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...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 49, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 50.] God must come to us, to give us the best possible chance of understanding Him. Not only in the ministry of the Holy Spirit to every person, inspiring and judging us in fair-togetherness, but even more directly than that, more obviously as a Person than that, more able to reveal the truth of His character in action we can see, not merely hear in our hearts. That doesn't mean we necessarily will understand what is happening; we might still make our own honest mistakes about it, or we might still try to fudge our way around it to protect some inflamed sense of our own self-importance. But this leads to a number of questions about the act of God I am now considering: what should I mean by God coming to us, each of us, personally, in this manner? Well, there have been odd tales, throughout history, all over the world, about encounters ...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 47, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 48, "The Story From Theology"] In the four previous sections I have analyzed dozens and dozens of metaphysical propositions-- over 600 pages worth! --deciding for various reasons between them, building and shaping a metaphysic, and arriving at what Christians have historically called ‘orthodox trinitarian theism’. I have arrived there without reference to scriptural authority or claims of special revelation; right or wrong, any sceptic could in principle arrive here, too, by following out the logical trail in regard to data commonly accessible to any of us. I am a trinitarian theist, and this is why I would be a trinitarian theist, even if there was no such thing as historical Christianity, or scriptures to seek out testimony on. I worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Su...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding Chapter 39, can be found here. ] [This entry starts Chapter 40, "An Introduction to the Concept of Sin".] One especially important part of a discussion about ethics involves the question of 'evil'. If ethics are only a human invention, or if ethics are only a perceptual illusion based on irrational response to our environment (micro or macro), or if ethics are only some combination of those two general explanations, then any discussion of 'evil' is rendered somewhat moot. 'Evil' would mean only what you and I have been automatically conditioned to treat as 'evil', and/or only what you and I happen to reject (whether for self-practical purposes or aesthetically). Learning ‘what is evil’ would mean learning what we have been automatically conditioned to treat as evil, and/or learning what other people have opportunistically chosen to treat as evil. We coul...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting Chapter 39, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes Chapter 39, "The Role of the Third Person of God".] [Repeating where the prior entry left off:] Moving along then: what kind of communication can we expect from the Holy Spirit to anyone at all, in any time and place? It might be suspected that this would mean all people at any time and place would hear God talking directly to them in an unambiguously clear and constant manner. However, this obviously does not happen. Why this does not happen is certainly worth consideration eventually, because it would seem to be one of the most effective means of communication--perhaps not useful for every contingency, but useful enough to be a common occurrence. So we know from experience there are evidently some limitations to His communication with us, even at the most fundamental level of communication (through the Holy Spirit). Setting aside ...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding Chapter 38, can be found here. ] [This entry starts Chapter 39, "The Role of the Third Person of God".] In the previous chapter, I examined a potentially damaging problem stemming from the requirements of some earlier inferences I had made. This problem, although subtle, was severe enough that it might have unraveled quite a bit of my previous argument. However, upon close examination of the problem, I discovered that after removing certain inconsistencies from the option list, I was rewarded, not with a conclusion that much of my previous argument would need to be trash-canned (or at best redrafted), but that there must exist a 3rd Person to the self-existent Unity of God. I had, in short, deduced the existence of what Christians call "The Holy Spirit" or “The Holy Ghost”. So, what does this "3rd Person of God" do in relation to us? The answer to that question depe...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting Chapter 38, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes Chapter 38, "Inferring the Third Person of God".] A Third Person of God can thus be inferred as solving a special conceptual problem, that is sometimes (and I would say quite rightly) advanced against mere monotheism, on the grounds that God can be necessarily expected to interact personally with created persons (such as ourselves) and that God has characteristics which allow for the existence of a proceeding distinct Person of God Who exists (analogically) ‘within’ the overarching Self-begetting and Self-begotten independent reality of God (without being either the Self-begetting or Self-begotten Persons). But I hinted back in Section Three, when inferring the interpersonal unity of God (as God Self-begetting and God Self-begotten), that I could have gone on immediately at that point to inferring the existence of a Third Person of G...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 37, can be found here. ] [This entry begins Chapter 38, "Inferring the Third Person of God".] If we cannot perceive something of the principles of God's interPersonal love (the love between Father and Son that grounds all reality), then we will be working at dangerous inefficiency against reality. I think it would be inconsistent with God's love and justice for Him to prevent us from perceiving this (although we might ourselves choose to turn away from it--a topic I will be discussing later). It is not a mere fact about God that we need here, but a real relationship to Him, as person (you and I, individually and corporately) to Person (God--Who Himself is a substantial interPersonal unity). Unfortunately, an argument I made some time ago may be returning here to nix me. I insisted, back when I was discussing your and my relationship to God and Nature, that you and I needed a commo...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: I am here appending in several parts some excerpts from an unpublished book of mine (not CoJ incidentally), originally composed late 99/early 2000, wherein I work out a progressive synthetic metaphysic. The topic of this Section of chapters is ethical grounding; and in the first several entries I analyzed crippling problems along the three general lines of ethical explanation, including general theism. After this though, I returned to the argument I had already been developing for several hundred (currently unpublished) pages, and used those developed positions to begin solving the philosophical dilemmas I had covered in previous entries. Along the way, I ran into a potential problem last seen back in my (unpublished) Section Three; but slotting that problem into my developing argument allowed me to discover that I should believe that a 3rd Person of God exists. Having covered some introductory inferences regarding the 3rd Person's relationship ...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: I am here appending in several parts some excerpts from an unpublished book of mine (not CoJ incidentally), originally composed late 99/early 2000, wherein I work out a progressive synthetic metaphysic. The topic of this Section of chapters is ethical grounding; and in the first several entries I analyzed crippling problems along the three general lines of ethical explanation, including general theism. After this though, I returned to the argument I had already been developing for several hundred (currently unpublished) pages, and used those developed positions to begin solving the philosophical dilemmas I had covered in previous entries. Along the way, I ran into a potential problem last seen back in my (unpublished) Section Three; but slotting that problem into my developing argument allowed me to discover that I should believe that a 3rd Person of God exists. Having covered some introductory inferences regarding the 3rd Person's relationship ...