking both the Means to Moral Excellence and also the Ends of Moral Excellence. Messianic Jews & Christians converge there – where did they all go off the proverbial rails?

Also — why do you float/suggest premises by which we are to literally believe that literal males cannot wear literal hats on their literal heads ((*on *Christianity))?

With respect to your trend of multiple years of avoiding giving us an answer as to whether you, as one who went to seminary, mean to land on “F” or else on “G” from the above list, we see that same dance of yours occurring both Before & After your favorite link/comment as that SAME question of “F” vs. “G” leads us into it and as that SAME question of “F” vs. “G” then follows it – each time left unanswered by you.

Recall the list of “A” through “G” as it will be referenced as we move forward:

*A. Racism
*B. Scripture
*C. Pastor Martin Luther King Jr.’s exegetical conclusion on (a) vs. (b)
*D. Exegetical Error

*E. Your observation of “But Some Christians Have Used A-Verse To Condone Racism”
*F. Your possible/apparent claim that Scripture DOES in fact Condone Racism/Slavery/Etc.
*G. Your possible/apparent claim that you are NOT claiming “F” that but rather you are MERELY only trying to point out “E” ((…“But Some Christians Have Used A-Verse To Affirm Racism”…))

Quick Example before looking at your Favorite-Dishonest-Christian-Racism-Link:

From here at RR’s Blog:

Me: http://disq.us/p/239voui
You: http://disq.us/p/239wf7h
Me: http://disq.us/p/23ah6n6

Me Two Years Ago: http://disq.us/p/1qhhc5t
Me again asking you a question and reminding you not to invent excuses: http://disq.us/p/23fvuxb ((…ried twice http://disq.us/p/23f72l1 …))

Again you never flat out tell us as one who has graduated seminary whether or not you mean to stop at “F” or else “G” from the earlier list.

Example:

Regarding Racism/Slavery vs. Pastor King’s Exegetical Conclusion vs. Your refusal to tell us if you mean “F” or “G” from the earlier list:

**Begin Excerpt/Copy-Paste:

Metanarrative is fundamental. Without Metanarrative you’ve / we’ve no rational “metrics”. Therein one cannot pretend that one’s wider metaphysic is superfluous. Where on lands with respect to Being & Reason & Mind & Contingency & The Perfection Of Being & Change/Becoming & A….Z ((…and so on…)) will necessarily stomp all over one’s semantic intent with respect to Perception & Knowledge & what counts as rational metrics and what counts as rational inquiry ((…and so on…)). YET you quote verses which you <say> condone Racism/Slavery ((…is it “F” or is it “G” from the earlier list??…)) and all while acting “As-If” the contingent abstractions of contingent minds of contingent beings are all one needs – Full Stop – and THEN you ask us to <say> what those verses <say>. And? What has our ((…the Christians in the following links / threads…)) reply always been? Well we grant you your wish and, so, we repeatedly *do* tell you want “that-verse” in fact “says”. We quote those SAME verses you demand that we “Be-Honest” about and then proceed to tell you how they DON’T affirm/condone Racism/Slavery ((Etc.)).

So? Where is the *dishonesty*? Do you WANT us to expunge the first 1000 words, the last 1000 words, and then “interpret” the remaining 54 words in the middle? Did you want us to <say> something <else> besides what we <said>? If so, why? How is it possible for there to be a Pro-Racist *verse* in an Anti-Racist *Metanarrative*?

**End Excerpt/Copy-Paste.

Since context is everything, we find “therein” on that same topic that we have an actual history of a Before/After “Comment History” vis-à-vis your favorite link/comment as follows.

[RECALL / NOTE: Some of the hyperlinks will go to STR’s old format an read as “error” but they are being left in as place holders because the threads are still in disqus format perhaps when time permits they will be updated. Many of those specific links are from ((A)) https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/believing_biblical_doctrines_requires_humility_not_arrogance/ and ((B)) https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/if_naturalistic_evolution_is_true_people_are_not_equal/ and ((C)) https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/force_is_required_to_override_belief_in_reality/#comment-3027550452….]

Again you never flat out tell us as one who has graduated seminary whether or not you mean to stop at “F” or else “G” from the earlier list. So for reference the first of those is copied here for context:

**Begin Excerpt/Copy-Paste:

Here’s my comment to you from there, and it’s actually relevant to “interpretation” as being discussed in this thread (…. P. Kirkpatrick’s say vs. mean is again in play etc….). So perhaps this is helpful after all. Here’s the quote (of me to you) from the other thread:

Begin quote:

It is your claim that Scripture, the Bible, has no (rational) support for racism, and that’s fine, but, once again, you also “chastise” with this,

“Again, you can try to explain what it “really meant” or that it “no longer applies to us,” but to deny what it literally says is dishonest.”

This statement by you claims that “what it really meant” (as claimed by Amy and others here etc.) and “what it literally says” are at odds / do not agree. And it claims so much that you even call the failure to acknowledge the difference (not same) as dishonest.

So tell us, AG, why is Amy (and others here etc.) dishonest if she (we, etc.) is/are in fact saying what Scripture literally says?

We are saying that Scripture literally does not justify racism. Now, are we being dishonest by *not* acknowledging what Scripture actually says?

You also say “you can try to explain… BUT…..”, again forcing a wedge of disagreement / difference between the explanations of what Scripture literally says (per Amy and others etc.) as opposed to “what it literally says”.

Your own personal beliefs about racism are not part of this discussion. Rather, your claims about this supposed difference and this supposed dishonesty is what is in review. You’re the one making these claims.

If in fact we are being dishonest for failing to affirm this difference well then Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. in fact got it wrong with respect to his exegetical (scriptural) conclusions. If in fact this supposed difference is fallacious “at bottom“, well then it does not exist, and non-existence just is non-being.

End quote.

I could be mistaken but I don’t recall a response from you there.

That said, that discussion was another good example of this business of interpretation, and also of zooming in so close (“Holy Race”, etc.) that one fails to see the entire narrative.

Lastly notice the opening acknowledgement: “It is your claim that Scripture, the Bible, has no (rational) support for racism…”

That wasn’t the contention. The issue was your stark contradiction of that by all the rest. Hence the following:

Your own personal beliefs about racism are not part of this discussion. Rather, your claims about this supposed difference and this supposed dishonesty is what is in review. You’re the one making these claims.

**End Excerpt/Copy-Paste.

Again you never flat out tell us as one who has graduated seminary whether or not you mean to stop at “F” or else “G” from the earlier list. Occasionally you get ((…at least for a few comments before hedging…)) quite specific and say that you do NOT disagree the accuracy of Pastor Martin Luther King’s exegetical conclusion. A basic item from that is the second link ((… http://disq.us/p/1f6ogz7 …)) from the list which is copied here:

**Begin Excerpt/Copy-Paste:

You Say:
But to deny that it literally says “X” when I quote it saying “X” is dishonest.

My Reply:
But there are no verses that literally support racism.

We agree, correct?

If we agree then you have no point to stand by.

How can a pro-racist *verse* exist within an anti-racist *narrative*?

You can’t have it both ways. Unless you refuse to interpret. You ask us to <say> what those verses <say> and we repeatedly *do* as we unpack the anti-racist narrative of Scripture. Where then is the *dishonesty*?

**End Excerpt/Copy-Paste.

Again you never flat out tell us as one who has graduated seminary whether or not you mean to stop at “F” or else “G” from the earlier list. So the third item ((… http://disq.us/p/1f6zx1v …)) continues the theme and is copied here:

**Begin Excerpt/Copy-Paste:

I never once claimed that there are verses which *you* understand to support racism.

You accused Amy (and the rest of us in that thread) of being *dishonest* when we say that there are *no* verses which literally support racism. You stated that the reason we were all *dishonest* when we make that claim about what Scripture literally SAYS is because we were NOT saying what Scripture literally SAYS.

You stated,

“Again, you can try to explain what it “really meant” or that it “no longer applies to us,” but to deny what it literally says is dishonest.”

You seem to believe there are verses which literally SAY that God and/or God’s agenda is racist, and that, therefore, when Christians disagree with that then they are *dishonest*.

But there are no verses that literally SAY / support racism.

How can a pro-racist *verse* exist within an anti-racist *narrative*?

You can’t have it both ways.

**End Excerpt/Copy-Paste.

More context then with the following:

Similar Problems In Your Analytic:

Again you never flat out tell us as one who has graduated seminary whether or not you mean to stop at “F” or else “G” from the earlier list. Instead you hint of accusing Christians with the crime of defamation/libel for seeking clarification/distinction of terms in the same context. So there is ((was)) http://disq.us/p/1f6hrd5 which is copied here:

**Begin Excerpt/Copy-Paste:

On interpreting OT verses:

I asked you then and will ask you again here: Was Pastor MLK Jr. correct about Scripture affirming our equality and not supporting racism?

You ask us to <say> what those verses <say> and we repeatedly *do*. So where is our *dishonesty*?

What did *you* mean when you said Christians (MLK?) are *dishonest* because on that issue (racism) Christians (MLK?) don’t say what Scripture REALLY SAYS? It seems you’ve got Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. pegged as *dishonest* or else misguided. Of course asking for clarification then didn’t lead to any forthcoming clarifications from you. Why?

Or, perhaps wording it differently:

Why do (did) *you* say (claim) that Christians are *dishonest* and why are Christians not saying what scripture REALLY SAYS when they affirm Pastor Martin Luther King Jr.’s conclusions? What is the interpretative disagreement you have with their (dishonest?) conclusions? You ask us to <say> what those verses <say> and we repeatedly *do*. So where is our dishonesty?

You’ve been asked for clarification multiple times then and now here. You like to call quoting you in that context and looking for distinction / clarification in that context a (legal) criminal offense. Interesting.

**End Excerpt/Copy-Paste.

More context then with the following:

Similar Problems In Your Analytic:

Again you never flat out tell us as one who has graduated seminary whether or not you mean to stop at “F” or else “G” from the earlier list. You take a verse, expunge Narrative & Metanarrative, insist that is what it “literally” means, and then “Stop” there at “F”. But do you stop there? When challenged you Flip-Flop and pull-back to “G” ((…again “F” and “G” from the earlier list…)). Therein there is http://disq.us/p/1f67yqk which is copied here:

**Begin Excerpt/Copy-Paste:

You Said:
Again, you can try to explain what it “really meant” or that it “no longer applies to us,” but to deny what it literally says is dishonest.

My Reply:
Why would I help you promote your claim that Pastor Martin Luther King Jr.’s intellectual assent to Scripture’s affirmation of equality was misguided? Your claim that what Scripture “REALLY SAYS” affirms God’s racist agenda was there (as here) void of interpretation. It’s demonstrable. Thank you for the reminder of yet another example of your flawed methodology in this arena. Or, do you disagree with those who have interpreted differently than MLK? Your use of “REALLY SAYS” didn’t seem to leave that option open.

Panning the lens out is the ticket. You ask us to <say> what those verses <say> and we repeatedly *do*. So where is our *dishonesty*?

**End Excerpt/Copy-Paste.

More context then with the following:

Similar Problems In Your Analytic:

Again you never flat out tell us as one who has graduated seminary whether or not you mean to stop at “F” or else “G” from the earlier list. Recall that when Scripture describes an ax head floating on water or Peter walking on water, you opine that such is absurd. But when it’s pointed out to you that we as causal agents suspend things on top of water all the time, you again opine that we cannot invoke God as Causal Agent when reading Scripture. But of course the writer’s intention/meaning DID “MEAN” / “Believe” in the God Who Is Above Nature and so all the semantic intent of Being Itself comes into play. Your response? You expunge Narrative / Metanarrative / Author’s intent / and the Genre/Goal of the Communique under review given that SAME “Being Itself” and so on. So a bit of that is alluded to in http://disq.us/p/1hz2nf3 which is copied here:

**Begin Excerpt/Copy-Paste:

Misdiagnosing Reality: That you believe it is impossible to keep objects on top of water (…causal continuum, being, intentionally manipulating nature’s fundamental particles…) is peculiar.

That and similar kinds of evidence-free beliefs of yours — and your emotional commitment to your a priori of No-God — all force you to so misread reality and all lead you into misguided modes of interpreting not only our experienced reality through time as human beings but of course also the unavoidable variations of descriptions of that experienced reality occurring across and beneath differing conceptual ceilings through time. All of that cumulatively stifles your analytical range.

Whereas, the Christian is forever open to new data points as they come streaming in. Temporal beginning? No problem. No temporal beginning? No problem. Molecules to Body? No problem. Immaterial else absurdity? No problem. Brutally repeatable moral experience? No problem. The irreducible self? No problem. Logic’s lucidity over forced absurdity? No problem. Intelligibility/reality? No problem.

Such intellectual liberty to follow all modes of all evidence wherever said evidence may lead is refreshing.

Fortunately technology has greatly increased our ability to rapidly cross-reference [1] large numbers of scientific observations and [2] large numbers of documents and texts which cumulatively span thousands of years. Such technologies have helped us to more accurately map necessary and unavoidable topographic features of the ontological history of becoming vis-à-vis both Cosmos and Conscious Observer.

Of course, your entire range begins and ends with something far less robust.

—End Copy/Paste Of “Some-Say-Said vs. It Says” —

Recall from the beginning of this post/essay the following four items:

• —Primer 1 of 3:
• —Primer 2 of 3:
• —Primer 3 of 3:
• —Irreducible Consequences of Primers 1 & 2 & 3

The following continues within that same content:

Meaning Makers:

Making “a verse” or making “a chapter” the source of all Meaning Makers in one’s argument only after ripping out the 400 pages which come before it and the 400 pages which come after it displays a lack of understanding surrounding the rules of basic reading comprehension and subnarrative and metanarrative and far more. All of Privation is Evil and that is a part of the “Why” behind parts of Scripture defining Sinai as housing elements God Hates just as it is a part of the “Why” behind parts of Scripture defining Sinai as the Ministry of Death just as it is a part of the “Why” both the Old Testament and the New Testament speak of Sinai as that which pales in comparison to the Far-Better yet to come ((in Christ)). When we fail to read WHOLE “Metanarratives” we are simply not rising above intellectually sloppy reading.

Meaning Maker:

It really is basic reading comprehension and basic logic: All Metanarratives — and [Reality] just is a Metanarrative — arrive in and by this or that Metaphysical Wellspring of all ontological possibility and that Singularity forces One Terminus and hence One Meaning Maker which all definitions must necessarily stream-from and pass-through and – upon interpretation (Etc.) – either survive or fail-to-survive.

Meaning Maker: See The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament by Chad Bird.

Meaning Maker: Christ = Epicenter In all the heat and noise the [Epicenter] provides Man with two unbreakable pillars:

[1] What God is like — the Trinitarian Life — three distinctions — the Triune God — wherein we find Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving.

[2] What it is that keeps Man in relation with God and/or gets Man back into relation with God — namely Pour||Drink vis-à-vis God Himself as All Sufficiency Himself in His Own Self-Outpouring. The Epicenter holds through all of Man’s possible worlds — both with & without “Man in Privation”.

Once again: Slavery In The Christian Metanarrative Is Defined As A Swath Of Privations Many Pains. Therefore The Christian Metanarrative Cannot Have A Pro-Slavery Verse Much Less A Pro-Slavery Any-Thing.

Scripture’s Meaning Makers and Slavery and Any Topic Whatsoever  https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/scriptures-meaning-makers-and-slavery-and-any-topic-whatsoever.pdf

Metanarrative, Subnarrative, Endorse, and Definitions Once Again:

The two excerpts below are from Hurtado and their general context is scripture defining slavery as evil and assigning slaves the status of Christ’s Body and so then of Brother, of Family, of Full Partaker in the Kingdom. Before the two excerpts it is worth noticing an insightful reply by someone who was discussing these quotes on why that content of Scripture and its narrative is expected:

“Considering that slavery was social de-personing and that crucifixion was the ultimate means of depersonalization, that makes sense.”

Here are the two excerpts:

“….also noteworthy is the extended exhortation and encouragement to Christian slaves in 1 Peter 2:18-25, where the author likens any unjust sufferings that they may bear, likely as Christian slaves of pagan masters, to the sufferings of Christ (vv. 21-25). This linkage of the suffering of slaves with Christ effectively ennobles the situation of slaves, at least at the level of the discourse, a striking step in a world in which slaves typically counted for little as to dignity. Of course, this did not amount to the abolition of slavery or even securing the freedom of slaves, at least at that point. But this sort of compassionate rhetoric addressed to slaves was unusual, if not unique, in the Roman world….”

—&—

“….although it may seem to comfortable moderns that the early Christian texts are morally deficient in failing to summon slaves to rise up in revolt and in failing to demand that Christian masters immediately free all their slaves, neither was actually a realistic option at the time. But the point to underscore is that, despite the various limits on the scope of their actions imposed by their social situation, Christian wives, slaves, and children were addressed as moral agents in early Christian texts and, perhaps just as importantly, as fellow members of the body of believers in which these various exhortations were delivered. We should not discount too hastily what this, even this modest conferral of dignity, could have meant in that ancient setting to those who were otherwise unable to change their situation….”

—both excerpts are from: Hurtado, Larry W.. Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World . Baylor University Press.

Continuing With Metanarrative, Subnarrative, Endorse, and Definitions Once Again:

Given the topic of Genesis 3 → John 3, the concept of 1. “narrative” and of 2. “sub-narrative” and of 3. “meta-narrative” is from time to time, quite selectively, even intentionally (…it seems…) lost on our Non-Theist friends. Treating Sinai as “The-Good” and thereby expunging Scripture’s own metrics – and thereby creating a straw-man.

Genesis 3:15-17 just is John 3:15-17 in the literal Descriptive-Prescriptive of the Christian Metaphysic. It’s not complicated → Teens in youth groups can see the obvious here:

The amalgamation of Genesis 3:15-17 and John 3:15-17 house all currencies as Man’s Privation actualizes (…whether within Time and Physicality or by any other mode…). We find BOTH Genesis’ promise of that terrible topography of the “Dark Outside” rapidly ensuing AND Genesis’ promise of the topography of our emancipation within and by amalgamation as John 3:15-17’s fulfillment of Genesis 3:15-17 actualizes. Therefore we find that Scripture’s [A to Z] forces us to define (…the descriptive, the prescriptive…) all the business of Slavery, of Domination, and of all such Moral Landscapes as the “Dark Outside” – or on definition all such “Hellish” topographies – that such contexts and subtexts actually referent landscapes which are far less than God’s Eternal Ideal for “The Adamic”.

Brief divergence:

While it’s off topic here it is helpful to note that “The Edenic” landscape in Genesis 3 houses two “Doors” within Eden and they both face outward. One faces outward into “Eternal Life” and one faces outward into “Privation” ((our current reality)). The radical “ontic change” from Eden to Eternal Life is nothing less than Categorical and that is why “Outward Facing Door” is the right syntax. Whatever “Eden” was it was neither Privation as we know it here in the Privation of Good nor was it Eternal Life vis-à-vis the Perfection of Being. That’s off topic but regarding all definitions and Good and Evil and Innocence and Culpability and all the rest we must take Genesis 3 and the entire height and breadth and width of the Christian Metaphysic on its own terms.

End brief divergence.

Our Non-Theist friends will forever cherry pick it seems – “a” verse or chapter here or there – full stop – as if that is how “Reality” “Works”. Too often that is a road block that will not permit such discussions to take place based on all of Scripture.

Even Worse:

As our Non-Theist friends preach of love and write of love and theorize of love they merely attest to their assent that, in fact, in spite of their Atheism, they really do believe otherwise, for they forever push all ontological regressions – they try to – into what their own paradigm denies them, namely that they can and do have Semantic Intent that has a Rational Terminus – which provides Metaphysical Closure – and not a kind of “Eternally Open-Ended Non-Distinction” – but in fact a Metaphysical Terminus of – oh – say – something akin to the Trinitarian Life vis-à-vis Irreducible Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving amid Self/Other. Notice that while the Trinitarian Life DOES provide them their hope for such an ontology they freely and knowingly choose something other than that lucidity vis-à-vis Reason and her Explanatory Terminus – notice that they instead choose a bobble termed reductio ad absurdum and YET it is all in the (now unavoidably) irrational attempt to reach the same End Point. https://metachristianity.com/reason-reality-golden-thread-reciprocity/

Genesis 3:16 is proof that God’s own stated end-points in scripture’s [A to Z] describes enmity between Male/Female as the Dark Outside. John 3:16 restores such. It is nothing less than a Downhill Ontic from the Edenic to all things Sinai which is why Leviticus gives to us a lens wherein we find all the same endpoints when it comes to Sons and Slaves and everything in between.

The Language and Definitions Pre-Fall is very different from the Language and Definitions after our fall into Privation (…some say into the isolated Self….out of “Other” as in out of “God”…). Also, the Language and Definitions and syntax Post-Resurrection, where Man is again offered the Way into “Other”, are all once again that which is found Pre-Fall – no difference in male, female, Jew, Gentile, slave, free, and so on…all are His Beloved… and so on…and so on.

This business of slavery and male/female and all of that is an “issue” only because our Non-Theist friends do not take God at His Own Word in scripture’s own self-described End-Points, or [A to Z]. It’s easy to fuss against Straw-men of course – nonetheless the “A” and the “Z” of all definitions stream from nothing less than the Trinitarian Life – Who is the Beginning and End of all things – of all definitions – vis-à-vis timeless reciprocity vis-à-vis that same “A” to “Z”.

Repeating Layers: We run into “Behold, I make all things new” and before John 3:16 we find inequality, bloodshed, dark, and, in the reverse direction, before Genesis 3:16 we find equality, life, light. And again: after Genesis 3:16 but before John 3:16 we find God’s Own, “….I have no desire of this. Prepare for me a Body…”.

God ENDORSES?

All of this brings us again and again and again into the incoherence of the Critic’s “Scripture Endorses”.  It is by 1000 different avenues that Scripture’s vectors define all things Outside of Eden as the Pains of Privation and all things Sinai as Less-Than that Far-Better yet to come regarding both the Means and Ends of Moral Excellence, and so on, and so on. Jesus “justified” Divorce in Codified Law even as He (God|Jesus) also Hated it and notice a few things about what God Hates regarding Less Than Moral Excellence and The-Ideal and The Far-Better Yet-To-Come:

[Regulating Hated X’s] Does Not Equal [Endorsing X’s]

The Non-Theist or Critic who insists God Endorses Slavery has given himself away because SINAI really IS “The” metric of Endorse in his assessment. The amount of hiding-of-one’s eyes, so to speak, one has to do in order to make that work is unfortunate. That is to say that one has expunged far too much, especially the OT, such as Genesis in which [A] the Far Better than Sinai in fact precedes Sinai and [B] the OT Prophets in which something Far Better than Sinai is going to leave Sinai behind, and far, far more. Sinai-As-The-Metric is a fool’s errand which has jettisoned half of the OT to get to half-of-a-narrative to do half-of-the-work.

The OT itself and the NT with it define both the reality of [C] “God-Hating-X“ and simultaneously the reality of [D] “God-Regulating-Different-Forms-Of-X“ (via Law/Sinai). Why? Those are just four places where the fallacy of “Endorses Slavery” expunges huge swaths of what is right there in black in white. It would be better for the “Endorses Slavery” advocate to interact with reality as it actually is, rather than with some sort of something that he wishes it to be, but isn’t. Dialectical wishful thinking:

“…the overarching argument involves the necessity to point out that none of this is representative of God’s ideal. You make a huge jump from tolerance to endorsement from God’s perspective that doesn’t take into account the moral vision of the biblical narrative…… the job of the critic is to demonstrate the premise of God’s future-oriented, creation repairing agenda as a falsehood, and that the Sinai covenant represents His ideal for all mankind, forever. Until the critic does that, trying to force *endorse* into the key hole of temporary, forward looking tolerance [of things we’re expressly told He hates] is dialectical wishful thinking……” (by GM)

But that’s obvious because freely choosing to avoid interacting with Scripture’s Metrics until one has first expunged half of Scripture just is a product of wishful thinking. The Endorses-Slavery Advocate often suggests,

“Either God is still wrong today, or His position has evolved…”

Given that the Far Better first precedes all things Sinai according to the OT, and given that the Far Better also outdistances, outperforms, and leaves behind all things Sinai according to the OT, they are referring to their own invention of some sort of Non-Old-Testament Map. As for the NT, well, it’s all the same.

So what about all things Sinai? So far what we find the Non-Theist doing with Sinai ((other than autohypnotic dialectical wishful thinking)) is something like the following:

• God is evil on my terms — because Sinai.
• God is evil on God’s own terms — because Sinai.

Both fail for the obvious reasons discussed so far and also discussed in “Divine Command Theory Reduces To A Metaphysical Absurdity” at  https://metachristianity.com/divine-command-theory-collapses-into-a-metaphysical-absurdity/

What we are doing is using a “lens” for “Good” and the Non-Theist is using “Sinai” and “The Bible” as if either of THOSE is “the metric” in the Christian Metaphysic. But NEITHER of those is the Metric Of or Standard Of or Source Of The Good.  Saying The Good is based on (…it’s ontics and so on…) the Bible is like saying Physics “comes from” (…the Ontic and so on…) the physics book over there on the shelf. But “Good” is *not* based on the Bible. Not according to Scripture at least. Just as “Physics” does not “come from” that Physics Book over on the shelf. There is something FAR WIDER/THICKER. Notice the KEY problem for the Critic of Scripture using this fallacy: It is a giant strawman to claim that within Christendom The Good in fact “comes from” something Created and/or World-Contingent ((Sinai / The Bible)) given that “it” (The Good) just is *GOD* (in Christendom).

Remember that this applies to all things Sinai given that Moral Excellence is defined (in Scripture) as that which precedes, outdistances, out-performs, and leaves behind, all things Sinai. While it is understandable that discomfort compels the Non-Theist to avoid reality as it actually is and thereby invent and then argue against various Non-Christian, Non-Old-Testament, and Non-Paradigmatic Start/Stop points or premises, it would be better for our Non-Theist friends to interact with the real world as it actually is. https://randalrauser.com/2018/04/the-complementarian-dilemma/#comment-3858775297

A Critic once changed from Slavery to the Hebrews and Capital Punishment for the disobedient child. It is apparent that he elected not to read, or include, the context of Hebrews there. Why? Well, first, he needs to read up on the fact that, since every child disobeys, the Jew clearly did not read it as he did and had they done so they would have gone out of existence as a people since all children disobey. So it’s obviously something quite different and while that IS a BIG problem there is STILL the problem that he is appealing to Sinai as Scripture’s Metric. AGAIN. “Leapfrogging between Commands” so to speak never gets outside of those cul-de-sacs.

Metanarrative As Sinai Can’t Restore Life — It Only Restrain Death

Muddied waters with respect to ON THE ONE HAND: what Scripture means by Restraining/Containing Death ((…Law/Sinai/Etc…..)) and then on THE OTHER HAND Birthing/Giving Life ((….God’s Own Self-Outpouring or All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring because nothing less can solve the nature of the “Problem” of “Privation” which just is a “Deficiency of Being” and, so, nothing less than “Being Himself/Itself” Pouring Himself Out/Into that Vacuum/Hollow will or can provide any full on metaphysical closure….)).

The fruit of that confusion in so many of our Non-Theist friends manifests with the following sort of errors:

1. When knowledge [widens] it is evidence of No-God.
2. When knowledge [fails to widen] it is evidence of No-God.
3. When knowledge [narrows/falls] it is evidence of No-God.
4. When knowledge is [static / stagnating] for long periods, well, that too is evidence of No-God.

Knowledge as the means…..

“….[back then]…. such things were done in-line with those groups’ understanding of their directives from god at the time. To reinterpret now does nothing to change the source of their “legitimacy” then…”

The problem with the critic’s syllogism of legitimacy is along the lines of:

Legitimacy: Is Sinai God’s Ideal for Mankind according to Scripture? The Messianic Jews tell us that the Jews “then” “knew” of the “Far Better” “yet to come” and so on “too”.  Follow closely: IF the answer is, “Well NO Sinai is NOT God’s Ideal” THEN Moral Excellence is defined (and found) by a different metric and the premise which defines changes in knowledge and/or changes in sight-lines as a redefining of Moral Excellence is both uninformed and uninformed. The legitimacy of definitions is entirely dependent on the moral narrative of Scripture. The Christian metaphysic presents us with Scripture’s actual metanarrative which is instead in the form of the following:

[1] Widening and changing trajectories with respect to Man’s knowledge of God and Life affirm Scripture’s topography (…from the get-go…).

[2] Real-time peaks and nadirs within the knowledge of good and evil, of God and Life, is therein part of that topography (…from the get-go…).

[3] Sinai never was God’s Ideal for Mankind (…from… the… get.. go…).

Basic Rules Of Reading Comprehension Once More:

A more fruitful method is to read whole books, from the A to the Z and recall that, when it comes to the proverbial [“a” verse] strawman, all such content is in fact a slice of a much larger, wider, narrative and hence the terms of Metanarrative and of sub-narrative arrive. All sub-narratives are from the get-go unable to outreach or out-define the definitions of the far wider Metanarrative. Without the right *metanarrative* the verse which such fallacies are quoting actually cannot “say” anything at all.

Scripture’s [~Pro-ABC Metanarrative~] cannot – by simple force of logic with respect to round squares – contain any [~Anti-ABC content~]. Think “sub-narratives” and “metanarrative”.

One more time:

Scripture’s [~Pro-ABC Metanarrative~] cannot – by simple force of logic with respect to round squares – contain any [~Anti-ABC content~]. Think “sub-narratives” and “metanarrative”.

That is NOT a Christian apologetic but is, simply, the affairs of basic reading comprehension. An example of such in one particular context, which holds – by simple force of logic with respect to round squares – through all contexts:

“And my point from the beginning has been that only a person who did not understand the Bible as a whole, including all the background information of the Law, could use the verses that way. No honest English reader could read the Bible as a whole and come up with their interpretation. The verse says what it says as part of a specific narrative, not as some kind of stand-alone fortune cookie. It’s not my apologetic. I didn’t make up the rules of reading comprehension.” (by A.H.)

Brief Snapshots From The 1800’s Pro-Slavery & Abolition Discussions

The following is borrowed from Bradly Mason https://alsoacarpenter.com/ It is an outline with 1800’s enslavers’ claims ((each titled “Claim”)) followed by 1800’s Abolitionists’ answers/replies ((each is “lettered”)) in the following:

Begin Excerpt:

Claim: “Abraham owned slaves”

1. We do not know the exact character of this “slavery.”
2. The actions of the saints recorded are not prima facie normative.
3. God often allowed for actions and institutions which were contrary to His own moral Law and natural law, though He regulated them with the end to (1) diminish their abuses, then (2) eliminate the practices altogether (see marriage/divorce in OT vs. Jesus in NT; “because of the hardness of their hearts, Moses allowed it…”).

Claim: “Israel was allowed to own slaves and the Law of Moses sanctioned it.”

1. All indenture among Hebrews was to be temporary, primarily for the sake of paying debts, injury was prohibited, breaking up families prohibited, diminishing resources prohibited, the poor of all classes were to be relieved, etc.
2. Permanent slavery was solely to be in lieu of war and as the only alternative to death. Only the nations of Canaan were under the “ban” and therefore to be conquered. War, beyond this redemptive historic commission, was ONLY to be defensive. (Many examples given.)
3. Thus, “slaves” were temporary indentures among Israel, permanent only among those “under the ban” in one-time commissioned warfare, or those spared their life when unjustly attacking Israel.
4. Further, as Israel kept the Law and trusted in the promises of God, each of these categories would become increasingly unnecessary, ultimately eliminating the institution altogether.
5. Israel began to enslave even their own brethren, through fraud and violation of God’s commandments, in part leading to Israel’s punishment and exile to be “slaves” yet again for a time in a foreign land.
6. In short, Israel was once enslaved, slavery is bad, redemption would eliminate both war and slavery.

Claim: “Neither Christ nor the Apostles condemned slavery”

1. The coming of Christ, His death, resurrection, and ascension obliterated the wall of separation, thereby forever abolishing the distinction between Israel and the Nations. Hence the only allowable permanent slavery in the Old Covenant is forever abolished. As redeemer, He ended slavery, as was the intent from the beginning.
2. The Apostle Paul did not desire for a small group of people, within a vast empire that sanctioned slavery, to attempt to subvert the social order by force, but rather to destroy the institution through gospel and ideology.
3. Thus, he declared no difference between Master and Slave before God, all are one in Christ, that Masters were slaves to Christ, and Slaves freeman in Christ; he encouraged Philemon to release Onesimus and called out his hypocrisy; he told Christians to get their freedom if they could; he said that no one owned by Christ should be owned by men; etc. All of which did in fact destroy the institution among Christians.

Claim: “Modern enslavers are no different than Abraham, etc.”

1. The new African Slavery little resembles OT slavery or even Roman slavery.
2. Slavery is not natural to any “race” or people group; all are equal by birth.
3. Manstealing warrants death.
4. Those who buy, sell, or harbor stolen human property are guilty of manstealing.
5. The current institution violates nearly EVERY SINGLE commandment and is a “National Sin” which will lead to God’s hot judgment.
6. The Scripture, the arc of redemptive history, the laws of nature, the Gospel, and the command to “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” condemn the institution and all Christian men everywhere ought to oppose it.
7. Some, not all: Those suffering under the institution can by right rebel and revolt, since, being contrary to both God and Nature, Masters and Governors have no right to enforce. (“To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world,” *wink, wink*)
8. The West is destroying Africa, turning peoples against each other, filling them with alcohol, corrupting them with greed, and pilfering and exploiting both their resources and people, all due to unrestrained, unchristian, avarice.

End Excerpt. ((Brad comments, “Yes, it’s a rough summary. But maybe it’s time to get familiar with 200 year old arguments for why we know it’s wrong to own people?”))

Recall from earlier the historical content linked through “The Abolition Project” at http://abolition.e2bn.org/index.php

The following is also borrowed from Bradly Mason:

Begin Excerpt:

A taste of how Christian Abolitionists dealt with enslavers’ appeals to the Apostle Paul, from, “An Essay on Slavery Proving from Scripture its Inconsistency with Humanity and Religion” by Granville Sharp

“If I have vindicated the law of Moses, much easier can I vindicate the benevolent apostle Paul, from Mr. Thompson’s insinuations, with respect to slavery; for he did not entreat Philemon to take back his servant Onesimus, in his former capacity, as Mr. Thompson has asserted, in order to render bondage consistent with the principles of revealed religion,—but St. Paul said expressly, ‘not now as a servant, but, above a servant, a brother beloved, &c.’ So that Mr. Thompson has notoriously wrested St. Paul’s words. IN the other texts where St. Paul recommends submission to Servants, for conscience-sake, he at the same time enjoins the master to entertain such a measure of brotherly love towards his servants, as must be entirely subversive of the African trade, and West-Indian slavery. And though St. Paul, recommends Christian patience under servitude, yet, at the same time, he plainly insinuates, that it is inconsistent with Christianity, and the dignity of Christ’s kingdom, that a Christian brother should be a Slave. ‘Can’st thou be made free? (says he to the Christian servants) choose it rather, for he that is called of the Lord, being a servant, is the freeman of the Lord; and, in like manner, he that is called, being free, is the servant of Christ, —Ye are bought with a price; BE NOT THEREFORE THE SERVANTS OF MEN.’

The apostle, indeed, had just before recommended to his disciples to abide in the same calling, wherein they were called, and, ‘being servants, not to care for it:’ That is, not to grieve on account of their temporal state; (for if, instead of thus enjoining submission, he had absolutely declared the iniquity of SLAVERY, tho’ established and authorized by the laws of temporal governments, he would have occasioned more tumult than reformation among the multitude of SLAVES, more striving for temporal than spiritual happiness); yet it plainly appears, by the insinuations, which immediately follow, that he thought it derogatory to the honor of Christianity, that men, who are bought, with the inestimable price of Christ’s blood, should be esteemed servants; that is, the Slaves, and private property of other men; and had Christianity been established by temporal authority, in those countries where Paul preached, as it is at present in these kingdoms, we need not doubt but that he would have urged, nay, compelled the masters, as he did Philemon, by the most pressing arguments, to treat their quondam slaves, NOT NOW AS SERVANTS, BUT ABOVE SERVANTS—AS BRETHREN BELOVED.”

(Granville Sharp as well as others did in fact effectively deal with the Old Testament quite well, as he indicates at the beginning, without denying the inspiration and authority of the Scripture.)

End Excerpt/Quote.

The following is borrowed from Bradly Mason https://alsoacarpenter.com/

Quote/Excerpt:

“…Thomas Aquinas’ answer to, “Is Christ the Head of all mankind?”, Summa III, q. 8, a. 3, is also very important to developing a proper social doctrine. His answer is, of course, yes, Christ is the Head of ALL humanity, not just some. He presumes, to begin with, that Christ is incarnate for ALL mankind, which is unquestionably true according to the ecumenical Creed’s and council’s of the Church. Assuming this premise, Thomas can rightly argue to Christ’s headship of all mankind. In sum, by bearing the substance of man, the human nature, Christ was made like all men—whether predestined to glory or not—in every respect, save sin. As such, all men in this life are potentially His brethren, being of like nature with Him. Just as we all have shared the like nature of the first Adam, so Christ has become the “Second Adam” and the “Last Adam” by assuming the same nature into His own person. As all men share in the self-same human nature that Christ even now bears, so all men are capable of union with Him and thus are all potentially so, should they only receive and believe His gospel. While only those predestined will ultimately be united to Christ by faith and love unto glory (reducing the natural potentiality to mystical actuality), the fact that Christ has borne the flesh of all mankind unites the whole of humanity around the new and perfect man, the Head of all creation, our Lord Jesus Christ. So, what does this have to do with social doctrine? It means that all mankind, whether in Christ mystically or not, are united with Christ and under His headship according to their very humanity—that is, according to the human nature that all men share with Jesus. As such, ALL HUMANS also share equally in the dignity of His human nature, fully displayed in His Incarnation, death, and resurrection. The Gospel does not destroy the unified image of God in man. Rather, the Gospel brings this image to its ultimate end, viz., our Lord Jesus Christ. And even as our incarnate God now bears the human nature itself, so He bears the nature of the Jew, the Greek, the African, the European, and any other category of Adam’s offspring we care to construct, WHETHER IN OR OUT OF THE CHURCH. As Christians, we must therefore share the same ethic of our Savior toward all men, whether Christian or not. He who “loved the world” and therefore “gave His only begotten Son” to bear the nature of every tribe, nation, and tongue in turn explicitly requires the same self-sacrificial love of us: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:43-48). To be sure, if we limit the scope of Christ’s person and work to the Church and the already redeemed, we are likely to limit the scope of His common grace to all mankind. As He has borne the flesh of all, He has thereby dignified the nature of all, making every member of the human race not only a fit object of His redemption, but also a fit object of every Christian’s reconciliatory affections and energies…”

End Quote/Excerpt.

A Brief Look Into Genocide? Canaanites? And A Bit More:

A few paragraphs down from here this is looked at more but it is worth inserting here a brief look at the obvious:

Total Destruction: There is the obvious case of God using the same language of Total Destruction with Israel first as a condition should they fall into sins (etc.) and then as the fulfillment of that promise.

Israel is, like the “Cancer” too, totally destroyed.

In-Genocide-Like-Fashion-Utterly-Destroyed-By-God and so on. In fact THAT did happen and THAT Promise WAS kept in that God DID “utterly destroy” Israel and such was vis-à-vis that proverbial Exile. Israel is absorbed into other nations, alive and well, overcome, conquered, retaining their identity in many senses, losing it in many senses. Neither the facts of history, nor the actual metanarrative, nor ancient biblical and extra-biblical “linguistics” support any sort of “Full-Stop” appeal to “Genocide” (which is what God would have done to Israel).

For added context the following is an excerpt from God Sending Lying And Evil Spirits? Abraham And Isaac? Cyrus And Isaiah 45:7? The Greater Good Fallacy? — at https://metachristianity.com/god-sending-lying-spirits-god-n-sending-evil-spirits-n-abraham-n-isaac/ and the specific part is at the bolded/labeled “Part 9 Genocide? Amalekites? Canaanites? Marry One’s Rapist? Etc.?

Begin Part 9 Excerpt:

We’ll start with a brief look at some excerpts from the following three which cover a wider range of topics but have several segues here:

1. http://christianthinktank.com/rbutcher1.html
2. http://christianthinktank.com/qamorite.html
3. http://christianthinktank.com/midian.html

Begin Excerpt:

Even in the little section on the Amalekites, the description of the situation doesn’t even come close to what we consider ‘genocide’ today. Most (but not all) things considered genocide today involve groups internal to the country in question, and they were either killed outright by their own government (sometimes slowly through torture and abuse) or deported to a place of sure-to-kill-them environment. Academic definitions of genocide exclude combat deaths and noncombatants that die as a by-product of military action. It generally denotes the deliberate killing of someone solely because of their indelible group membership (indelible is the term used for race, ethnicity, nationality etc.–that characteristics that are ‘indelible’). [For one of the major authorities on this subject, see the work of R.J. Rummel at www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel.]

Consider some of the better-known cases:

1. The government of the Ottoman Empire deported two-thirds or more of its estimated 1-1.8M Armenian citizens during WWI. They were forced into the deserts of present-day Syria, and most died due slowly to starvation and dehydration. This was an internal groupthat was forced out of the country into the desert to die.
2. The Nazi genocidal actions against the Jews, the Roma, etc. were also initially targeted at internal people.
3. During WW2, the government of Croatia killed an estimated 200-350K of its internal Serbian citizens.
4. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia killed 31% of its own population, apprx 2 million people (although some of this would be considered ‘democide’ and based on ‘delible’ characteristics such as political alignment, instead of ‘genocide’ proper).
5. In Rwanda, between 500k-1M of the Tutsi ethnic group (all internal) were killed by the Hutu ethnic group (fighting had been going on between them for some time).

Notice how extremely different these are from the case of the Amalekites:

1. They are NOT an internal group
2. They are NOT a minority group
3. Amalekites are NOT targeted because of their Amalekite-ness (since they were welcome as immigrants in Israel)
4. They are never under the government control of Israel.
5. They are not pursed and hunted in other countries for extermination.

…..What this means–although it would not bear on the main ethical sensitivity here–is that it is historically inaccurate to label this military action as ‘genocidal’. (This is still the case, EVEN IF one ONLY is talking about the killing of the families of the warriors. There are none of the defining elements of genocide–as the term is used by experts–present in the accounts of this initiative.) Let’s be clear on this–I am not exploring how to “justify a genocide”, because in the first place, it is NOT genocide. [Interestingly, the only case we have in the bible of something approaching genocide is in the book of Esther. Haman, a prominent official, develops a plot in which the internal people will be allowed to attack, kill, and plunder the internal Jews in the nation. This is very close to genocide, and it is quite ironic that Haman is called an Agagite, and said to be an Amalekite by Josephus in Ant. 11.209.]

End Part 9 Excerpt.

R. Rauser has “The Bible depicts God commanding moral atrocities. Should we believe it?” at https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/the-bible-depicts-god-commanding-moral-atrocities-should-we-believe-it/#comment-3958500420

With respect to what Scripture defines as evil he seems to agree with the OT and NT in defining all murder and all rape and so on as evil. That’s fine as far as it goes. However, one cannot read, say, Винни-Пух and apply the same premises when one is reading, say, Война и мир ~ After all, if “Winnie The Pooh” equates to “Tolstoy” well then…. But that’s silly. Instead, there’s the oh-so-obvious contours of real, actual humanity and real, actual evil and real, actual “necessary means” if we are going to talk either about love’s egalitarian form or about the necessary means v. the perfection of being and so on, as those just are the proverbial Christian Narrative.

Recall: “GM” offers context and it’s really not that complicated. The “range” or the “degrees of change” from what many term “The Edenic” to that of the “New Creation” is far, far wider than any one-verse or one-chapter “slice” of “Sinai” (or any other X). As mentioned already, all “definitions” begin and end in the egalitarian topography of the Trinitarian Life.

Quote:

“This is part of the problem of this whole conversation. One half is to accurately describe what was going on in the Old Testament…. and one is the moral vision of the Old Testament as a whole. It’s absolutely vital to understand that the Mosaic law was not God’s ideal, it was God working with a certain people group in a certain cultural context to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant of bringing a certain kind of blessing to the world (a savior and kingdom of God). That the law was not God’s ideal is apparent in the narrative of the development of the law, God explicitly saying so through Jeremiah and Jesus himself saying that they were granted laws, not because they are good in of themselves, but were accommodations to the hardness of their hearts, and asking more of them would have been futile. And so on. The perfectly egalitarian human relationships of Genesis 2 is the ideal moral paradigm of the Old Testament….. ……the overarching argument involves the necessity to point out that none of this is representative of God’s ideal. You make a huge jump from tolerance to endorsement from God’s perspective that doesn’t take into account the moral vision of the biblical narrative……. the job of the critic is to demonstrate the premise of God’s future-oriented, creation repairing agenda as a falsehood, and that the Sinai covenant represents His ideal for all mankind, forever. Until the critic does that, trying to force “endorse” into the key hole of temporary, forward looking tolerance [of things we’re told He hates] is dialectical wishful thinking……” (by GM)

End Quote.

R. Rauser has The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest: A Review at https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/the-lost-world-of-the-israelite-conquest-a-review and if we are careful we find that the book corrects one error and then commits the same error. It corrects the error of expunging all context from a box labeled [one phrase] which is [“kill all that breathes”] so that the [LITERAL FULL STOP] box is rightly shown to be ridiculous. Then the book unfortunately commits that SAME error as it expunges all context from its own [one word] box which is [“Heram”] so that then that [LITERAL FULL STOP] box is left as the New Ridiculous. Therein the book’s premises get a bit muddied.

Cultural mindsets certainly don’t define reality. At least on the Christian Metaphysic. Basic example: Sinai is X, but X isn’t the Beginning & End of The Good & The True. The inverse error is to claim that regardless of our particular cerebral and moral ceilings God simply never transposes anything regarding The Good & The True. The Trinitarian Life finds not only Being pressing in as we are created to be the living Imago Dei but more specifically the fact that The Adamic was/is created off of the Blueprint of Being as Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving.

That of course feeds definitions into all possible frames and, therefore, the key to the meaning of any verse comes from the paragraph, not just from the individual words, and then the key to the meaning of any paragraph comes from the chapter, not just from the individual paragraphs, and then the key to the meaning of any chapter comes from the specific book, not just from the individual chapters, and then the key to the meaning of any individual book in Scripture comes from the Whole Metanarrative that is [Scripture] and not just from the individual books, and then the key to the meaning of the Metanarrative comes from logical lucidity vis-à-vis ontological referents in a specific Metaphysic, not just from [The-Bible], and then the key to the meaning of the Map that is the Metaphysic comes from the Terrain that is the Trinitarian Life and not just from the Metaphysic, and that Terrain sums to Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Processions vis-a-vis the Trinitarian Life even as robust explanatory power on all fronts teaches us that just as it is incoherent to say “Physics” somehow “Comes-From” that physics book over there on the shelf, so too it is incoherent to say that Metaphysical Naturalism or that the Christian Metaphysic either does or “can in principle” somehow “Come-From” ANY-thing that reduces to a World-Contingent Explanatory Terminus.

As we navigate “linguistics” a brief observation ~ the notion that [burning kids alive] and various other sins — and so on — were A. ignored by God for several hundred years and were B. in fact NOT a part of the causal architecture behind the forced regime changes in Caanan are both false. And in fact it is one “category” within the narrative which demonstrates that with respect to both – as follows:

First, God did intervene and then tore down that landscape (…Israel displaces Canaanites Etc…) and, also, sins/evil were not the Whole Reason behind the forced change, but that they were a key part of the causal architecture behind the forced regime change is obvious and it is the following category of scriptures, which houses many examples like the following, which demonstrates both:

“….It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you…..” (Deut. 9:5)

And so on. Then to the topic of linguistics and literary construction, the following is from https://www.str.org/w/the-canaanites-genocide-or-judgment-#.XOCBPhYpDDs

Begin STR Excerpt:

“…God gave the directives, to be sure (the Jews hadn’t thought this up on their own), but one must accurately understand God’s intention before he can accurately assess God’s commands.

First, the wording should be understood in the context of ancient Near Eastern military narrative, the argument goes. Ancient writings commonly traded in hyperbole—exaggeration for the sake of emphasis—especially when it came to military conquest. The practice is evident throughout battle reports of the time. “Joshua’s conventional warfare rhetoric,” Copan writes, “was common in many other ancient Near Eastern military accounts in the second and first millennia B.C.”

Therefore, phrases like “utterly destroy” (haram), or “put to death men and women, children, and infants”—as well as other “obliteration language”—were stock “stereotypical” idioms used even when women or children were not present. It decreed total victory (much like your favorite sports team “wiping out” the opposition), not complete annihilation.

Second, Copan argues, women and children probably weren’t targets since the attacks were directed at smaller military outposts characteristically holding soldiers, not noncombatants (who generally lived in outlying rural areas). “All the archaeological evidence indicates that no civilian populations existed at Jericho, Ai, and other cities mentioned in Joshua.”

Third, on Copan’s view the main purpose of the conquest was not annihilation, but expulsion—driving the inhabitants out—and cleansing the land of idolatry by destroying every vestige of the evil Canaanite religion[8] (e.g., “You shall tear down their altars, and smash their sacred pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire.” Deut. 7:1–5).

Further, this process would be gradual, taking place over time:

“…The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You will not be able to put an end to them quickly, for the wild beasts would grow too numerous for you…” (Deut. 7:22).

Finally, the record shows that Joshua fully obeyed the Lord’s command:

“….Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord, the God of Israel, had commanded…. He left nothing undone of all that the Lord had commanded Moses….” (Josh. 10:40, 11:15)

Still, at the end of Joshua’s life it was clear that many Canaanites continued to live in the land, left to be driven out gradually by the next generation (Josh. 23:12–13, Judges 1:21, 27–28). According to Copan, if Joshua did all that was expected of him, yet multitudes of Canaanites remained alive, then clearly the command to destroy all who breathed was not to be taken literally, but hyperbolically.

If these arguments go through—if God did not command the utter and indiscriminate destruction of men, women, and children by Joshua’s armies, but simply authorized an appropriate cleansing military action to drive out Israel’s (and God’s) enemies—then the critic’s challenge is largely resolved, it seems….”

End STR Excerpt.

Additionally the following from M. Flannagan:

“….A similar phenomenon occurs with the case of the Amalekites, the Babylonian invasions, and the sacking of the Jebusite city of Jerusalem. In each case a battle is narrated in totalistic terms of complete destruction of all the people, yet later narration goes on to assume matter-of-factly that it did not literally occur. The fact that this happens on multiple occasions in different books rapidly diminishes the probability that these features are coincidental or careless errors. Why is it that almost every time a narration of “genocide” occurs, it is followed by an account that presupposes it did not happen? These facts significantly raise the probability that this is a deliberate literary construction by the authors….” (Matthew Flannagan)

And so on. As alluded to earlier, in the book “The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest” there are various references to syntax of something akin to “…like a cancer…” but they do not make sense if left standing in mid-air given the following fact, quoted from another source:

“….Israel’s own occupation of the land was conditional; Israel too would be “..utterly destroyed..” if it engaged in the defiling practices of the Canaanites (Lev. 18: 25– 28 ). Indeed, later the Israelites would be judged— removed from the land through exile— because they violated the terms of the covenant….”

And yet notice that Israel is not “the-proverbial cancer” and, also, still again Israel is not “In-Genocide-Like-Fashion-Utterly-Destroyed-By-God” in that “exile”. But what about “Utterly Destroyed?” That happened to Israel? Well yes. “THAT” did happen and that Promise WAS kept in that God DID “utterly destroy” Israel and such was vis-à-vis that proverbial Exile. Israel is absorbed into other nations, alive and well, overcome, conquered, retaining their identity in many senses, losing it in many senses. Neither the facts of history, nor the actual metanarrative, nor ancient biblical and extra-biblical “linguistics” support any sort of “Full-Stop” appeal to “….like a cancer…” nor to any “Full-Stop” appeal to what any of us mean by “genocide” because, again, Israel gets the SAME PROMISE of “utterly destroyed” carried out ON THEM as they practice their Faith under their various rulers and have their various cities and so on all under their various rulers. That is why/how Canaanite populations and interactions are still in the later narratives of the Old Testament long after these earlier narratives. History, Scripture, and Fact affirm what modernity describes as “Regime Change” and not what modernity describes as “Genocide”.  Regarding the “why/how” behind the fact that all such violence, even Justified War, is defined by Scripture as Ugly/Bad see www.BibleViolence.com which goes to Deficiency Of Being, Old Testament Violence, The Metaphysic Of Privation, And Christ Crucified https://metachristianity.com/old-testament-violence-the-metaphysic-of-privation-and-christ-crucified/

Covenant Theology finds Canaanites and proverbial outsiders in Shechem within Joshua chap. 8 vis-à-vis the covenant renewal ceremony, which mirror’s Israel’s own future experience in Israel’s exile. No identity is ever “Utterly Destroyed” nor can we find any supposed Outsider/Insider missing from that seamless Stream of Ancestry within Christ. We find there that the two notions of a. “Sin was all up in the whole show as the reason for all of Israel taking over Canaan….” and of b. “Sin had nothing to do with any of it” are both leaving out definitive chunks of Narrative, as, all over again:

“….The point here is this: God doesn’t play favorites. God said that he raised up Israel in part to judge the Canaanites for their sins. (Deuteronomy 9:5) But then God turned around and judged Judah when they did the same thing by letting other nations conquer them. (2 Kings 21:10-16)

That is from the essay “Killing the Canaanites: Why can’t atheists like Richard Dawkins tell the difference between genocide and justified capital punishment?”

Similar observations are from “God of Violence Yesterday, God of Love Today? Wrestling honestly with the Old Testament” by Helen Paynter:

“In contrast to other ancient Near Eastern deities, the God of Israel does not support whatever battle the leader picks. Similarly, there are surprising themes of God not being on Israel’s side and of God favoring Canaanites and condemning Israelites.”

Similarly, Actual War was not All-Or-None with respect to our own “Modernity’s Old English Literalism” as the deliberate literary constructions used (…and which Modernity’s Old English Literalism muddies up…) are neither “spooky” nor “just-da-bible” but are historically defined in both Biblical and Extra-Biblical manuscripts.

Question: “…don’t you believe in literal interpretation…”

Answer: I think you mean to affirm a non-literal interpretation, yes? If you believe that “All That Breathes” is a bit of syntax that is mysteriously immune to the facts of history then you believe that we are to read about a fiction (…God commanded the killing of all that breathes…). But we know better. So it’s not clear what you mean by “literal”. That word isn’t supposed to mean “historically-uninformed”.

Slavery & Violence & Discussion Hall #1 & Discussion Hall #2 https://randalrauser.com/2019/08/four-pitfalls-for-apologists-defending-biblical-violence/#comment-4578894509

More segues into the fact of Non-Genocide in the book “Jesus Loves Canaanites” https://randalrauser.com/book/jesus-loves-canaanites/ and also reviewed at https://strangenotions.com/did-god-command-genocide-in-the-old-testament/

The text is either in the Genre of Modernity’s News Reports and is historically accurate “in that sense” and so we find that scores of cities & peoples survived the so called “genocide” – in which case there was no genocide – or – the text is in a different Genre where the author’s intents and literary devices take over. Most agree that what we find is that the “Genocide” within Joshua is Historical Fiction and the authors all knew that just as they knew the “sense” in which they wrote and the authors all had different literary constructions/devices throughout history and so our job is to extricate and apply those constructions/devices.

In Closing:

Recall that “Sub-Narratives” never can “become” “Meta-Narrative”. The key to the meaning of any verse comes from the paragraph, not just from the individual words, and then the key to the meaning of any paragraph comes from the chapter, not just from the individual paragraphs, and then the key to the meaning of any chapter comes from the specific book, not just from the individual chapters, and then the key to the meaning of any individual book in Scripture comes from the Whole Metanarrative that is [Scripture] and not just from the individual books, and then the key to the meaning of the Metanarrative comes from logical lucidity vis-à-vis ontological referents in a specific Metaphysic, not just from [The-Bible], and then the key to the meaning of the Map that is the Metaphysic comes from the Terrain that is the Trinitarian Life and not just from the Metaphysic, and that Terrain sums to Timeless Reciprocity & Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-a-vis Processions vis-a-vis the Trinitarian Life even as robust explanatory power on all fronts teaches us that just as it is incoherent to say “Physics” somehow “Comes-From” that physics book over there on the shelf, so too it is incoherent to say that Metaphysical Naturalism or that the Christian Metaphysic either does or “can in principle” somehow “Come-From” ANY-thing that reduces to a World-Contingent Explanatory Terminus.

With some of that in mind the following are a few vectors I put together in 2014 which are a bit esoteric but, well, it has to be okay to have SOME sort of FUN every now and then with one’s writing (etc.) ~

Begin Esoteric-ish Copy/Paste:

Slavery’s Only Absolute – Ceaseless – Antithesis: Trinity

Absurdity:

Deep in the mire of unrecallable eons metaphysical naturalism finds her faceless god named Blind Indifference relentlessly falling forward, nurturing, rearing any potpourri of molecular happenstance worthy of yet one more step of genomic multiplication. The hodgepodge arrays of irrationally conditioned reflexes summing into the psychedelic inclinations we call “slavery” across various insect speciations is found ever worthy, highly favored and therein declared part of god’s fitted kingdom. Kaleidoscopic cascades falling forward ever outward, ever wider across fitted eras carried the kingdom’s self-serving heartlessness into yet other, even more successful species – effervescing into the ever irrationally conditioned psychic phosphorescence within the skulls of a more recent biped arrival. The bipeds immersed in their many and varied conditional – arbitrary – delusions each declare with fists raised that their own particular conditioned – arbitrary – delusion is the fact of the matter an all others are the “real” delusion. In a world of neurons awash in an ocean of blind molecular reflex antirealism’s ontological pluralism sits at god’s right hand – his expressionless name being Absurdity and god is his A and his Z. The bipeds are unaware that these too – these varied notions of trueness – are yet other crafty bits of stealth which god has laced deep into his array of reflexive feedback loops ever lurking beneath the surface compelling her mechanistic genomic duplications to spit out yet again. She always wins, eventually, across the eons as her beloved psychotics adrift in their ocean of conditioned – arbitrary – delusions ever shuffle this way and that way feverishly sprinting towards inevitable extinction there in what is the moral landscape of god’s kingdom.

Sanity:

Our brutally repeatable moral experiences intellectually and existentially coincides with Scripture’s Meta-Narrative – each affirming that Slavery is in all possible worlds – at every conceivable juncture – that which is – in existence’s full and final essence – the Ought-Not, the Outside, the Dark, the Ugly, such that once the universe’s fateful reorganization within its quantum change-of-states (energy’s absurd infinite regress) fluxes yet again and evolutionary morality is non-entity, there will yet be – still left standing – that immutable Objective Moral Object inside of love’s volitional grain amid personhood – still left standing – in all that is love’s I-You / Self-Other there as the final mediator, Actuality’s ceaseless envoi. The inescapable – unending – value of, beauty of, worthiness of Person, of Other there – we will see how – ends all regression – ad infinitum. This meta-narrative is the fact of the matter, is the state of affairs on the issue at hand – slavery – and that in all possible worlds, therefore – it is self-evident – we must look beyond both methodological and metaphysical naturalism’s inseparable identities with the kaleidoscopic fluidity of the arbitrary, the phantasmagoric, the amoral, the indifferent for in that hopelessly indifferent paradigm ontological pluralism wrapped up inside of antirealism’s variegated oscillations awaits all lines and while in such absurdity all may be the stuff of psychosis adrift in an ocean of irrationally conditioned delusion, all assertions just are an impossible case in such a world of delusion-laden psychosis. Naturalism as a metaphysics – not as a methodology of the study of the created order – accumulates here ever more hemorrhaging in what ends in fatality, and, in this issue now at hand, leaves SLAVERY ever intact as just one more bit of The-Real in that endless chain of bits within quantum indeterminism’s absurd infinite regress that just is energy’s change-of-state – that just is atheism’s god.

Spying Freedom:

Once out of metaphysical naturalism’s nihilism we find that Mind’s I-exist is declared actually intact – free of enslavement’s absurdity – where logic’s A in fact is not logic’s B as logic’s finger outreaches the edges of the natural universe and man’s own mind, his own living-i-am there awakes within an ocean of ontological contours which all begin to fuse as we move into the arena of our brutally repeatable experiences, into all that is logic, into all that is the beloved, into all that is love. We find at the end of these many lines all that is personhood’s necessarily triune real estate of the I’s motions amid all that just is the milieu of Self-Other-Us and there mind’s living-i-am’s perceive yet farther. In all these junctures that same triune real estate of personhood, of the I’s motions, is found seamlessly fluid in His Image, that ontological – moral – landscape that is the ceaseless reciprocity within the immutable love of the Necessary Being, there – in God – in Trinity.

Emancipation:

God – Immutable Love – Trinity – articulates, “Let Us make man in Our Image” and Genesis’ Actuality is the OT’s Actuality, is the NT’s Actuality, as Actuality finds Man in the lap of Personhood’s inescapably triune milieu of Self-Other-Us within the ceaseless reciprocity of the immutable love of the Necessary Being. Therein – in Trinity – love’s timeless Sacrifice, pouring out, of all which we call Self – amid and among the timeless Filling of all which we call the Beloved/Other forever begets within such living waters all which just is the singular Us – and this ad infinitum void of what we call First, void of what we call Last, void of what we call Thirst. Such triune contours within the immutable love of the Necessary Being bring us to the ends of what Man can call sight as he peers into He Who first precedes, then endures, and finally outreaches, outdistances, all possible worlds. The exegesis of filiation, of the eternally begotten as a proper and orthodox semantic paradigm is there forever housed within the Triune, that is to say, within those motions which both the intellectual and existential affirm as comprising love, Who Scripture affirms is Himself God. A key that unlocks: Man is by necessity the Contingent Self, fashioned in His Image – in God’s, the Triune’s, Image – and therein Man’s Means and Man’s Ends just are those motions found within Trinity by which all his (man’s) hope – all his (man’s) means and ends – are reduced to one word: Other.

Slavery’s End:

The geography amid Contingency and Necessity never changes as all that is the state of affairs of the contingent self’s volition amid self/other finds him in motion and such unpacks the affairs of volition’s delight, of volition’s trust within love’s many embraces and we find that should such motion be into the contingent’s own self he will there find – necessarily – insufficiency, lack, want, and this ad infinitum in the un-free permanence of the un-whole. Whereas, that same business of volition – of motion – into what just is Immutable Love finds the non-free of the non-whole fading into non-entity as – ad infinitum – He fills us full with our true and final felicity. All the OT’s assessment of means and ends across all those millennia just always were those same means and ends assessed in the NT which all these millennia just always have been all these affairs of His Love enunciating across all that just is the history of man that it is the case that in fact – actually, finally – no person shall need to be taught of love by man ever again – as it will be Immutable Love Himself Who fills us, Who we spy face to face. The Necessary Means here becomes the Necessary Being Himself as – it is self-evident – nothing less houses the reach required to tie up all such metaphysical ends in Actuality’s Paradigm. All-Sufficiency emerges as what must be the contingent’s hope: God Himself pouring Himself out for – pouring Himself into – we the contingent in all that just is the affairs of Amalgamation, all that just is Timelessness/Time, Immaterial/Material, Incorporeal/Corporeal, Word/Flesh, in all that just is the affairs of God-In-Man, of Man-In-God – of incarnation. By such All-Sufficient Means an unspeakable liberty will emerge in our Ends as wherever we shall there freely motion within Actuality’s Triune, whether into what lay beneath our feet, or into what sails above our heads, or into those possible worlds within our chests, we will find that beautiful freedom called Permanence.

End Esoteric-ish Copy/Paste  ((…from https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2014/08/ten-reasons-the-bible-has-it-right-on-slavery/#comment-104642 …))

Slavery: The Christian Metanarrative Defines Slavery As A Swath Of Privation’s Many Pains Therefore The Christian Metanarrative Cannot Have A “Pro-Slavery” Verse Much Less A “Pro-Slavery” Any-Thing. That’s the bottom line. As per the following:

http://www.Slavery.Bible

END