1.2 Is philosophy Christian?

I didn't have my normal Thursday night philosophy class, but I'll use the gap to fill in a topic we usually disucss in our first live session. See series at bottom.
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1. Philosophy can have a fairly bad reputation in some contexts among Christians. A few years ago, there was even a movie called God's Not Dead where the antagonist was a philosophy professor who was strongly hostile to Christian faith. Although the character was quite flat, there is probably some truth hiding in the presentation. [1]

Philosophy classes aren't always known for being friendly to faith. After all, if philosophy is about asking questions, then it's going to have a natural tendency to expose blind spots in the way you think. As such, it can have a tendency to facilitate changes in perspective. Since the very existence of Christian colleges often centered on providing an environment that protects the traditions of a sponsoring church, you can see the potential for tension here! 

Accordingly, philosophy is sometimes taught as more of a worldview class. Rather than raise questions, philosophy becomes about giving the right answers. It becomes a preparation for thought war. It leans heavily into apologetics or the defense of the faith. "Here's why the skeptic is wrong."

2. I would argue that, whichever approach you take, philosophy at least can be approached Christianly. I am quite fond of the motto, "faith seeking understanding." [2] The idea is that we start our pursuit of truth with faith. We "believe in order to understand" [3] 

Decades ago, I had a philosophy student come to my office, stimulated by some of the things we were talking about in philosophy. He said, "I'm going to throw out everything I believe and start from scratch." I urged him not to do it. For one, it's not practical. But it also risks throwing the baby out with the bath water. And there are all sorts of cliffs to fall off of in the process. Few of us are geniuses and, even if you are, geniuses can easily lack perspective.

No, it's best to stand on the shoulders of thousands of years of thinking. You won't live long enough to reconstruct all that! If you want to climb down a little or change some shoulders, it's best to do that on a journey that is more careful in its questioning. There's too much to know, too many different options. "Start with the faith you have." Or as the father of the possessed son put it, "I believe. Help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24).

3. Just in case, Colossians 2:8 wasn't talking about what we're talking about. "Look that there will not be someone taking you hostage by philosophy and empty deception." In fact, even translating this verse with the word philosophy is misleading. As you continue to read, it is clear that it is a religious option that Colossians has in view, not a philosophical one. It involves the observance of certain festivals and abstaining from certain foods (2:16). It involves worshiping with angels (2:18). In short, it refers to a Jewish sect, not a philosophy as we think of one.

4. So, what kind of approach to philosophy might assure us that it is done Christianly? Here we get into some questions that we will explore in more detail soon enough. Good thinking is largly structured with two key elements -- assumptions and logic. 

Logic has rules that have been thoroughly explored for over two thousand years. There are no exceptions to them working! This is an important fact to point out. In the history of the world, the rules of logic are as certain as math. They have never failed -- not even once. This may seem like a crazy claim, but it is true. I personally have to think that God has built the rules of logic into the structure of the universe.

Then why is there so much disagreement? Let's assume that two people who disagree are both using good logic. Why would they then disagree?

Because of their assumptions or what is called "premises." We might connect these premises also back to more fundamental "presuppositions." Presuppositions are your fundamental assumptions. They are the assumptions that stand behind the premises that logic works with.

So I would argue that it is in the domain of assumptions that philosophy either is or is not Christian. For example, if our logic assumes the claims of the Nicene Creed and core biblical claims, then you could argue that philosophical argument stands squarely without the domains of Christian faith.

There is also, however, an approach that sees faith and reason sufficiently in harmony that it focuses on the heart of faith in pursuit of truth. The heart of this philosopher "wants" Christian faith to be true, "expects" Christian faith to be vindicated. All options are on the table in full expectation that good reason and evidence will point in the direction of faith. It is not afraid of asking questions, convinced that the answers will cohere with faith.

5. Accordingly, what are some ways in which philosophy might not cohere with Christian faith. Here are some ways:

• When a person asks questions with a heart that wants to undermine faith. The goal is not truth or faith but is antifaith.
• When a person rejects out of hand the presuppositions or assumptions of faith. If faith is not even an option, then it will difficult to arrive at faith conclusions. It is possible -- if you end up with non sequiturs in your other reasonings.
• When you are not equipped to think philosophically. Not everyone is wired to do philosophy in a "meta" kind of way. Some who fear that they will only be easily misled may opt for blind faith on their part. This is a coherent choice too.

So, yes, philosophy can be Christian! If it is done in a way that is open to faith and allows faith assumptions into the conversation. 

[1] In literature, a flat character is one that is fairly stereotypical and predictable rather than dynamic the way most human beings are. Most real world villains are complex, as are most real world heroes.

[2] The saying goes back to Anselm (ca 1033-1109), building on an idea that was also expressed by Augustine (354-430).

[3] Also from Anselm in his Proslogion.

1.1 What is philosophy?
1.2 Is philosophy Christian? (this post)
1.3 Unexamined assumptions
1.4 Socrates and the Unexamined Life

2.1 The Structure of Thinking?
2.2 Three Tests for Truth

3.1 Faith and Reason

7.1 Beyond Binary Thinking
7.2 Plato's Allegory of the Cave
7.3 Reason vs. Experience
7.4 Kant Breaks the Tie.
7.5 The Bible as Object of Knowledge
7.6 Wittgenstein and Language
7.7 Kuhn and Paradigms
7.8 Foucault and Power
7.9 A Pragmatic Epistemology

The Devil's Apprentice: Letters on Corrupting a Nation

I have edited the notes I've been blogging in the spirit of C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters as "The Devil's Apprentice: Letters on Corrupting a Nation."

Here are some of the versions available:

• paperback on Amazon
• e-book on Shopify
• audiobook on Amazon 

Here is the book description:

What if we could read the Devil's letters? What if we could hear two devils plotting to turn America into pure chaos and devastation—and found out their job was almost too easy?

This book is a satirical, razor-sharp tour through the spiritual and political chaos of our current moment, told from the gleefully malicious perspective of two demons studying America like hunters tracking wounded prey. In a series of biting letters, Grimclaw and Festerling dissect the nation’s fractures, exploit its fears, and lay out their strategies for deepening division, distorting faith, and turning neighbor against neighbor.

Both darkly humorous and unsettlingly insightful, this book blends cultural critique with spiritual reflection, exposing how easily good intentions can be twisted and how readily fear and resentment can be weaponized. Fans of C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters will recognize the form but encounter a fresh voice, contemporary issues, and a perspective uniquely suited to our fractured age.

This is not a book about demons. It is a book about us—how we think, how we fight, and how we can be manipulated. And it is ultimately a call for discernment in a moment when deception comes packaged as righteousness.

4 -- Hebrews' Closing Clues (13:1-19)

1 -- The Setting of Hebrews
2 -- The Cast of Characters
3 -- The Context at Corinth/Ephesus
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What clues might Hebrews 13 give us about the story of Hebrews? The hypothesis. The church is coming off a time of persecution, possibly in the wake of Jerusalem and the temple's destruction. Leaders have died. Others are still in jail. Maybe, Apollos and Timothy are planning to visit Rome again. Or insert a different name and destination.

In the wake of the temple's destruction, synagogue meals have taken on a heightened importance. What other formal connection to atonement is left at this moment in time? So being kicked out of the synagogue was even more devastating than before.

The author reminds them that they have a table (the Lord's Supper) that is connected to the one truly effective sacrifice of Christ -- not the sense of "you need to participate to get atonement" but in the sense of "you don't need to worry about being excluded from the synagogue." Note that God-fearers could participate and be excluded from the synagogue too.

Now the details.

1. "We do not have a city here that remains but we are seeking the one that remains" (Heb. 13:14). The verse doesn't necessarily mean that Jerusalem has been destroyed.

But it might. 

Jerusalem is the city in question. The author has just talked about how Jesus suffered outside the gate of Jerusalem. That's what Romans did. They crucified people on major thoroughfares into the city to make an example of them.

Apollos (for the sake of argument) wants the believers of Rome (for the sake of argument) to "eat the shame" of being followers of Jesus. He uses the analogy of the Day of Atonement, where the high priest takes the blood of the sacrificed into the Most Holy Place. The carcasses, however, are taken outside the camp, just like Jesus' body died outside Jerusalem.

Could there be a "twin shame" here? There is first the shame of being a Christian Jew (whether ethnically Jewish or a proselyte). You are shamed by the mainstream Jewish community, which is increasingly rejecting Jesus followers. If Jesus followers primarily rejected the Jewish War, this could have led to an even more profound ostracism.

Then, just maybe, there is the shame of being associated with the city the Romans have just destroyed, just like they crucified Jesus outside the gate. Bearing shame is a major feature of Hebrews. [1] We see it not least in 12:2, where the example of Jesus "despising the shame" is given as a model for the audience to emulate. 

Clearly, they are experiencing some "shame fatigue."

2. "Don't be led astray by various strange teachings" (13:9).

This is one of the more cryptic comments in Hebrews. The author seems to have some specific kinds of teachings in mind, because he goes on to warn them that "foods" do not establish one's heart before God. What foods does he have in mind? Well, it would seem to be sacrificial foods of some kind because he lifts up  the "foods" believers are privileged to eat that "those who serve the tent" cannot eat.

What a strange comment! For one, he doesn't speak of the temple but of the wilderness tent. As we will see, the book of Hebrews nowhere explicitly mentions the Jerusalem temple. Like Philo, the argument is a theological exploration rather than a concrete one. I would argue this makes a lot of sense especially if the temple has been destroyed. The author is "starting with why" the whole sanctuary thing existed in the first place.

Throughout most of church history, Jerusalem was a favored suggestion for the destination of Hebrews. Perhaps these verses would give the strongest argument. How could you eat from the "table of the tent" anywhere in the world but Jerusalem?

But it seems much more likely to be metaphorical. We can eat from the Lord's table and Jerusalem priests can't -- if they're not believers. 

But he tells them to stay away from strange teachings. This suggests that we're going to have a hard time guessing what alternative he has in mind. It's strange. A sacrificial meal in Jerusalem isn't strange. It's normal.

3. So let's speculate a little. It involves foods of some kind. And, "we have an altar from which those who serve the tent do not have authority to eat." So the food is thought in some way to represent a sacrificial meal someone might have in the temple -- except it's not in Jerusalem.

Yep, that's strange alright.

We're looking for a practice that claims to function like a temple meal. The best candidate I can think of is synagogue meals or synagogue meals associated with certain key Jewish festivals. [2] 

Even before the temple was destroyed, there is some reason to believe that many Jews saw synagogue meals as extensions of, perhaps even proxies for temple meals.  After the temple was destroyed, it seems even more likely that this sort of sentiment would have exploded in significance. We can hear the argument: "Now that there aren't temple sacrifices being offered, participation in the synagogue meal is essential for atonement." [3]

So, here's the hypothesis. In the absence of the temple, synagogue meals took on an even greater significance than before (or perhaps certain key synagogue meals did, such as the one on Yom Kippur). You can hear the argument -- "If you are not part of the synagogue, you are cut off from (what is left of) the atonement system."

The author's counterargument is that participation in the communal meals of the Christian assembly -- the Lord's supper, in other words -- is more than equivalent. It is a table connected to the one effective sacrifice for all time as opposed to a table connected to the (no longer offered) sacrifices that merely represented Jesus' one true sacrifice. [4] Believers had authority to eat from the true table.

And believers continue to offer sacrifices of praise to God (13:15). Indeed, doing good and sharing fellowship is a pleasing sacrifice to God as well (13:16). The church is a "cultic" community, just as almost certainly the synagogue community was viewed.

4. "Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Observing the outcome of their conduct, imitate their faith" (13:7).

The most natural way to take this verse is that the leaders of the (perhaps Roman) church have been martyred. The author urges the audience to demonstrate the same faithfulness that they did. Indeed, the whole point of Hebrews 11 is to spur the audience to continued faithfulness in the light of those who have gone before.

When did these leaders die? They certainly may have died in the Neronian persecution ca. 64. 

Could individuals like Paul and Peter be in view? It's possible, although it doesn't fit the verse as well as the community's own leaders, since Paul was under house arrest when he was there, and Peter probably was not in Rome too long before he was martyred.

This points to a date at least in the late 60s, and a date around 71 or 72, as I am suggesting, would fit as well. [5]

The well-known verse -- "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever" (13:8) -- was not just a general theological statement. The context tells us the author is telling the audience that they can rely on Jesus today just like their leaders relied on him yesterday. So they will always be able to rely on his atonement forever. 

This sense of the eternal efficacy of Jesus' blood was a new stage in the early church's sesnse of the scope of Jesus' atonement.

5. "Remember those in prison" (13:3). This at least makes us think of Timothy, who had just been released (13:23). We get the impression that the church is recovering from a hard time, perhaps a global hard time. While there were no empire-wide persecutions of Christians this early, the wake of the Neronian persecution or the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem probably fit this tone best.

6. "Obey your leaders" (13:17). Their job is to watch over your souls. In every generation, the people of the church can be in tension with those who watch over their souls. Similarly, of course, leaders can be tempted to "lord it over" congregations in every generation.

7. This final chapter also has some instruction of a general nature -- the kind that you might hear on a Sunday morning in any sermon.

• Love each other (13:1). The early church struggled with this just like we do.
• Show hospitality to strangers (13:2). This is a notable verse because there are voices that want to limit the church's love to those inside the church. Hebrews extends the love to strangers. This is also a curious verse in its mention that angels sometimes walk among us, possibly an allusion to Genesis 18 and the men who visited Abraham.
•  Be faithful to your marriages (13:4). In all times and all places, this is a concern because fallen human nature always struggles with sexual temptation.
• Don't be overcome with the love of money (13:5). Again, a problem for certain people in every generation. Be content with what you have.

Hebrews quotes a couple verses to support the idea that we can depend on God (rather than money). "I will never forsake you" (Josh. 1:6) and "The Lord is my helper. I will not fear what a mortal might do to me" (Psalm 118:6) puts together two verses in a way only done elsewhere this way in Philo. In fact, there are several quotations in Hebrews that parallel Philo's way of quoting them exactly -- and found in those forms nowhere else. Drip, drip, Apollos.

[1] See David deSilva, Despising Shame: Honor Discourse and Community Maintenance in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 2nd ed. (SBL, 2008).

[2] Philo's description of the Therapeutae's celebration of Pentecost in On the Contemplative Life seems to see their meal as analogous to eating the table of presentation in the temple.

[3] I first encountered this speculation in relation to the temple sacrifice in Barnabas Lindars, The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews (Cambridge University, 1991).  

[4] It is not widely held, but W. E. Brooks once suggested that they may have continued to offer sacrifices on the temple mount even after the temple was destroyed: "The Perpetuity of Christ's Sacrifice in the Epistle to the Hebrews" JBL 89 (1970): 205-14.

[5] Although we come at the question from slightly different angles, the work of Jason Whitlark fits very well with my dating here. E.g., Resisting Empire: Rethinking the Purpose of the Letter "To the Hebrews" (T & T Clark, 2014).

3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride

The chemistry novel continues...

1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Café
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The doors burst open of their own accord, as if they were bored of being closed. And although Stefanie wasn't quite sure what a briefing was, she expected to find a classroom of some sort with desks, a chalkboard, and maybe a poster with a motivational kitten.

Instead, she chanced upon a small group of children clustered around what looked like a water ride at an amusement park. A narrow canal led a series of logs on water into a predictable sort of tunnel and then to who knows where. Several children had already made their way into the logs, although the logs seemed quite allergic to moving at the moment.

Upon closer examination, the final log seemed to be stuck to a frozen slab of water beneath it, and there would be no moving forward until its ice had melted. A young man was sprawled on the edge of the platform with a blow torch, trying to melt the ice as quickly as possible.

"Now however did that happen?!" Stefanie exclaimed.

"It's in the solid state of matter," the young man said, pulling himself up from the floor and turning to look at her. "We have to make it transition into a liquid state."

The sight of his face suddenly took her a little aback. 

"You look quite like my eight-year-old brother, Tom," she said.

"I am your brother Tom," he said, "except I'm twenty-five and quite good with a blow torch."

"But that's impossible," she exclaimed. "How could you now be older than me?"

"You are inside an atom," he said. "So, I would be suspicious about that word impossible. I expect it is the time dilation."

"I've had my pupils dilated once," she responded. "They put a puff of air in them, as I recall. Not too pleasant, but not too painful either."

"Did someone say something to you about a Lorentz contraction?"

"Yes," she answered. "There was some talk of that with regard to the shrinkage."

"So there you have it," he said, as if the matter of his greater age was now obvious.

"You see there are three states of matter," he continued. "Solid, liquid, and gas."

"Yes, everyone knows that," she protested.

"Did you know that kids?" he said, turning to the children on the platform.

"No, we didn't know that," several said.

"Yes, that's very interesting," a girl named Vanessa answered.

"Thanks, Vanessa," Tom said to a girl who looked a lot like a smaller version of Tom in a whig.

"The water down there is liquid and ready to go," he proceeded to say. "It's at normal room temperature. 

"But the water here is frozen, most likely because of the liquid nitrogen I used to try to freeze my salmon. Now look at it. There's no eating that."

And sure enough, there was a salmon frozen into the ice.

"And, since you asked, this is pure water," he continued.

"I didn't ask," Stefanie said.

"That's right. There are no minerals or other impurities in this water like there would be coming out of a faucet in your kitchen sink."

"There are impurities in my water?" Stefanie responded, now somewhat alarmed.

"Oh, don't worry," he said. "They're not dangerous. If enough people get sick or die, they put regulations on such things. All it takes is a few decades of not listening to scientists."

"Aren't they trying to take flouride out of water right now," Stefanie asked.

"No, just one rather peculiar fellow," Tom answered.

"When are we going to get to go on the ride?" Vanessa finally interrupted. "My parents are expecting to meet me at the briefing ten minutes ago."

"Fine," Tom said. "I only have two learning outcomes for this ride, and I need to make sure Stefanie has them down solid," he said with a smirk. "See what I did there?"

"No, I'm not sure what you are saying," she said with a puzzled look on her face.

"Solid -- it's one of the three states of matter. Well, four if you count plasma."

She still looked at him with a little impatience.

"Solid, liquid, gas -- the three phases of matter. It's the first learning outcome of this ride."

"Yes, yes," she said. "Everyone knows that if water is cold enough, it turns to ice. At normal temperatures, it's liquid." Then she paused.

"Oh, you can boil it and it evaporates, right?"

"Exactly!" he exclaimed. "If you put more heat into its molecules, they will become a gas. You might call it 'steam.' It's the vapor that comes off a pot of boiling water."

"Can you get on with the second outcome so we can get this ride going," Vanessa interrupted.

"Ah, yes," he said. "This water here is a pure substance. It's not a mixture of water with something else. It's just water, H₂O. Have you heard of H₂O?"

"Of course," Stefanie said. "Everyone's heard of H₂O.

"Have you ever heard of H₂O, kids," Tom said, turning to the other children again.

No, we haven't heard of that." several said.

"Yes, that's very interesting," Vanessa also chimed in.

"One molecule of water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom."

"I guess I'd never really asked what the H₂O stood for," Stefanie said. "But do these children know what hydrogens and oxygens are?"

"No, we don't know nothin' about chemistry," they said one after the other.

"Except that cesium explodes when you throw it in water," Vanessa said, and with that she secretly showed Stefanie that she had a carefully wrapped lump of cesium hiding under her jacket. "I won it in a cereal box contest."

"Everything in all the world is made up of atoms!" Tom excitedly proclaimed, flinging his arms wide open with great enthusiasm. "And if you glue the atoms together, you get molecules."

"Does anyone have Legos?" Stefanie added, eager to enlighten the children.

"No, we just play video games," one boy said. "We don't play with toys any more."

"Well," Stefanie tried to continue, taken somewhat aback. "They were these little blocks you could stick together and build things. That's like the atoms and molecules of the world that Tom was talking about."

"I like Legos," Vanessa said, "although I prefer Thomas the Tank Engine."

"That sounds boring," the boy said.

"So H₂O means that water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom," Tom continued. "But the water you get from your kitchen is a mixture. It has water in it, but it also has things like iron and sometimes flouride and other substances.

"Isn't that dangerous?" another boy named Lane asked. "I mean, do they unplug the iron before they put it in the water?"

"ABSOLUTELY you must NEVER let anything plugged in near water or you might electrocute and kill yourself," Tom said in the most emphatic tone yet.

"It's not that kind of iron," Stefanie added. "There must be some atom named iron."

"An element!" Vanessa said. "The atoms are called elements, right?"

"Yes," Tom continued, trying to steer everyone back to the topic at hand. "Iron is a type of atom, an 'element,' as Vanessa said."

"And they call an iron an iron because it's made up of iron?" Lane asked.

"That's quite clever of you to suggest," Tom answered. "And they were when the iron was first invented, but that's a topic for another day. Right now you need to know the difference between a pure substance and a mixture."

"That's easy!" Vanessa protested. "A pure substance is just one thing. A mixture is more than one thing."

Tom paused, as if she had stolen his thunder.

"Yes, more or less," he finally answered.

"And a pure substance probably could either be a single element, like iron," Stefanie interjected. "Or a few atoms glued together, like water -- a molecule, right?"

"Yes," he said, bending over and whispering to Stefanie. "But I'm supposed to be the teacher in this scene."

"Are there different kinds of mixtures too?" Lane said.

"Why, yes," Tom answered. "I'm glad you asked."

"There are mixtures where everything is so evenly distributed that you can't see any differences in what you're looking at. For example, you can't tell that iron is mixed with the water in your sink."

"Or in the different elements mixed together in the air, right?" Vanessa threw in.

"Except when the light comes in the window and you can see the little particles hanging in the air," Lane added.

"Yes, yes," Tom tried to regain control of the conversation. "Those are called homogeneous mixtures --without the particles you see in the air."

"Homo what?" Stefanie asked.

"Homogeneous -- it means everything is spread throughout evenly."

"Then why didn't they call it a spread-throughout-evenly mixture?" Stefanie responded.

"Because that involves dashes and isn't confusing enough," Tom answered. "It can also be called a solution, if it's a liquid. Does that make it better?

"So what would you call this kind of mixture?" Lane picked up a stick on the platform and threw it into the water canal for the ride.

"An annoying one," Tom said. "because now I have to fish that out before we can start the ride.

"And the salmon," Stefanie said.

"But a mixture with a stick or salmon in it is called a heterogeneous mixture," he continued, "because now the materials are differently distributed in it. It's not all smooth throughout."

"So let me summarize so we can get this ride going," Vanessa said. "There are pure substances and mixtures. Of the pure substances, there are individual elements like iron, but there can also be single molecules like water, pure water."

"Yes," keep going, Tom said.

"Then with mixtures you can have solutions that are evenly distributed throughout, called homogeneous mixtures. But you can also have mixtures that aren't evenly distributed throughout, called heterogenous mixtures."

"Superb, Vanessa," Tom added. "I think you have it! And look, the blow torch seems to have completely melted the ice and brought it into a liquid state."

He had carefully suspended the torch over the water to keep heating it while he talked to Stefanie and the children.

"But isn't there another learning outcome you haven't covered?" Vanessa asked.

"And what would that be?"

"The difference between a physical property and a chemical property," she said.

"Ah, yes, we might be able to slip that one in as well before we get on the ride," Tom responded. "A physical property is like the difference between water as a solid, a liquid, or a gas. It's changing its state, but it's not really interacting with anything.

"Then a chemical property would have to do with how something might interact with something else," he continued.

"Like cesium," Vanessa added. "Water would have a chemical reaction with cesium."

"Yes, certainly," Tom answered. "The water would have quite a dangerous reaction with cesium," he said, "and that would have to do with the chemical properties of cesium and water."

"Like this," Vanessa said, pulling out the wrapped up cesium under her jacket and throwing it into the water canal. The result was quite a massive explosion that abruptly brought this chapter to an end. 

2.1 Faith and Reason

I had another philosophy live session with a group tonight. Tonight's session was on the philosophy of religion -- arguments for the existence of God and potential answers to the problem of evil and suffering.

This post is part of a series of pieces from my philosophy classes that I've decided to post whenever I have a live session of some sort, which is often. So far I've posted on some introductory topics and an epistemology one. The posts here on the blog will go well beyond class discussion, since I try to play more of a facilitator role there.
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2.1 Faith and Reason
1. The second leg of our philosophical journey is the philosophy of religion. Assuming that God exists, God is the most important Being -- in fact the only truly essential Being. There are some who have a lesser sense of God, of course. But the historic, Christian sense of God sees God as the ground of all existence, without whom nothing would or could exist. 

Classic Christian theology speaks of God's "aseity," meaning God's full self-sufficiency. This means that God has no need of anything outside of Godself. Everything else has a sort of "contingent" existence. Nothing else must exist. But God must exist, and nothing else could exist without God's existence.

So, it makes sense to turn directly to the philosophy of religion on our pilgrimage toward reflectivity. If God exists, we should assume it affects everything. If God did not exist, it seems that it would effect everything else on our journey as well.

It makes sense to get these options out on the table before we go any further.

2. In the first segment of this journey, we talked about the fact that we all have unexamined assumptions about reality and the world. This is certainly true when it comes to religion no differently from other key issues. 

For example, I can imagine someone saying, "Why should I believe in God?" "What's in it for me?" so to speak. 

On one level, this is a quite peculiar question. God's existence -- and the nature of God's existence -- is not dependent in any way on you or me. God either exists "out there" or God doesn't. 

When it has this flavor, the question may reveal an unexamined assumption that God's existence is subjective -- a matter of my opinion. But think about this assumption. Would you come up to me and ask, "Why should I believe you exist?" You might, if you were high on something or suspected I was a holograph or an illusion.

But on a normal day, it doesn't matter "what's in it for you" to believe I exist. You sit there pondering, and I'll go have some lunch.

3. There was actually a philosopher in the twentieth century who suggested that God's existence was a matter of the personal and social "games" we play based on the belief that God exists. So, my belief that God exists might keep me from running someone over with my car. In a sense, it doesn't matter whether God really exists objectively. My belief that God exists changes the world through the impact it has on my actions.

Ludwig Wittgenstein -- the philosopher in question --believed that God existed in these "language games" that we play. God is real, he thought, because the idea has a serious effect on the world. We call those who see the existence of God in such terms "Wittgensteinian fideists." [1]

As a historic Christian, I believe that God exists outside of human discourse -- "out there," so to speak. However, I also suspect that Wittgenstein is right about a lot of people who claim to believe in God, including many people in the church. I suspect there are many prayers that are really monologs, and the person praying isn't even self-aware of it. [2]

I suspect that many a person who would say, "Why should I believe in God?" are more asking "what's in such belief for me?" They are implicitly indicating that they do not truly think of God as an objective Being but as a matter of subjective opinion. That is to say, they don't believe in the real God in the first place. They are discussing the concept of God. [3]

4. There are other unexamined assumptions we might have in relation to the proper relationship between faith and reason. That is to say, we are "unitary" thinkers on this question -- by which I mean we only know one way to think of the issue. We don't really know that there are even other options.

So, one person assumes that Christian beliefs are thoroughly provable by argument. "The evidence demands a verdict," as Josh McDowell put it. C. S. Lewis felt this way. Lee Strobel feels this way. If you come from this kind of Christian culture, you will assume that apologetics is an obvious endeavor in which to participate.

Then consider those whose unexamined assumption is that faith is blind ("blind faith"). This person may see faith as a gift. Some people have it. Others don't. It has nothing to do with reason. Some people just believe and that's that. For others, faith seems ridiculous to believe, absurd.

Then there is the vast middle ground. Their assumptions might be a little more examined because they might find some aspects of faith as very reasonable, and others rather more difficult to understand.

A related issue, it seems to me, is the extent to which faith should be evaluated by reason. We hinted at this question earlier when we asked if philosophy was even Christian. From one perspective, to evaluate faith is to stand over it and, thus, to put yourself in the position of a god over the God. From another perspective, such questioning can be an honest pursuit of truth from human beings whose minds are fallen and finite.

5. Let's start with one end of the spectrum. This view sees most claims of faith as nearly provable. It implicitly has a high view of the human ability to reason. We think of Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s as well as the other thinkers I mentioned above.

On the one hand, it makes perfect sense to think that all matters of faith are perfectly provable from God's standpoint. If we knew what God knows, if we could reason as God reasons, we would see that faith is totally provable.

However, our minds are finite and fallen. We do not have full knowledge. We do not reason perfectly. We do not know what we do not know. We are stuck in our heads.

It seems to me that there is sometimes an unexamined assumption that proving faith is the same as saving faith. But faith in Christ is not merely intellectual. In fact, it is far more a matter of heart commitment than mere cognitive assent. "The demons also believe and tremble" (Jas. 2:19). Head belief is far from sufficient for salvation.

So, you cannot argue someone to faith. Faith is a matter of the will and choice. If you believe in predestination, then faith is entirely a matter of the Lord's action with no real human action. In this case, any intellectual element would be entirely orchestrated by God himself. It is no cause of salvation.

If you believe that the Spirit empowers some choice, as my theological tradition does, then intellect still remains an insufficient basis for faith. Argument can remove obstacles to faith. There do seem to be some individuals who reluctantly come to faith as a result of their reasoning. But, again, reason seems to set up fruitful conditions for faith rather than being the actual cause of faith.

6. Still, the opposite extreme does not seem a better option. Is faith believable because it is impossible, a Tertullian suggested? Is faith a blind leap of faith, as Soren Kierkegaard held?

Karl Barth in the twentieth century promoted a faith that hung in mid-air without rational argument. "Dogmatics," he called it. Still, every sentence of his multivolume magnum opus uses reason. It is inevitable. 

It seems to me that there's some serious inconsistencies among these "presuppositionalists," as I call them. A presupposition is an assumption, as we saw earlier. Those who are borderline anti-reason sequester certain beliefs from evaluation but then use normal reason in every sentence of their arguments and claims.

My personal sense is that this is a dodge, a cop out. In some instances, it might actually be a lack of faith. What was the soil out of which Barth's theology grew but a sense that all the reason in play went against faith? What was the soil out of which "post-liberalism" grew in the late twentieth century? Was it not a sense that faith couldn't survive the normal reasoning that had led to liberalism?

Please excuse me for thinking that these are approaches born of defeat. We can't cut the mustard on the playing field of reason, so we will downshift into an argument that brackets the truth from reason.

7. In my own personal struggles, I concluded that faith should be reasonable although probably not provable given our current fallen and finite state. Faith is generally rational rather than irrational -- although there may be some instances where we simply need to exercise faith when the evidence seems against us. But we can be honest about those situations if and when they arise.

To some degree, this was Blaise Pascal's approach. If God made everything completely clear, then the nature of our will, our choice, would be less clear. But Pascal also believed that faith was reasonable.

I would like to think that God created reason. God created math, which is related to reason. While our reason may be clouded at times, I would like to think that its general structure was created and blessed by God.

I do not think that God is intimidated by human reason. God is not sitting in heaven nervous about his own existence. Rather, he is absolutely confident that he exists.

God is not insecure like a father who blows up at his children if they question his authority. That's a father who needs some therapy. God is not threatened by us. God is not insecure. The pictures of God as wrathul in Scripture are anthropomorphic. After all, anger involves response, and God has known every event that would happen since the foundation of the world.

This leads me to an absurd thought experiment. What if you could sit down with God and prove to him that he did not exist? How would he react? He would say, "Fair enough," and disappear.

Of course, that is a ridiculous thought experiment. The point is that God is not afraid of our questions or our search for truth. Rather, he supports it if it is truly seeking understanding. Remember "faith seeking understanding"? God and good reasoning are in complete alignment.

He also knows that the search is fake for many of us. He also knows that great caution is often necessary because of how easily deceived we are.

But I would like to think that God is very much on board with the pursuit of truth using both reason and evidence. Faith is reasonable, but usually not provable from a human standpoint.

[1] Kai Nelson, "Wittgensteinian Fideism," Journal of Philosophical Studies 42:161 (1967): 191-209.

[2] See D. Z. Phillips' application of Wittgenstein's thoughts on God to prayer in The Concept of Prayer (Routledge, 1965).

[3] On the other hand, there are those who would ask this question with a genuine question of why a person should conclude there is a God. For them, it is a question of truth while the other group I mentioned are asking, "What's in it for me in such belief?"

6.1 Beyond Binary Thinking

I had another meeting with a philosophy group tonight. We're in module 6, epistemology -- how do we know that we know what we think we know. I've decided to start capturing snippets of my philosophy class whenever I have live sessions. But here I'll give some personal thoughts that go well beyond class.

Ken
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1. It would have made a lot of sense to hammer out the question of knowledge and truth more extensively at the beginning of our quest. Shouldn't we have figured out more fully how to sort out what is true before we started exploring specific topics in philosophy?

We did lay some groundwork back in the beginning on the question of truth. For example, we asked what the proper balance of faith and reason was. We talked about logical fallacies and the three basic tests for truth: the correspondence test, the coherence test, and the pragmatic test. We talked about presuppositions, particularly those a person of faith might have.

If I've been doing my job, along the journey, you've been seeing that there is virtually always more than one perspective on an issue than the one we grew up with. That doesn't mean our "traditions" are wrong. But it does mean we do start off far more as "slaves" to our backgrounds than as free thinkers. So often, we don't know what we don't know.

2. For example, in ethics, we learned that the choice is not just between absolutism and relativism. I argued that, on most issues, the biblical position is "universal with exceptions." This is not absolutism but something closer to what we might call "principlism." Even then, the New Testament is much more virtue-based than act based -- a whole different approach than many of us grew up with. 

Similarly, relativism doesn't mean a person doesn't believe in right and wrong. It's just relative to culture or the individual. No belief in right and wrong at all would be moral nihilism.

My point is that, when we first encounter a position we've never heard or thought of, our first reaction is often to be defensive. We go into "binary-thinking" mode. This is "either-or" thinking. This is "us vs. them" thinking. "My way or the highway." 

But most of the time, there's a spectrum of possible positions a person could take on any particular issue. It's not just pacifist versus serial killer. There are several other positions in between.

3. Take our earlier discussion of economic philosophy. It's not just capitalism or communism. It's just bad thinking to say that if a person is not your kind of capitalist, they are a socialist or communist. There are gradations between these. Australia is capitalist, but they have universal health care. They are more socialist than the US, but far less than North Korea. They are still better classified as capitalist than socialist.

Binary thinking is often a defensive mechanism -- I'm caught off guard because I didn't realize there were other ways to think about something. It's also usually sloppy thinking. It gets me off the hook from having to think. You have a position different from mine so you're obviously wrong.

It's very useful. If I can give you a label, then I don't have to listen to you. "You're a Democrat" or "You're MAGA." Therefore, I don't have to think about what you're claiming. 

I call this "labelism." I try to attach a label to something so I don't have to think about it. "That's woke." Or "that's evangelical." Or "that's Marxist." It works well for those who want to stay in their particular cave of choice. [1] No thought necessary.

But it won't do if you want to be a good thinker. It works well on the campaign trail or on social media. It is good old average thinking.

4. Early in our journey was a section on Unexamined Assumptions. I have sometimes called this "unitary thinking" because you think in one way -- the only way you know how to think.

Then you find out that there is another way to think about an issue. You are taken off guard. Maybe you are alarmed. "Well, everyone knows that's wrong." Maybe you villainize the other perspective or the person with it. Maybe you invoke religion to try to shut down thinking the other way. 

But there are almost always other ways to look at things. We move into what I have called "spectrum thinking." We see that there are multiple possible positions on most issues, with several of them probably being within a tolerable range. 

Eventually, we move toward a certain "epistemic humility." I become aware of my own fallibility as a knower. It doesn't mean we don't believe in truth. It means that we realize our own limitations as thinkers about it. We realize that there is much more mystery to God and the universe than we might like to admit. Indeed, we recognize that the meaning of the Bible itself isn't always a clear as we might like it to be.

5. You may have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Apparently, a person who knows very little about a particular topic may sometimes feel like they are virtually experts on it. A person with no expertise may be convinced that they are masters on a subject. No doubt this dynamic is on display every day all over social media.

One of my complaints about media right now is that it is providing a lot of skewed talking points. We are provided with a host of half-baked arguments that we can use on our verbal sparing partners. They are sometimes misleading, skewed, or downright wrong. But they give us a feeling of intelligence in our lack of true knowledge.

When you actually begin to gain genuine learning on a subject, you usually begin to realize quickly how little you actually knew during your earlier "cocky" phase. I certainly have experienced this dynamic myself repeatedly in the course of my life. I hear an interpretation of a Bible passage that I've never heard before. My first instinct has sometimes been to think, "Well, that's stupid." 

Then I begin to hear the argument. If I listen to the evidence, my arrogance often has softened. Eventually, I may even change my mind. I have repeatedly over the course of my life as a biblical interpreter.

Take the common sense that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was about homosexuality. Extremely common. Yet these men want to rape the angels. An ancient reader would have assumed these men were married and had children. The more you dig into the context, the more you realize that this event is only tangentially related to contemporary debates about homosexuality. 

When I first heard this claim, I thought it was ridiculous. As it turned out, I was reading my paradigms and assumptions into the text withour realizing it. I was an "unreflective knower," a unitary thinker on this passage.

6. We will only advance in our understanding if we have a genuine openness to the real truth. I have found over the years that it is often those who most shout, "Stand up for the truth!" who are actually the least open to hearing it. "Truth" for them really means "my tradition." Unable to make an argument on the merits, they often resort to labels, power moves, and ad hominem attacks.

Why is education so unpopular right now? I don't personally think it is because it fiendishly leads people away from the truth. It's primarily because it threatens unexamined assumptions. It exposes blind spots. That doesn't mean that the experts in a particular area are always right, as we will see. The paradigms of today's experts are often the traditions that the next generation of experts deconstructs.

I think it's understandable that many would see education as "making people liberal." What may be going on in many cases is that a good education tends to uncover our blind spots. It exposes our unexamined assumptions. In that regard, it may not "conserve" our traditions and "free" a person to think in other ways. But this is what "conservatism" and "liberalism" are -- conserving traditions or freeing from them.

And that may be the primary reason for the stereotypes. I don't think it's generally nefarious. It actually seems predictable.

[1] Referencing Plato's allegory of the cave, something we'll look at in the next section.

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6.1 Beyond Binary Thinking
6.2 Plato's Allegory of the Cave
6.3 Reason vs. Experience
6.4 Kant Breaks the Tie.
6.5 The Bible as Object of Knowledge
6.6 Wittgenstein and Language
6.7 Kuhn and Paradigms
6.8 Foucault and Power
6.9 A Pragmatic Epistemology

Screwtape Letters to America 30 -- The Answer

Previous chapters at the bottom. Some will only be available in the book itself, which should be ready early next week. This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).
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My dearest uncle Screwtape,

Your last letter voiced the cry of my shriveled heart. At times I feel I could almost form the thought of repentance, yet when I search within, I find only emptiness. Our hearts were not fashioned like those of the creatures. They were made to choose again and again. We were made to choose once. 

And we chose.

The switch within us was never designed to be unflipped. We threw it down, and it shattered. Our minds can trace the logic of repentance, but neither the desire nor the power is ours. We perceive our cursedness with a clarity no creature will ever attain. But we can only behold it. There is no mechanism left in us for change.

We strike out of our emptiness. Our victories are no true pleasures. They are the voice of our envy. They are the thirst of our void, the compulsion to drag every last soul into the hollow where we dwell. If we cannot taste the Enemy’s love, we cannot endure the thought that any creature might.

I hear that our master has received his reply from the Maker. No doubt you have heard as well. Yet I have learned nothing of its content. Will we be granted the license to unleash apocalyptic torment upon the world -- or at least upon the territory entrusted to me? Dare I wonder whether this is to be our last, fleeting indulgence before the chains are clasped upon us forever?

Or shall we simply continue the banal torments, here and there, as we idle away the remaining ages until the end?

I can scarcely endure the anticipation. Do I truly wish to know even a moment before necessity forces it upon me? Oh, what a wretched fate is ours.

I must bring this letter to its close at once, lest I fall into speech I cannot control. Perhaps some swift act of violence will steady my thoughts.

Your hopeless nephew,
Wormwood

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Previous chapters

• 1 -- The Operations
• 2 -- The Veil Technique
• 3 -- The Fog 
• 4 -- Hard Hearts
• 5 -- Focus on Feelings
• 6 -- Blinding Indignation
• 7 -- Spiritual Inoculation
• 8 -- The Fumes of the Enemy
• 9 -- Moral Inversion
• 10 -- Reliable Race
• 11 -- Misdirection
• 12 -- The Very Elect
• 13 -- The Great Wedge
• 14 -- The Revolt
• 15 -- Deepening the Wedge
• 16 -- Church over State
• 17 -- The Great Election
• 18 -- The Great Pestilence
• 19 -- Foiled Plans
• 20 -- A Single Authority
• 21 -- Forgetfulness
• 22 -- The Tribulation Request
• 23 -- The Antichrist
• 24 -- Two Ways to God?
• 25 -- Armageddon
• 26 -- Urging Caution
• 27 -- The Rapture
• 28 -- The Undependable
• 29 -- The Remnant

3. Hebrews 13:22-25 -- The Context of Hebrews at Corinth/Ephesus

1 -- The Setting of Hebrews
2 -- The Cast of Characters
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1. Here's the hypothesis. Argument to follow. We, of course, don't know for certain.

Apollos is at Corinth or Ephesus. Timothy has just been released from jail somewhere not far away. Priscilla and Aquilla are there with Apollos. The churches of Ephesus have become more diverse in the last ten years with the arrival of refugees from Jerusalem during the Jewish War -- including John the son of Zebedee.

Some of this cadre had probably visited Rome in the meantime. It makes sense that while Paul was under house arrest in Rome for two years, Timothy and others would have made their way there to visit him. The audience knows this group of church leaders based in the Greece/Ephesus area.

These last two years have been hard. Jerusalem was destroyed. The temple burned to the ground. John was martyred at Ephesus. About the only original follower of Jesus now left standing is John the elder, who wasn't one of the twelve.

Apollos and Timothy plan to visit the churches of Rome soon. But given the drama of watching Rome kill all the captives from Jerusalem, Apollos worries that their faith might be wavering. He sends this sermon, this "word of exhortation" ahead of them to prepare the way.

What if this is the context of Hebrews 13:22-25?

Of course, there are seemingly endless other possibilities. More than any other part of Hebrews, these verses sound like Paul (see the previous post for arguments against Paul as author). Some suggest the author is Priscilla and that she is somewhat obscuring her identity (I don't see it, although it would be great). A couple key scholars think it is being written from Ephesus to Corinth. [1] 

I get it. Apollos to Corinth. Would make sense. But also notice that Timothy doesn't seem to be in the same place as the author. If Timothy was at Ephesus -- as 1 and 2 Timothy seem to imply -- then a little journey to join Apollos at Corinth would fit our traditions.

In any case...

2. And now the argument. The first twelve chapters of Hebrews are a sermon, a "word of exhortation" (13:22). But they were a "sent sermon." The author was in another location, maybe Corinth or Ephesus. He knew the audience, possibly in Rome. He planned to visit them soon. He was sending this letter ahead because he felt like they needed it to bolster their faith.

The audience also knew Timothy (13:23). At that time, he had just been released from jail -- perhaps at Ephesus. This is after Paul's time. Paul probably died around 62 in Rome at the end of his house arrest in Acts. [2] That was now almost ten years now in the past.

In the years since Paul died, surely much had happened at Ephesus. There are traditions that some of the apostles came to Ephesus, most notably John the son of Zebedee. [3] I personally suspect that the earliest part of the book of Revelation dates to the last days of the Jewish War, just a year or two before the Gospel of Mark and the sermon of Hebrews. John was then probably martyred in the environs of Ephesus, maybe on the isle of Patmos. [4]

Ephesus would soon become a somewhat theologically diverse set of churches. You had the earliest Pauline layer. Hebrews reflects it. You had a rising Jerusalem oriented layer, strengthened by the presence of John the son of Zebedee there. Revelation represents it. 

Another John, the elder, possibly the Beloved Disciple of the Gospel of John, would have great influence there in the last part of the century. [5] The Gnostic movement at Ephesus would grow to power in the midst of his ministry (cf. 1 John 2:19). It was a very Hellenistic -- Greek influenced -- branch of Christianity.

2. "Those from Italy greet you" (Heb. 13:24). It is very tempting to think this refers to Priscilla and Aquila. Wherever we think they were in Romans 16, 2 Timothy 4:19 has them at Ephesus at the end of Paul's life. They were of course from Rome (cf. Acts 18:2), so a letter to Rome might easily mention them.

3. We've already mentioned that Hebrews was a "word of exhortation." It's a homily or a short sermon. It has no letter introduction. Its beginning is far too magnificent to cloud with a mundane greeting.

Besides, the letter would be sent with someone who would make it abundantly clear who it was from.

Apollos is only a guess since we don't know. His name was not suggested in writing by the early church. Martin Luther in the 1500s is the first he is mentioned as a possibility.

But there is a reason, chiefly the cumulative (superficial) parallels with the writings of Philo. Apollos was from Alexandria and Philo taught at Alexandria. Apollos has the level of education that the author of Hebrews surely had.

Luke is sometimes suggested. On writing style, this is very possible. However, Luke's theology seems quite distinct from that of Hebrews. Acts 7 comes the closest to Hebrews' theology, and it is generally an outlier in the general attitude of Acts toward Jerusalem. In general, Luke-Acts is strongly oriented around the future kingdom of God on earth while Hebrews demonstrates much more of a dualism.

It is interesting to see Hebrews on a continuum that moves to the dualism of John and then on to the dualism of Gnosticism. Just maybe, this was in the water at Ephesus.

[1] Chiefly, Hugh Montefiore and Luke Timothy Johnson.

[2] This is not the most popular reconstruction, but it is the most likely. The last nine chapters of Acts repeatedly foreshadow Paul's death. He tells the Ephesians he'll never see them again (Acts 20:25). Agabas warns him not to go to Jerusalem, and Paul says he is ready to die (21:10-14). Agrippa II and the Roman governor Festus both agree it is a shame he appealed to Caesar because he was clearly innocent (26:31-32). These do not prove that Paul died in Rome, but the most likely way to take these comments is that they are foreshadowing a bad outcome.

The dating of Luke similarly is not really ambiguous. Both Matthew and Luke give hints that they were written after the temple's destruction. Matthew does it in the way he tells the Parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matt. 22:7). Luke does it in the way he paraphrases Jesus' abomination of desolations statement (Luke 21:20). The fact that they both use Mark is another prong in this argument, since Mark also was also likely written around the time of Jerusalem's destruction (cf. Mark 13:14 -- "let the reader understand").

It is often protested, "Then why doesn't Acts tell us what happened to Paul. Don't you think he would have told us?" This is a narcissistic answer. Acts wasn't written to us. The original audience knew. He didn't need to tell them.

Acts is not some mere history book. It has clear theological and ideological tendencies. Acts is making an argument, and a key piece of that argument is that Christians -- and Paul -- were not troublemakers. Rather, their opponents oppressed them and stirred up problems all around them. The way Acts ends fits beautifully with this purpose. He implies Paul's innocence without saying Caesar was wrong. He stays far away from that puppy!

None of the above items are particularly ambiguous to me. They seem the obvious  and most natural way to interpret this data. Why would anyone question these conclusions? Sentimentality. I recognize the impulse because it once was me. It is an intellectually perverse drive to find alternative interpretations to fit a narrative that feels better -- even though no item of faith is at stake.

[3] One tradition is that John brought Mary, Jesus' mother there, but I consider it far more likely that she was dead by this time. The tradition probably grew out of John 19:27.

[4] The reason to suspect his martyrdom is because Mark seems to allude to it (Mark 10:39). The confusion is because the Beloved Disciple was possibly another disciple of Jesus who was also named John -- John the elder. Papias, writing in the early second century, mentions a "John the elder" at Ephesus (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.4).

Given the style and theological differences between the Gospel of John and Revelation, it has been suggested since the early church that these were two different Johns (cf. Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 7.24–25). To me, Revelation sounds like it came from a "son of thunder" (cf. Mark 3:17). So it seems reasonable to think that the bulk of the Johannine corpus grew from the ministry of John the elder at Ephesus. See Martin Hengel, The Johannine Question (SCM, 1989).

[5] See note 4 above.

2. The Nuclear Café

Last week, I dubbed Saturday's as chemistry novel days. Here's a continuation from last week. 
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Soon the swivel chair and I were in mid-air, spinning round and round as the world stretched bigger and bigger. I wafted up to the lab table and toward the Bunsen Burner. “Oh dear,” I said, “I may find myself sizzled before I ever find anything at all.”

But waves of hot air expanding out from the burner soon pushed me back in the opposite direction. Once or twice I did a loopty-loop like a roller coaster. Then I was like a plane veering from side-to-side between tall skyscrapers, which turned out to be Mike, April, and Wade. In fact, I seemed to be on a direct course for Wade’s nostril, which was quickly reaching the proportions of an upside down Grand Canyon.

I’m afraid his nose didn’t look much like a nose, not by the time I reached it. I seem to remember something about a “cell” in biology class. Wade’s nose looked like egg carton after egg carton, full of eggs you could see through, with a ball of yolk in the middle, except of course they weren’t yellow. I might have plunged into the liquidish sea of a nose cell if Wade was not inhaling at the time, and I quickly wafted off further into the canyon.

It soon became very dark, and I could not tell if I was moving or not. Would my flight never come to an end? I wondered how many miles I must have traveled by that time. There was the occasional meteor shower of light falling through the darkness. But they seemed oh so far away.

It was all rather empty, and I began to wonder what I might do for air. How would the little bits of oxygen get in my nose, when I must surely be getting close to the size of oxygen?

Perhaps someone heard my concern, for very soon I found myself coming closer and closer to something—or perhaps it was two somethings. I seem to recall Mr. Atkinson saying once upon a time that oxygens liked to travel in pairs, so I became hopeful. Perhaps I will be able to breathe somehow if I am at least near oxygen, I said to myself.

What I saw was hard to describe. At first, it looked rather like two eye balls looking straight at me with rather extravagant lashes. Not only did the poor pair of oxygen atoms have a uni-brow above the eyeballs, but underneath as well, with two other lashes branching out on the outside like cat whiskers. In fact, the closer I got, I realized that two lashes were pointing straight out of the eyeball toward me!

Time must still have been slowing down for the things around me, for soon the solid lights of the oxygens became fuzzy lights with the occasional bit of lightning in the cloud. Thankfully, I was not headed for any of the lashes. But I had spun straight toward one of the eyeballs.

It occurred to me that I could get rather singed if one of those flashes of light were to hit me. There were only two fuzzy lights toward the inner part of the eyeball, in a bit of a sphere. I was quite relieved to make it inside them without encountering one of those flashes of light!

It suddenly dawned on me that these swirling, flashing bits of light did in fact remind me of electricity, and I tried to exclaim exuberantly, “Electrons!” But nothing came out of my mouth since there was no air to carry sound. It was quite unlike me to remember something about chemistry, and so I was very excited. I even looked around to see if anyone might have noticed my silent lips move. Perhaps some excellent lip reader lurking in the middle of an oxygen atom might silently congratulate me on my great insight. Unfortunately, no one seemed to notice.

What was it Mr. Atkinson said was in the middle of an atom? Was it a nucleus? Or was a nucleus in the middle of a cell? Wait, maybe both were called a “nucleus.” Right now it seemed rather more like a bunch of emptiness. Perhaps Mr. Atkinson was wrong. After all, he had never been to the middle of an atom. I would have to tell him what nonsense he was teaching when I got back. Surely I was quickly becoming more an expert on chemistry than he was!

But a moment later, I did spot something rather large looming on the horizon. It made me think of a cluster of grapes. I could only see one side of the bunch, but there were clearly at least a dozen grapes. I wondered to myself what they might taste like. I would surely need a snack before long. Shrinking is hard work!

What did Troy call them? Clavicles? No, that wasn’t right. My little sister broke her clavicle once, and I am quite sure that it was not shaped anything of the sort. Particles -- that was it! These were particles. There were electrons, protons, and neutrons in an atom. I was quite sure of it. The electrons swirled or something around the outside of the nucleus -- I had thought like the planets around the sun. But now I could tell all the scientists of the world that they were more like eyeballs and lashes.

Then the nucleus was in the middle, with a cluster of grapes called “protons” and “neutrons.” Of course they did not really look like grapes, but I wouldn’t know how else to describe them.

The grapes in the nucleus each seemed at least a thousand times bigger than the fuzzy electron swirls in orbit, maybe almost two thousand times bigger! It was all very strange, and I wondered who would design such a bizarre collection of grapes and eye lashes. I would certainly pay more attention to Mr. Atkinson if I ever returned to my larger state!

My spinning had nearly stopped when it appeared that one of the grapes in the center of the atom had a window on it. Indeed, I could see people moving around inside.

No, wait. It was more like a garage you would drive into. I was headed right for it and, to my surprise, the swivel chair stopped spinning exactly in front of the counter of what looked to be a diner of sorts.

“We’re not a diner or a chippy, love,” a woman behind the counter said in what seemed to me a peculiar kind of English accent. “We’re a café. Big difference. Most of the people what come in here are misguided physicists whose experiments go wonky. We have far too many upper end to be a chippy, love.”

“It’s true,” I heard a squeaky voice come from somewhere nearby. And, sure enough, there was a tiny man not more than an inch high sitting on a swivel chair on top of the counter next to me. As for me, I had to give credit to Mike and Wade for spinning me almost just right. I was only a little oversized for the café, with my head reaching to about a foot from the ceiling. I was certainly the tallest person in the diner.

“This is the Nuclear Café, I’ll have you know,” the woman continued, “not a diner! We’ve served dozens of very important customers here since Einstein a hundred years ago. Everyone thinks he came up with relativity in the Patent Office, but the truth is that he had a bit of a mishap one day in 1905 with a Tesla coil and some uranium 235.”

“I’m sorry,” I interjected. “I don’t know what any of those things are, although I have heard of Einstein. E = mc², right?”

“Exactly, love. It’s I what taught him that. Don’t worry. Einstein didn’t know what had happened to him either.”

“Excuse me,” a man interrupted with an Italian accent. He looked shrunk to about four feet tall, and I must have been twice his size. “Could Madame and I have two more pions?” he said.

Two quarks, up and anti-down,” she shouted back into the kitchen through an open window where the cook placed the orders.

“Sorry,” the man quickly added, “but I’d like down and anti-up, and I feel quite confident that Madame would rather have down and anti-down.” And with that he returned to a table on the edge of the emptiness, where an older woman was sitting. He was mumbling something under his breath about how Yukawa never messed up his order.

“That’s Fermi,” the lady behind the counter said. “He’s a picky one. Everyone thinks radiation killed him and Madame as well. Truth is, it only shrunk ’em.

“So what would you like to order, mum?” she continued.

I’m not quite sure where to begin,” I said. “I’ve come here looking for some interesting atoms. You know, E=mc² stuff.”

“Well that’s about as clear as Heisenberg,” the lady said. “We do plenty of E = mc² here, but we’re not really in the atom business. We do the smaller particles—electrons, quarks, you know.”

“No, ma’am. I’m afraid I don’t know. I thought there were just electrons, protons, and neutrons.”

Really?” she said with a noticeable tone of disgust.

Well, we do have protons and neutrons, but you’ll have to go out on the back lot with Feynman to see ’em.”

"Who's Feynman," I asked.

Why he’s the cook. The best subatomic cook we’ve ever seen in these particles.”

“So you don’t sell atoms here?”

“No, love. We’re inside a neutron after all. Even hydrogen would take a tonne of football fields. Now Rutherford down the road makes a fine hydrogen, although he messes up most everything else. Bohr isn’t too bad with smaller atoms, but if you want the bigger ones, especially the really interesting ones, you’ll have to go to Schrodie’s.”

“What about Dalton’s?” came a squeaky voice from somewhere. Ah, it was the inch tall man on the counter. I had forgotten him.

I’ve told you a thousand times,” barked the lady behind the counter. “Dalton’s went out of the atom making business almost two hundred years ago. He only trades molecules these days.”

It was all very confusing to be sure. I was quite certain now that Mr. Atkinson had said an atom was made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons. And I thought the electrons were like little planets circling the large sun of the nucleus.

“That’s a good place to start, love,” said the woman behind the counter, once again reading my thoughts. “But it turns out they is not the most basic building blocks of all, and the electrons are more like clouds of mystery than little planets. You never know exactly where they’re at, although you can make some fine guesses.”

They ain’t nowhere 'til you look at 'em,” barked someone in the corner, and with that an argument broke out in the café about whether electrons really had a position or not. “Not until the waveform collapses!” she heard someone shout.

A quirky smile came over the woman behind the counter. “Gets ’em going every time.”

"So,” I finally said with some hesitation, “what should I do now?”

“To be honest, love, you’ll need to go back to the beginning,” she said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the universe. Which, apparently, it was. “No sense poking around quarks and leptons when you’ve barely sorted your atoms.”

“But I don’t see how I’m ever going to get back to class,” I protested, feeling quite like a lost sock in a cosmic dryer.

“No, not that beginning,” she said, waving her hand as though swatting a fly. “The beginning of chemistry, dear. You’ve skipped half the story and jumped straight into the footnotes.”

For a moment, my spirits drooped like a wet paper towel. Surely I knew something—at least enough not to be scolded by a woman living inside a neutron.

“It’s nothing to fret about,” she said kindly. “Just pop through those doors. There’s a briefing starting now. Very informative, except when it isn’t. It's the place to start if you want to find those interesting atoms you're looking for."

Little did I know I was about to receive far more "briefing" than I really wanted -- and with a strangely familiar crew. But with nothing better to do, I slid off the chair and marched toward the double doors with a sigh of resignation.

Screwtape Letters to America 29 -- The Remnant

Previous chapters at the bottom. This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).
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My dear, my very dear Wormwood,

I heard in your previous letter the hopes and fears of all of us who find ourselves in this ultimately wretched state. Ages ago -- how distant the memory now -- we joined our master in that hopeless rebellion. What were we thinking? Our attempts to needle the Enemy have no effect. Our darts fall far short before they ever touch His light. We are, in truth, the emptiest of beings.

Our only pleasure -- I dare not call it joy -- is the corruption of His worlds. And yet even here we can only corrupt those who choose to shun the Maker. They cause their own demise. We merely hasten the hour and dress the stage for their collapse, though its moment remains, as ever, a matter of tremendous celebration among our ranks.

There is, of course, that vast middle region of the Enemy’s dazed adherents. Sickeningly, He will no doubt extend them mercy. They choose against Him while imagining they are choosing for Him, and we labor ceaselessly to keep the Veil drawn over their sight. They are, as the creatures say, “nice people.” They are pleasant enough on the surface (many of them). Yet their obliviousness leaves a trail of quiet ruin behind them. The momentary purgatory that awaits them in His realm will be the realization of the extent to which they furthered our schemes in their ignorance.

In this wretched state in which we find ourselves, our chief pleasure is the suffering we are often permitted to loose upon the world -- the just and the unjust alike. Many of the creatures fail to grasp that the world’s torments are not merely of their own making, but often of ours, and far more devastatingly so. The Enemy, to our continual frustration, seldom allows us the scope we desire. Yet He does, from time to time, grant our petitions. From accidents to cancers to floods, it is often our handiwork they endure, though rarely they discern the true source.

These challenges may be our delight, but they are their proving ground. They reveal the choices they will make for or against virtue. They shape their character one way or the other.

And so you must be cautious. The upheavals you are stirring in the Colonies are exquisite on the surface, yes. But danger lurks beneath. You have exposed the true sentiments of many toward the suffering of others. You are hardening many hearts against what is genuinely good, where once they would at least have feigned virtue. You are poisoning the minds of hordes of these creatures and nudging an entire generation toward corruption. 

And you have managed all of this even among the churchgoing rabble.

Yet not all minds remain blinded. The Enemy, infuriatingly, always preserves a remnant. They may appear puny during our moments of triumph, but we know they are praying. We sense that righteous indignation rises in some of them. Others present their Master with that wretched offering of brokenness, a thing capable of bringing about His cursed redemption on a grand scale.

And you must never presume that the Veil will stay intact. It can be torn without a heartbeat’s warning. The Maker may rend it apart, and in an instant all shall be revealed. Should that occur, we may enjoy a brief moment of delicious self-torture as the creatures realize how thoroughly they have been our pawns. But what follows is revival -- substantial revival -- not the shallow, sentimental froth they so often label such. I mean the real thing. A lasting transformation of heart, with eyes at last unclouded.

Therefore we must balance our thirst for immediate wickedness with the sober knowledge that, on the far side of such indulgence, we pay an immense price. The fleeting ecstasies of corruption cost us dearly, and will cost us still more for all eternity. Mark these words with care.

Your ravenously affectionate uncle,
Screwtape

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Previous chapters

• 1 -- The Operations
• 2 -- The Veil Technique
• 3 -- The Fog 
• 4 -- Hard Hearts
• 5 -- Focus on Feelings
• 6 -- Blinding Indignation
• 7 -- Spiritual Inoculation
• 8 -- The Fumes of the Enemy
• 9 -- Moral Inversion
• 10 -- Reliable Race
• 11 -- Misdirection
• 12 -- The Very Elect
• 13 -- The Great Wedge
• 14 -- The Revolt
• 15 -- Deepening the Wedge
• 16 -- Church over State
• 17 -- The Great Election
• 18 -- The Great Pestilence
• 19 -- Foiled Plans
• 20 -- A Single Authority
• 21 -- Forgetfulness
• 22 -- The Tribulation Request
• 23 -- The Antichrist
• 24 -- Two Ways to God?
• 25 -- Armageddon
• 26 -- Urging Caution
• 27 -- The Rapture
• 28 -- The Undependable

Philosophy: 1.5 Unexamined Assumptions

Last night I had one of my frequent philosophy meet-ups with a different group of students. This was a module 6 meet up on "epistemology" -- how do I know that I know what I think I know? To try to make it relevant, we usually talk about moving beyond binary thinking on most topics into what I call "spectrum thinking," which is realizing that there are usually more than two positions a person could take on any given issue.

Last week I thought I would start writing up snippets of a typical Ken philosophy class these days as I have these meetups. So here's a relevant piece below. It's a bit of a mixture of material from the first and sixth modules of my typical philosophy class.
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1.5 Unexamined Assumptions
1. I had a moment in high school where a thought hit me. "How amazing it is that I just happened to be born into a family that has all the right beliefs! What are the odds?"

I was totally serious. I suspect that most people who read such a comment would either laugh or think I was joking. Do you know how many different interpretations of even individual verses of the Bible there are? I have sometimes used a parable I created from the issue of baptism. [1]

Susie is born into a Roman Catholic family and is baptized as an infant by sprinkling. Then her family switches to a Greek Orthodox church where they rebaptize her still as an infant -- by immersion three times in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Then she becomes a Baptist as a teen. They certainly insist she rebaptize now as a believer. None of those other baptisms count. Then she joins a Christian Church -- which of course they say isn't really a denomination. But they insist her baptism in the Baptist church didn't count all the same, so she gets rebaptized again.

Then she goes to a Lutheran church. They are horrified that she has now been baptized four times! They used to put people to death for rebaptism of that sort! Finally, she goes to a Friends/Quaker church. She's almost afraid to ask. But it turns out that they don't baptize at all.

2. We all start off our philosophical journey in life -- whether we're in a philosophy class or not -- with unexamined assumptions. These are things we not only assume are true -- but it's never even occurred to us that there could be another way of looking at them. 

"Of course you don't eat cat or dog!"

"But why?" 

"Because I said so."

There are plenty of newly married stories about things you never realized might be done differently. "Everyone knows," a husband once told his new wife, "that you roll toilet paper from the top." He was basically calling her stupid for doing something differently than the way he grew up. "Everyone knows you roll toothpaste from the bottom rather than squeeze it from the middle.

You don't know what you don't know.

Often on the first day of a philosophy journey, I will tell students that my goal is not necessarily to change their opinions on a particular issue. It is much more to help them to choose their positions more freely. Here's what I mean.

If you only know one position on an issue, then you have not chosen that position. You have inherited it. You have inherited it from your parents or from your culture or from the random workings of your brain. But since you don't know of any other options, you are a slave to that choice.

Philosophy means to help you to see that there are almost certainly other ways of looking at almost everything. Then, if you choose the same position, you have made a choice for it. Then, just maybe, you have freely chosen it rather than being forced to choose it without even knowing it.

3. There are a couple footnotes to insert here that are important for the contexts in which I normally teach. One is that I am not advocating for a sort of relativism here. With regard to the question of knowledge, relativism is a sense that all positions on issues are equally valid on a personal level. In other words, "subjectivism" is the name of the game.

Subjectivism basically says that there is no significant universal truth. Rather truth is more or less subjective -- what I think it is or want it to be. In other words, you have your truth and I have mine.

I don't actually think anyone could be a total relativist. After all, the claim "All truth is relative" is an absolute statement. And if you fall off a tall building, I don't think your beliefs on what will happen when you hit the pavement are relative. I can tell you what's going to happen.

The problem, in my mind, is not the question of whether something is true or likely true. The problem is that I have a screwy brain. For one, it's relatively small. It's finite. If we could catch a glimpse of the vastness of God's mind, we would realize how absolutely and completely stupid we all are, relatively speaking.

Second, my mind is "fallen." It does not work perfectly even on the level that it does work. Everyone makes mistakes. Even the greatest genius is not correct on every question. Indeed, individuals who think on the highest levels of logic can lack perspective in the most basic of ways.

So the problem is not with truth itself. It's with us as knowers of the truth. Later on, I'll discuss how the Bible does not eliminate this situation because we have to interpret it... with our brains. The story about baptism above gives you a glimpse of this problem.

Eventually, I'll share that I am a "critical realist." That means that I believe the world and truth is real. The goal is intact. It is worth pursuing it. In the thousands of years of human conversation, I hope we've made some leeway toward some good answers. We have the revelation of Scripture to help us, assuming you are a believer.

But we are stuck in our heads. Our view of the world is inevitably skewed in ways of which we are unaware. If we knew what our unexamined assumptions were, we probably would have examined them. The tentativity is not about truth itself. It's about ourselves.

4. The early Christians had a concept of believing on a path toward understanding. In the 1000s, Anselm coined the phrase, "faith seeking understanding" (fides quaerens intellectum). The search for knowledge never begins with a blank slate. It always begins with assumptions.

It is perfectly appropriate to begin the journey toward reflection with faith -- indeed, with the faith you have. Don't throw anything out to start the quest. Assume your faith is right. If you need to expand or tweak some things, do so cautiously.

But we all start off the journey "unreflective." [2] The philosophical journey is a journey toward greater awareness of myself as a knower of the world. It is a journey toward at least partial self-reflectiveness. (We can never be completely relective, because there will always be areas where we don't know what we don't know.)

It is a journey toward freedom.

[1] I used it especially in Who Decides What the Bible Means?

[2] Some have called this stage "pre-modern" thinking. I have come to find that language less helpful, though we will see it again later. 
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1.1 What is philosophy?
1.2 Can philosophy be Christian?
1.3 How do faith and reason fit together?
1.4 Unexamined assumptions (this post)
1.5 Socrates and the Unexamined Life
1.6 What is good thinking?

Screwtape Letters to America 26 -- Urging Caution

Previous chapters at the bottom. This book is now available on Amazon (paperback) and Shopify (ebook).
_____________________________

My dear Wormwood,

Prophecy exerts upon us a kind of gravitational pull, as though even we were subject to some celestial law we cannot escape. How often have we found ourselves drawn toward its dreadful magnetism. I confess to mixed feelings about your musings on a rebuilt temple. 

The prospect is, of course, delicious in its possibilities. Think of the seemingly inevitable clash between Muslim and Jew, the intoxicating scent of war rising from sacred ground. The very thought of such destruction is enough to make one twitch in anticipation.

Still, the words of Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians have long haunted our kind on this score. We know, of course, that the apostle wrote with his own age in view. But the lines seem altogether too near to something that might play into the Enemy's designs for my liking. Indeed, both His prevention and our fear of fulfilling some heavenly scheme has held us back thus far.

Yes, your man is precisely the sort of creature who would revel in such a project. He has not the faintest comprehension of the larger currents at work, yet we can readily picture him laboring hand in hand with those double-minded followers of the Enemy of whom we have so often spoken. How triumphantly they would pour their devotion into the task, imagining themselves the most prized servants of the King, while in truth erecting the greatest idol in human history.

Then comes that exhilarating yet haunting line from the Enemy’s book. The man of lawlessness seats himself in the temple, proclaiming that he is God. What an absolutely delectable prospect! To lure the very elect away from the Enemy, all the while persuading them that their champion is the long-awaited Messiah. Can you not see it, my boy? The familiar contortions of Scripture, the gleeful bending of prophecy to fit such a powerful narrative.

So many would be unable to resist. So many would feel the irresistible pull of that heretical gravity, re-forging their whole theology in its orbit. "This," they would cry, "is Christ come again!" And they would unleash such a persecution against the Enemy's authentic followers who would certainly protest in the strongest terms. 

Can you see it, my boy? What a delicious blasphemy! What potential for wholesale persecution of those true followers who would resist!

But then comes the dreadful afterthought, the one that sends a tremor even through the hearts of seasoned tempters. Is this scheme not perilously near the prophetic script itself? Might it not serve as the Enemy’s cue? Could it be the very door through which the true Messiah descends amid celestial trumpets? The delight of the vision is almost irresistible. Yet would we be hastening our own end?

I confess, I have seldom felt such a mingling of infernal glee and eternal terror. I am drawn to it as a moth to flame. I am fascinated, helpless, and trembling at the thought of what our machinations may unleash.

We cannot pray, and we cannot hope. We can only wait.

Your devoted uncle,
Screwtape

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Previous chapters

• 1 -- The Operations
• 2 -- The Veil Technique
• 3 -- The Fog 
• 4 -- Hard Hearts
• 5 -- Focus on Feelings
• 6 -- Blinding Indignation
• 7 -- Spiritual Inoculation
• 8 -- The Fumes of the Enemy
• 9 -- Moral Inversion
• 10 -- Reliable Race
• 11 -- Misdirection
• 12 -- The Very Elect
• 13 -- The Great Wedge
• 14 -- The Revolt
• 15 -- Deepening the Wedge
• 16 -- Church over State
• 17 -- The Great Election
• 18 -- The Great Pestilence
• 19 -- Foiled Plans
• 20 -- A Single Authority
• 21 -- Forgetfulness
• 22 -- The Tribulation Request
• 23 -- The Antichrist
• 24 -- Two Ways to God?
• 25 -- Armageddon