CADRE Comments

Sometimes I'm asked to try to explain the Trinity simply -- sometimes for the humor of watching me try it! {wry g} And sometimes for the perceived apologetic value in my acknowledgment that the doctrinal set of trinitarian theism isn't simple, as if simplicity of a doctrinal set was itself evidence of truth (tell that to an astrophysicist of any flavor), or as if the complexity in itself should be regarded as evidence of unnecessary (and thus false) over-complication. There are only distant analogies to the Trinity in Nature, and that doesn't help, although that ought to be expected since we're supposed to be talking about the one and only self-existent ground of all reality. The Latin phrase sui generis is sometimes used here; that just means it's one of a kind and so every analogy to it for illustration will bring built-in differences from it. But one of my nieces (not yet ten years old) started catechism training this year, with some portions of doctrine (re...

Bill's topic from a few days ago is something that Christians (and other theists of all stripes) have been chewing over for thousands of years. It might seem like the answer is a simple yes or no; but there are concepts which supernaturalistic theists are (in principle) committed to, which introduce difficulties. I spent several hundred pages in Sword to the Heart ( which can be found for free in some different formats, including first here on the Cadre Journal ) slowly and carefully working up those concepts, but I'll summarize them below in a progressing topical order relevant to the question of God's responsibility. ( Click here on the jump to proceed. )

The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding Chapter 46, can be found here. This entry constitutes Chapter 47, and ends Section Four. This chapter mainly reiterates and spells out in some more detail how I arrived metaphysically at the conclusion that rebel supernatural entities exist, but it also arrives at the conclusion that these devils need the same help any of us sinners do: to be saved from their sins. This is a very controversial position; and I can't quite figure out where plausibly to split the chapter into two entries, either. So, to avoid posting an extra-long chapter on a controversial topic among Nicene trinitarians, seeing as this journal is dedicated to ecumenical Nicene apologetics (what trinitarian affirmers of the Nicene Creed generally agree on instead of what we disagree about), I have posted the whole chapter, about 16 pages, to a thread at the Evangelical Universalist forum instead (where I have been posting these Sword...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting Chapter 46, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes Chapter 46, "The Children of the First Sinners".] [I ended the previous entry asking, "Why is it that other people suffer thanks to my sin? Why does God not negate the harmful, baneful results of my own actions, sparing those who find themselves standing in the paths of effect?"] The first answer I reach is: I do not know that God does let every possible baneful consequence from my actions affect other people. On the contrary: I know I find myself thanking Him, that by providential circumstance other people have been spared from suffering which might have followed from some sin of mine. This does not, by itself, provide a solution to my question, for if even one minor suffering of a victim resulted from a whole history of (otherwise silent) human sinning, then the question of why God would allow such an effect would rem...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding Chapter 45, can be found here. ] [This entry starts Chapter 46, "The Children of the First Sinners".] I have argued that recorded history--even the history recorded by people who do not follow my own tradition--indicates that the tendency to act intransigently, in willful rebellion against what we perceive to be true, has been a perennial characteristic of our species. Because God would not have created us automatically in rebellion against Him (or against as much of Him as we could perceive), then our progenitors must have fallen into this state; and I think I can argue that the number of these progenitors must have been small, and the percentage of 'fallens' within that number must have been large: for the whole human race, as it stands now and as it has stood throughout history, exhibits the characteristics of sinful rebellion. [Footnote: I am not arguing this from the world...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, continuing chapter 30, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes chapter 30, "The Doctrine of Derivative Spirit"; and also concludes Section Two.] Here is the third story: which might in principle have happened 'instead' of the second, and which I think happened after all, even if the 'process details' related here could stand expansion and clarification. (Maybe lots of it!) In the beginning, God created the heavens and the world. And the world was a blasted heap of formless rubble, and darkness was over the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was hovering (or moving) over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Be light!"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, day one. [See first comment belo...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting chapter 30, can be found here. ] [This entry continues chapter 30, "The Doctrine of Derivative Spirit".] (Repeating from the end of the previous part.) I will begin dealing with ethics soon in Section Four, after this chapter. But for now, let me go back and retell my story again; from a different historical perspective but with (I think) the same principles. God creates Nature, and allows it to go through a quasi-independent historical process; "quasi-independent", for Nature does not exist on its own resources, but upon God, and is meanwhile guided subtly by God. One purpose of God in making this Nature, has been to create derivative sentiences like (but merely 'like') Himself. Billions of what we call years pass, as God slowly edges things into place, letting Nature be Nature. God is patient, because all time and space are in His hand. He is concerned with the final ...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding chapter 29, can be found here. ] [This entry starts chapter 30, "The Doctrine of Derivative Spirit".] In this chapter I will mostly take a break from progressing in a developing argument, to spend some time picking at the proposition I have just developed, concerning the relationship of derivative spirits to Nature and to God. In the process I will be considering some questions I have asked myself, and which perhaps I can anticipate from you, my reader. I will also try some illustrative analogies (although with an eye to the limitations of the analogies). (Keep in mind, however, that I am neither claiming nor requiring this particular theory of mine concerning the process of instigation of the soul, to be certainly correct. It does, I think, fit the bill, and is not self-contradictive; but that doesn't exclude other methods of getting to the same result. On the other hand, I have...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, continuing chapter 29, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes chapter 29, "Resolving The Grand Paradox".] You may have noticed I have often insisted throughout my book that opponents are not entirely wrong, but rather they're not entirely right; that they do have some good points, but they're taking them a bit too far or not taking them far enough or putting them together the wrong way. I have recently granted this in the case of pantheists and vitalists, for instance. In the case of atheistic naturalists, I think they are actually on the right trail when they discuss aggregations of natural events as the source of our rationality. Their pivotal error, as I have deduced, is that they put these observations and conclusions into service of a nonsensical proposition: that non-initiation produces initiation ability, that reactions produce actions, that the non-rational can be rational. Th...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting chapter 29, can be found here. ] [This entry continues chapter 29, "Resolving The Grand Paradox".] God, if He creates, must first create Nature. Let us say Nature is now up-and-running. It does not have to be exactly our Nature; it could for instance be a Nature inhabited by angels or elves or whatever--but, since I am searching for an explanation that deals with you and me and our behavior and qualities, let me stick with what I know best: this Nature, the one you and I obviously inhabit in some fashion. The first not-God thing God creates (per se) must be reactive, as distinct from His active character, so that He has created and not begotten (nor generated a Person of God Who has nothing to do with God’s own self-generation--but that’s a topic for later). If God wishes to introduce further effects into this system, above and beyond the effects that this system of itself produces (alon...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, chapter 28, can be found here. ] [This entry starts chapter 29, "Resolving The Grand Paradox".] During the previous few chapters, I think I have established many useful and true notions. One result of this process, however, has been to deepen the paradox I had already detected (as a potentially cataclysmic contradiction to my argument) back toward the end of Section Two. Now it is time to resolve that paradox--if possible. Let me begin, conceptually speaking, at the beginning. One and only one Independent Fact exists; no other IF could exist along with or instead of It. Being self-generative and rationally active, the basic self-sustaining action of the IF is to beget Itself. This most primary of Its actions--and as a rationally active entity, the most fundamentally chief cause of any effects, we should describe the IF with a personal and philosophical 'He'--allows the IF (God) to take an...