What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
The Trinity is one of those doctrines that Christians get out when they need to deal with Jehovah’s Witnesses, but they don’t pay much attention to elsewhere. It’s a shame because the Trinity is a birthright of Christians. It is a teaching that can change everything for us if we let it.
While Jehovah’s Witnesses will say it is a late development, it is all over the pages of the New Testament. One such place is in Romans. Paul moves back and forth from the Father to the Son to the Holy Spirit. Does a Trinitarian understanding help us in any way here? What difference does it make?
To discuss this, I have brought on a friend of mine who got in touch with me who recently wrote a book on this topic. He is a New Testament scholar and very well informed and also known as the Greek Geek. I can also assure listeners that if for some reason we cannot do the show, it will indeed be his fault. (Inside joke for those who understand it.) His name is Ron C. Fay.
So who is he?
According to his bio:
Ron C. Fay did his undergraduate work at Calvin College (now Calvin University), where he majored in Physics/Math and Classical Greek. He earned his M Div and PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), where he was the New Testament Department Scholar. He has taught at both TEDS and Liberty University, at the School of Divinity, as part of the New Testament faculty. He has taught from Junior High to doctoral level courses. He spent 7 years in the pastorate as well. He currently teaches for both Liberty and the Stony Brook School. He has published on Paul, Greco-Roman Backgrounds, John, and Luke-Acts and is coediting the series Milstones in New Testament Scholarship with Stanley E. Porter. His book Father, Son, and Spirit in Romans 8: The Roman Reception of Paul’s Trinitarian Theology was just released.
Romans is a great treasure for Christians and we will be diving into it. Prepare yourself to see the Trinity in the book through new eyes. We have also recently uploaded several episodes and are catching up on others so hopefully, we will be up to date soon.
What do I think of Clay Jones’s book published by Harvest House? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Most of us growing up have some idea that somehow we are going to live forever. I sometimes wonder if that could be what is behind our big obsession with our generation has to be the one Jesus will return in. It’s natural to long for that, but could it also be that if He returns, we get to avoid that death thing?
In this book, Clay Jones shows us how the fear of death drives everything. As I write this, our country is experiencing a pandemic that has kept people in the grip of fear in a way I have never seen in my lifetime. People seem to be constantly afraid they will either get the disease or give it to someone else.
So Jones takes us through a number of sections in this book. He writes about how people are in a desperate bind to learn how to live forever. It could be through virtual uploading to a computer or freezing your body through cryogenics. Either way, so many people want to do all they can to avoid death. It’s irony that so many that come up with health systems to avoid death wind up dying at what can be considered a younger age than expected despite this.
Well, if those don’t work, what about symbolic immortality? One of the biggest ways we often try to do this is to have kids. Surely that will make us live forever symbolically? Not really. Most of us don’t know much about our great-great-great-grandparents. For mine, I couldn’t even tell you their names.
We can also try to do a great work like a book or art or get a building built in our name. In some way, we want our legacy to live on. Sadly, another way many people try to do this is through evil. Commit a great evil and all of a sudden people know who you are. This is one reason I don’t favor giving the names of mass shooters out when they happen. It just gives them more of something they want.
If the fear of death is driving us though, how do we cope with it? We often turn to pleasure and amusement or even just sad acceptance in depression. We can get addicted to sex and to drugs and alcohol. We can even go the route of suicide. Wait. How is it that suicide deals with our fear of death? Because if death is coming and it’s inevitable, might as well go ahead and get it done with. Right? (Please do not go this route. Call the suicide hotline if you or someone you know is considering this. 1-800-273-8255. Your life is worth living.)
Jones then follows this up by first giving a brief case for the resurrection of Jesus. From there, he goes on to talk about our future life in Heaven which is something Christians do not think about enough. It has been said some Christians are so Heavenly minded that they’re no Earthly good. It is just the opposite. Too many Christians are so Earthly minded that they’re no Heavenly good. If we focus on eternity and what it will be like, then we are more prone to take things seriously here.
I remember when I was engaged to Allie and I had the realization come in of what was going to happen to me soon in marrying and the Scripture of “As Christ loved the church.” That was what I was called to do. I was called to love my wife that way. That was scary. Someday when I stand before God, the first questions will not be about Deeper Waters or my ministry. I suspect one of the first questions will be “How did you treat your wife?”
I have said before to guys, and women can alter it for themselves, that I don’t care if you have a worldwide ministry. I don’t care if atheists are scared to confront you. I don’t care if you win every debate. I don’t care if your books are all best-sellers. If you are not a husband to your wife and a father to your children, I count you a failure in ministry. I stand by that.
If there’s anything I would alter in Jones’s book, it would be how we are to live life now exactly. Jones wants us to be focused on Heavenly things, but rightly says he takes time for joys of this world too like going to superhero movies, prime rib apparently, and indicates he wouldn’t mind recreating his honeymoon. (And who can blame him guys. Am I right?) I would like to know how this is done. Do I need to feel guilty if I start to play a game in my private time? I would like to see more on this.
At any rate, this book is an important one to read. Death drives us more than we realize and this will make you think more seriously about your mortality and what you are doing with your life. This is only the second book I have seen from Clay Jones, and yet both of them I consider important reads.
What difference does it make where God is? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
When we pray, we pray to our Father in Heaven. What difference does that make? What is Jesus wanting us to think about when we say that we pray to our Father who is in Heaven?
Let’s start with the dangerous extreme. That would be Islam. Most sects of Islam have a version of deity that is so extreme that God is totally transcendent. The thought of Him interacting in a way such as in the incarnation is repugnant.
This is something we experience when God seems distant in our lives. Consider the idea of the saying that, “If you feel far from God, who moved?” It sure wasn’t God after all. That message could have been brought by one of Job’s friends to “counsel” him.
Of course, in suffering there is nothing wrong with examining our lives and seeing if there is anything we need to repent of. That’s something that we should be doing regardless. The point here is that our emotional experiences are not indicators of where we are in our Christian walk and too often, we make them just that.
So if that’s not what is meant, what is meant? Why not think that Jesus is trying to remind us who is in charge of this story? Heaven is the base of operations. It is where God reigns from. To pray to God is to remind yourself that He is in charge and He rules.
This is something we easily forget. Too many people think that if God is ruling right now, why is there so much evil and suffering? As we go through Matthew and look more at eschatology, we will see that that is issued directly. This is also a mistake Jewish readers often go with thinking that if the Messiah came, then shouldn’t there be love and world peace throughout the Earth as a result?
No. If anything, in Scripture we see just the opposite promised. YHWH says in Psalms 110:1 that the Messiah is to sit at His right hand while His enemies are made a footstool for His feet. The Messiah will have enemies during His reign and it will take time for them to be made a footstool.
Today, saying our Father in Heaven is meant to be a source of comfort. Whatever is going on, God is in charge. That He asks us to pray to Him tells us that He is not distant. He really cares about us. Not only that, we have the incarnation where the Son dwelt among us. God in human flesh walked around us and one day we will be with Him forever.
When you pray, pray to your Father who is in Heaven. He does hear. He does care. He will respond.
What does the start of the Lord’s Prayer mean? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
I’ve blogged before on the Lord’s prayer and it’s always interesting. Going through the Sermon on the Mount, this one cannot be missed. So let’s take another in-depth look at the Lord’s prayer.
Jesus starts off by telling us how we should pray. The prayer starts off with an address. The proper recipient is our Father. Okay. That sounds pretty basic. You start the prayer and you are talking to God.
Sounds basic, but it really isn’t.
Notice that Jesus at the start immediately assumes a communal activity. His followers were to come together and pray to God together. This is not to say that individual prayer can never happen. It is most certainly can. It is to say that Christianity is not meant to be experienced as an individual event.
Too often we have what is today Lone Ranger Christianity. Me and Jesus can just figure everything out today. I always go back to this story. It was a lady in a small group I was in once who said “I’m saved. My children are saved. Just sit back and wait for Jesus to come.” What an awful thought! How do you know your children will stay in the faith? What about other people and their children?
The community aspect is one thing, but there’s more. The community is to address God as Father. This is not some out there and distant deity. This is one who asks us to approach Him as if He is a parent. Jesus regularly makes this kind of analogy in the sermon and elsewhere.
This is also why Hebrews tells us to boldly approach the throne of grace. If you are the son or the daughter of the king, you ought not be afraid to approach the king. You belong there. You have been invited. You are a child of the king. Live like one.
Epictetus was a pagan philosopher who lived not too long after Christ. In his Golden Sayings, I find saying IX impressive. Change the language to a Christian language and see how it applies.
“If a man could be thoroughly penetrated, as he ought, with this thought, that we are all in an especial manner sprung from God, and that God is the Father of men as well as of Gods, full surely he would never conceive aught ignoble or base of himself. Whereas if Caesar were to adopt you, your haughty looks would be intolerable; will you not be elated at knowing that you are the son of God? Now however it is not so with us: but seeing that in our birth these two things are commingled–the body which we share with the animals, and the Reason and Thought which we share with the Gods, many decline towards this unhappy kinship with the dead, few rise to the blessed kinship with the Divine. Since then every one must deal with each thing according to the view which he forms about it, those few who hold that they are born for fidelity, modesty, and unerring sureness in dealing with the things of sense, never conceive aught base or ignoble of themselves: but the multitude the contrary. Why, what am I?–A wretched human creature; with this miserable flesh of mine. Miserable indeed! but you have something better than that paltry flesh of yours. Why then cling to the one, and neglect the other?
How much better could we see ourselves if we realized that we are adopted into the family. Remember Mephibosheth in the Old Testament? He was invited to feast at the King’s table, something the account says three times. Augustus Caesar was the most powerful man on Earth at one time, and got that way by adoption.
When we pray our Father, we are to realize that we are adopted into a royal family and we have that privilege. It is not just us individually, but us as a community. We all have the Father together and we can all come together as His children.
What are some things to avoid in prayer? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Sometimes, I hate public prayer at a church service. I say this as someone who has to do it as well. You never really feel genuine doing it. You know people are watching you to see what you have to say. It’s awkard.
Then there are the people who do these public prayers and they go on and on and on. You can say they’re real men of Jesus, but most of us just find them annoying. I find it interesting that the Lord’s prayer can really be said in under a minute. When the closing prayer starts to go longer than the sermon itself, we have a problem.
Jesus had a few statements about things like this. He never said to not pray in public as He sometimes did this as well, but He did say to watch your motives again. Some people do make a show of public prayers. They pray showing off their eloquence and their devotion to God, which if that is what you’re doing, we can call your devotion into question. Let’s look at verses 5-8 of Matthew 6.
5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
One of the rules for giving a sermon is to KISS. It has two meanings. “Keep it simple, stupid” and “Keep it short, stupid.” Prayer is done to talk to God. It’s not done to show others how awesome you are.
This is why also your devotion is not meant to be measured necessarily by how long you pray. I know some people who are true prayer warriors and they can pray for a long time. I’m not one of them. I know I need to work on that. Those like me need to start simple as well. Don’t say you’re going to build up prayer and then say you’re going to start with an hour a day. You’ll burn out and give up. If anything, start small. Maybe 3-5 minutes even.
Jesus also tells us our Father knows what we need before we ask. If so, why do we ask? We ask not to make something known, but to show that we are realizing our trust and dependence.
One of the problems I have with many prayer studies is they treat prayer as if the only goal is to get something. It also treats God as if He is obligated to answer a prayer. Many of us were devoutly praying for the healing of Nabeel Qureshi. It never came. Does that prove God doesn’t exist or that God doesn’t or didn’t love Nabeel? Not at all. It just shows for whatever reason we don’t understand, God chose not to heal.
It’s also too easy for prayer to become just a wish list. There’s not enough time spent in thanksgiving and adoration. I remember J.P. Moreland once saying he thinks in a worship service, the music should come after the sermon. Why? Because then we have heard the Scripture and the good news and we are giving thanks and celebrating about what we have heard.
Yet keep in mind, Jesus still points us to the reward. Our true reward is from our Father in heaven. It’s not in the praise and adoration of men. It’s in the approval of our Father. That is the praise we are to have.
Prayer is something important and we need to work on it, but one of the first things to do is to learn what not to do.
How should we give? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
In Jesus’s day, people wanted to get honor. To some extent, we all want this today, but honor is not the driving force that it used to be. In some ways, I think it is, but we don’t recognize it. If you’re on social media, you want your posts to have likes and shares. You want to have followers on Twitter. You want subscribers and views on YouTube. High school can often just be a big popularity contest and truly, high school never ends.
Jesus talks about the proper method of giving though.
2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Something that can irk me is when a company makes an advertisement and in the advertisement, they talk about how much they are giving to help something, which has been something common during this pandemic. Even more bothersome to me is when the giving is used to encourage people to get the product. “If you give to us, we will donate so much to charity.”
It’s worth pointing out though that Jesus doesn’t condemn giving for the sake of honor. However, He points us to the true honor. It is the honor of the Father that we are seeking. God sees what we do in secret and He will reward us for what we do. We often think that seeking something for yourself is bad. It’s not. It’s how and why. Jesus tells us to seek the honor that comes from God.
This isn’t to say that your giving can never be shown publicly. It can be. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. However, the goal of our giving should not be so people will just think how awesome we are. It should be for the kingdom of God and the good of the other person.
In Jesus’s day, the Pharisees would publicly proclaim when they were given. They did get their reward in full right there. They got the praise of people around them. Jesus wants us to seek the higher praise. This is the praise of God. The praise of people is temporary and will fade. The praise of God lasts forever.
And really, that’s something we need to keep in mind. We focus so much on temporary things and lose sight of eternal things. We will be around God forever and forever experience how we dealt with Him. If we lived our lives in love of Him, we will live our eternity that way. If we lived lives of hating Him, we will live forever that way too. Each of us is building an eternal dwelling in some sense and when we get to eternity, we will have the dwelling we built.
Do we have a problem often with seeing how God works? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
I play Question of the Day everyday on my Tap. Today, there was a question about Hippocrates. After the question, there’s a brief discussion giving the player more information about the question.
One thing said was that Hippocrates tried to look for natural causes of disease and natural treatments. Those were usually attributed to the divine and the work of the gods. Hippocrates was a dissenter in this and became the father of medicine.
Whether that is true or not, I cannot say, but it occurred to me that too often we have an idea on how God works and think that if God works, He must work in such and such a way. It is either God does a direct miracle or God has no involvement at all. Thus, if someone gets sick, if we find a “natural” explanation, then God wasn’t involved.
Dan Barker told a story of driving with someone once, I think a brother, who was trying to convince him of God’s existence and he pointed to the mountains and the wonder of the mountains and said, “Doesn’t that show you the wonder of God?” This is a very valid argument. I suspect many people are skeptical of atheistic theories because of the beauty and grandeur of the universe.
Barker goes on to talk some about plate tectonics and how that produces mountains. His brother just gives an angry response. The problem was that Barker still did not really refute his brother. His brother was thinking it had to be a pure fiat creation. Barker was saying “If I find a natural explanation, then that proves God isn’t needed.” Both are wrong.
To be sure, this doesn’t mean that God exists and it doesn’t mean that He doesn’t. It means this is a poor argument. If God is real, why does He have to work through a means of fiat creation? Could God not work through a natural process and use that to create mountains?
This happens often in debates about creation and evolution. Many Christians think if God created everything, He had to do it through a fiat process. Many atheists meanwhile think that if a naturalistic process can be found for bringing about living organisms, then God is out of a job. Both of them are doing God of the gaps thinking. It could be God exists and created fiat. It could be God does not exist and evolution brought living organisms about. It could be that God exists and created through evolution.
Another example is something like the parting of the Red Sea. Now some miracles are most certainly done fiat, but let’s consider this one in Exodus. For argument’s sake, we’ll take the event as historical. It could be that the parting of the seas is a natural event in that that happens when a really strong wind comes through. What would be the miracle here? It would be the miracle that it happened when it happened.
This can apply in other areas too. I remember when Michael Jackson died, there was a story going around about his ghost being at the Neverland Ranch based on a shadow seen moving across the wall. There was a news story done that showed a natural explanation for it and then said, “Therefore, we have shown there was no ghost.”
Do I think there was a ghost? No. Does that mean that the news story is right though? Not at all. It could be their explanation works and that the ghost of Michael Jackson is still at Neverland Ranch. It could even be their story is true and there is still such a ghost. Again, I remain highly skeptical, but showing one explanation does not prove another is automatically false.
So when it comes to medicine, God could use a sickness of some kind as a punishment. It could just be the way the universe works at times. We don’t know. Any sickness can be a good chance for self-exploration and seeing how we are living, but it doesn’t necessitate that we are being judged. I think it’s quite dangerous for Christians to speak for God when it comes to sickness and natural disasters as if they’re a prophet. We had one such prophet (And more than a prophet) in Luke 13 and I don’t think we’re going to top Him.
Theists and atheists too often are talking past each other because both have an idea that if God exists, He must work in such and such a way. Odds are God works in ways that we do not fathom. Limit how He works and both are prone to missing how He is working.
What do anthropomorphic animals on an island tell us about God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
A friend recently gave me a gift of $100 to the Nintendo Eshop and wanted me to choose what to get. My wife has been playing Animal Crossing and asked me to play with her. Now this isn’t my type of game I think, but I want to do more things with my wife. I get the game.
Allie has tried to get me into Harvest Moon and honestly, that one just didn’t click with me. I was thinking more of the same. I normally play RPG games or things of that sort. I grew up on Mario and Zelda and Metroid and later on, games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, which is now Dragon Quest.
So in the midst of our playing Pokemon together, Allie wants me to try Animal Crossing. Before too long though, I find myself being caught in this world. Last night I started really thinking about it. What is it that makes this world so special that Animal Crossing was a big sell, especially when so many of us were quarantined? Granted, it’s not for everyone….
Okay. So as the photo says, you start the game on this island and your goal is to build it up. Your first encounter is with a guy named Tom Crook…errr….Nook. He keeps charging you more and more for things he gives you which gives you a taste of progression. Once you pay off one debt, there’s another one and it’s bigger.
But at the same time, you’re expanding more and more. There is a museum on the island where you can bring in bugs, fish, and fossils. Later on, artwork becomes a part of it. There are planes whereby you can fly to other islands, which are either random ones made by the game or ones where other players, mainly friends, live.
Throughout, you gather resources. Some of these can be used to make tools like fishing rods and axes and nets and other things for collecting and practical use. Some of them are just things for beautification. Build some furniture and put it in your house.
So what are some things that I think make this so popular that even someone like me enjoys it?
Let’s start with a simple thing. Creativity. There is something nice about making something. Many a mother knows that getting a Mother’s Day card is nice on Mother’s Day, but getting one that is made instead of bought is even nicer even if the quality is less.
Now there are guys like me that can’t make a thing to save their lives, but there is something nice about gathering wood and iron and other things and using them all to make things. When we create, we are essentially doing the work of God. We are creating things after Him, the original creator.
Beauty is another one. Catching a fish and some butterflies reveals often times many beautiful creatures. Flowers are often planted on an island for no purpose other than beauty.
We live in a culture that often thinks beauty is relative. No Christian should ever think such a thing. None of us should say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is in the object itself.
When a player decorates their house just for aesthetic reasons or plants flowers just for such a reason, then they are showing that they believe in beauty. They anticipate that any player who comes to their island will think that it is beautiful as well. Let’s face it. We all like to look at beautiful things. Many times driving with Allie, I will look over at her and just think that I am amazed I have such a beautiful woman as my wife.
Lastly, there’s progression. We all like having goals that we can reach. In this case, it’s paying off debts and building a better environment for you and others to live in. Reaching a goal gives a sense of accomplishment.
Many of us know this in real life. We want to be praised when we do something well. We want to be celebrated when we hit plateaus. If you’re dieting and you lose a certain number of pounds, you want to celebrate. We celebrate graduating from high school and college. We celebrate birthdays.
The idea of progress really is a very Christian idea. Many worldviews in the ancient world were cyclical. History would repeat again and again. Judaism and later Christianity said that history started somewhere and it is going somewhere and there is no repeating of it. We take this for granted today, but it really was quite different for its time.
So those are some reasons why I have found myself enjoying this. If you play also, send me a message on Facebook with your code. Maybe we can visit each other virtually. Now if you’ll excuse me, my blog is done so I have some checking to do on my island.
What are we to make of the “Brights” today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
There are some atheists that give Christianity a fair hearing and can give a take. Some of them can look and say “I can understand how from a rational perspective that you can see this as evidence for the resurrection of Jesus or the existence of God.” Some of them can admit arguments from the other side need to be wrestled with.
Unfortunately, from what I meet online, these are the exception.
I could sadly say the same for Christians reversed, but the problem is many atheists claim that by being atheists, they are champions of reason and evidence. For them, I often modify the saying of Jesus. These people honor reason with their lips, but their heads are far from it.
Saturday night I had posted in a debate group in a thread about someone saying something about how Jesus probably wasn’t white. I agree with this. Jesus looked like the average Jew of His day and was most likely more olive-skinned than anything else. Still, for humor, I always post this meme.
So an atheist messages me yesterday morning asking if I had abandoned my faith thinking I had because I had posted this. Like I said, these guys are not experts in reason and evidence. He invited me to check out his website. Now I’m not going to comment on posts about science as science because I know that is not my area. However, I did see a guest post worth mentioning. We’ll go through it piece by piece as a fine example of how NOT to do atheist apologetics. It’s by someone named Jim Dorans, although I wonder why anyone would want to put their name to this.
“Every single attempted logical argument for the existence of the Abrahamic God, without exception, fails on at least one count.”
Well this is first off a very bold claim. Every single one of them fails. Hopefully, we’ll see that evidence. Also, keep in mind arguments from philosophy are not for the Abrahamic God normally, but for a god who is consistent with the Abrahamic God. It could be that God exists and all the Abrahamic faiths are wrong.
“Saint Anselm of Canterbury made the logical error of assuming the need for a perfect being, and worked from that point on. By that reasoning, and working from an unproven assumption, it was very easy to “prove” the existence of God.”
What would be nice to see is some quote from Anselm showing this. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist. Heck, this guy doesn’t even state what Anselm’s argument is or what it is even called. I do not accept the argument, known as the ontological argument, but this is in no way a refutation of Anselm.
“However, that very same reasoning could be applied by an opponent to prove the existence of Zeus, so that’s another reason why it’s a very weak argument.”
And here we are wrong again. Zeus is a being in a polytheistic system. He is never described as a perfect being. If anything, Zeus is a really big human figure with some special powers. You could compare him to Superman. Zeus is a part of a system that needs to be explained. He is not like the god of the Abrahamic faiths.
“Thomas Aquinas too, committed a similar error by assuming the need for a necessary being, and so, based on that unproven assumption, still managed to make a good argument for the existence of God.
It was very much begging the question, and from that fallacious standpoint, he was able to effectively define God into existence.”
As a Thomist, I just find this laughingly hysterical. Again, there is no quote of Aquinas. There is not even a listing of his arguments. There is nothing to show that the author has even read Aquinas. Aquinas’s arguments are also deductive arguments where if one accepts the premises and can show no fault in the form, the conclusion follows.
Normally, if you are responding to an argument, you lay out what the argument is and then show how the proponent thinks the conclusion follows. You try to be as charitable as possible with it. Then you show why you think the proponent of the argument is wrong.
“Again, using the same flawed reasoning, an opponent could just as easily define Zeus into existence.”
See above.
“The well-worn cosmological argument fails too, but for different reasons. Hugely complex, monstrous, recycled arguments tell us the 9,742 ways that a naturalistic explanation is logically impossible, but those 9,742 ways are then “falsified” by inserting God, because God is exempt from, and unbounded by, the laws of logic.Usually, the main claim revolves around the Bereanistic “it is impossible to cross an infinity”, which is just another way of saying that it is impossible to get to the start of an infinity in the past.”
It depends on what kind of infinity is being crossed. Some Aquinas was open to. He said, for example, in q. 46. article 2 of the Prima Pars of the Summa that you cannot demonstrate by reason alone that the universe had a beginning. It must be believed on the basis of Scripture. Today, scientists can debate that one back and forth, but Aquinas is not making an argument like that.
Aquinas says an infinity is impossible though if there is dependence on the ongoing activity of what comes prior. Picture my illustration of an eternal statue standing eternally in front of an eternal mirror. How long has the mirror been reflecting the statue? Eternally. Is the image in the mirror still dependent? Yes.
Aquinas uses the example of a stick pushing a rock and a hand moving the stick. Remove the hand or the stick and the rock doesn’t move. That is the kind of infinity Aquinas says is impossible to have. You cannot have a chain of secondary causes without one primary cause.
Note also that Dorans doesn’t say why or why not this is the case. Is it possible to transcend an infinite? Is it possible for the universe to be infinitely old? He doesn’t tell us.
“The claim then implodes on itself by stating that there must have been a First Cause (which therefore must have crossed that infinity in the past).”
Brace yourself for the demonstration.
“This First Cause is claimed to be God, which of course contradicts the principle of cause and effect, by stating that God does not require a cause, because he is er…God. So, we have now invoked the fallacy of special pleading.”
And everyone who has read anything on the cosmological argument howls with laughter at this point. I can do no better than Ed Feser does. Let’s look at what he says about it here.
“1. The argument does NOT rest on the premise that “Everything has a cause.” Lots of people – probably most people who have an opinion on the matter – think that the cosmological argument goes like this: Everything has a cause; so the universe has a cause; so God exists. They then have no trouble at all poking holes in it. If everything has a cause, then what caused God? Why assume in the first place that everything has to have a cause? Why assume the cause is God? Etc.
Here’s the funny thing, though. People who attack this argument never tell you where they got it from. They never quote anyone defending it. There’s a reason for that. The reason is that none of the best-known proponents of the cosmological argument in the history of philosophy and theology ever gave this stupid argument. Not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Aquinas, not Duns Scotus, not Leibniz, not Samuel Clarke, not Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, not Mortimer Adler, not William Lane Craig, not Richard Swinburne. And not anyone else either, as far as I know. (Your Pastor Bob doesn’t count. I mean no one among prominent philosophers.) And yet it is constantly presented, not only by popular writers but even by some professional philosophers, as if it were “the” “basic” version of the cosmological argument, and as if every other version were essentially just a variation on it.
Don’t take my word for it. The atheist Robin Le Poidevin, in his book Arguing for Atheism (which my critic Jason Rosenhouse thinks is pretty hot stuff) begins his critique of the cosmological argument by attacking a variation of the silly argument given above – though he admits that “no-one has defended a cosmological argument of precisely this form”! So what’s the point of attacking it? Why not start instead with what some prominent defender of the cosmological argument has actually said?”
Feser is stating what many of us already know. No one is using this argument that Dorans is dealing with. No one. Again, this is not saying anything about Pastor Bob using it. I am referring to anyone academically inclined. Feser goes on.
“And that, I submit, is the reason why the stupid “Everything has a cause” argument – a complete fabrication, an urban legend, something no philosopher has ever defended – perpetually haunts the debate over the cosmological argument. It gives atheists an easy target, and a way rhetorically to make even their most sophisticated opponents seem silly and not worth bothering with. It‘s a slimy debating trick, nothing more – a shameless exercise in what I have elsewhere called “meta-sophistry.” (I make no judgment about whether Le Poidevin’s or Dennett’s sleaziness was deliberate. But that they should know better is beyond question.)
What defenders of the cosmological argument do say is that what comes into existence has a cause, or that what is contingent has a cause. These claims are as different from “Everything has a cause” as “Whatever has color is extended” is different from “Everything is extended.” Defenders of the cosmological argument also provide arguments for these claims about causation. You may disagree with the claims – though if you think they are falsified by modern physics, you are sorely mistaken – but you cannot justly accuse the defender of the cosmological argument either of saying something manifestly silly or of contradicting himself when he goes on to say that God is uncaused.
This gives us what I regard as “the basic” test for determining whether an atheist is informed and intellectually honest. If he thinks that the cosmological argument rests on the claim that “everything has a cause,” then he is simply ignorant of the basic facts. If he persists in asserting that it rests on this claim after being informed otherwise, then he is intellectually dishonest. And if he is an academic philosopher like Le Poidevin or Dennett who is professionally obligated to know these things and to eschew cheap debating tricks, then… well, you do the math.”
And I fully agree with Feser again. Either Dorans is intellectually dishonest, which I do not want to say due to the principle of charity, or he is just ignorant of basic facts. Still not the height of charity, but ignorance is easier to take care of than outright dishonesty.
“What is even more amusing is that more special pleading is then used to justify the original special pleading, because God is, well, God …
But why God? Why not Zeus?”
And again, this is still not understood. God does not have a beginning and in Thomism at least, His very nature is to exist. He is what it means to be. You might as well ask “What caused existence to come into existence?” It is either something that already existed, which is a problem since its existence needs to be explained if existence had beginning, or it is something that didn’t exist, which means something can come from nothing, which is nonsense.
So here we have a claim that all the arguments fail and yet none of them are even spelled out at all, no writings are cited, and this is from only two philosophers. There are plenty of others. Some arguments I will think work. Some I will not, but the claim from Dorans is that they all fail and yet we haven’t seen them all put to use and what we have seen, it is the response that fails and fails miserably.
Again, if you want to be an atheist, be one. You can do that. However, please do not be one like Dorans and actually do your intellectual homework and read the other side and take them seriously. Christians need to do the same. Don’t present yourself as a champion of reason and evidence though when your very words will betray you.
How do we do good deeds? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
A month or so ago I remember making a post on Facebook about how I can see advertisements sometimes where companies talk about how they give to charity. It can also include incentives like “If you buy such and such from us, we will give XYZ to charity.” Generally, when I hear that kind of thing, it’s really a reason for me to not want to support. After all, you’re wanting to make a profit, which is fine, and your selling point is that you will give to charity? I should also buy your product or service because you are such a great company that gives to charity?
It reminds me of the verse I’m looking at today in Matthew 6.
Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
A year or so ago it was a December and Allie was in a hospital and so it was just me. I went to the church I go to and everyone could tell I was bummed out in Sunday School. After the class, the pastor asked me to stay behind and he wanted to share something with me. He told me that a donation had been made to Allie and I for our usage. I thought that this was nice and wondered how much it could be. $50? $100?
Nope. $5,000.
To this day, we don’t know for sure who gave it. We have ideas, but whoever it is wanted it to be a secret donation. They didn’t give so we could go and praise them. They gave because they wanted to support us and that gift was extremely helpful to us.
This is not to say you can never let your generosity be known, but you have to ask why you are letting it be known. What is the end goal in all of it? Do you want people to know that you’re just so awesome? Perhaps you share who you are just because you want the other person to know and to know that they have a friend in you.
At the same time, Jesus doesn’t condemn doing good deeds because it will give you something good in the end as well. After all, He says do these things so you will be seen by your Father in Heaven. If you don’t do them that way, you will get no reward. This means that if you do do them the right way, you will get a reward.
It’s really interesting that Jesus still appeals to our self-interest. What He is wanting us to seek is the honor of God. There’s something someone once told me that has stuck with me. Jesus talks about going to a banquet and taking the lowest seat so you will be invited to a better one and says if you humble yourself you will be exalted and vice-versa. Notice this though. Everyone is humbled and everyone is exalted. We just choose what order they come in.
We are to do good deeds, of course, but if we really do them just so other people will think highly of us, that negates the reward we can get for them. The other person can still benefit, but it’s not the same. I encourage you that insofar as it’s possible, try to do your good deeds secretly so other people don’t know.
If you can’t avoid that, it’s understandable, but still, check your motives. Seek the purest of motives. If wrong motives are in you and you still know the right thing to do, do it anyway and ask God to purify your motives.
