CADRE Comments

This week, the United States will celebrate our annual Independence Day (July 4th -- the day in 1776 we declared, a bit preemptorily, our independence from Great Britain). Freedom and independence are words with great political and cultural meaning for us; and not only for us, but for the numerous nations who (more-or-less following our lead) also declared their independence from sovereign rulers whom they believed were oppressing them, both socially and not-infrequently religiously. Sad to say, Christianity was just-as-not-infrequently the religious oppression the people were revolting against. To some extent this is even true of the United States: even though our own national revolution was grounded on a mixture of orthodox Christianity and nominal deism (such as Franklin’s and Jefferson’s), the history of our country’s settlement in the centuries before the revolution was typically based on fleeing religious (as well as financial) oppression in Europe. And it can ha...

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. )

It's that time of year again, when I post a link to back to my 2008 Cadre article on the philosophically unique connection between trinitarian theism and freedom. 2009's repost picked up some interesting and polite discussion on the Resurrection of Jesus (between myself and counter-Christian apologist Spencer Lo), and those can be found here -- but they aren't comments about the article per se. God’s hope to all our readers, around the world, this holiday season!

My yearly Independence Day link back to my 2008 Cadre article on the philosophically unique connection between trinitarian theism and freedom. God’s hope to all our readers, around the world, this holiday season!

My yearly Independence Day link back to my 2008 article on the philosophically unique connection between trinitarian theism and freedom. I'm posting it Friday this year for the beginning of the weekend. God’s hope to all our readers, around the world, this holiday season!

I wasn't sure I'd be available Sunday to post up the essay this year, so I'm doing it a bit early for the weekend. No particular revisions again this year; so just a link to my annual Independence Day sermon that I like to put up every year. {g!} (The only substantial comments so far can be found at last year's entry here, by the way. Although the comments turn out not to be about the post at all. {wry g}) God’s hope to all our readers, around the world, on this day, and every day! Jason Pratt

This week, the United States will celebrate our annual Independence Day (July 4th--the day in 1776 we declared, a bit preemptorily, our independence from Great Britain). Freedom and independence are words with great political and cultural meaning for us; and not only for us, but for the numerous nations who (more-or-less following our lead) also declared their independence from sovereign rulers whom they believed were oppressing them, both socially and (not-infrequently) religiously. Sad to say, Christianity was just-as-not-infrequently the religious oppression the people were revolting against. To some extent this is even true of the United States: even though our own national revolution was grounded on a mixture of orthodox Christianity and nominal deism (such as Franklin’s and Jefferson’s), the history of our country’s settlement in the centuries before the revolution was typically based on fleeing religious (as well as financial) oppression in Europe. And it can hardly be argued th...

[Note from Jason Pratt, 7/19/07: Professor Victor Reppert over at Dangerous Idea, has been redating his discussions on human rights in the context of the founding of the United States (which he does every semester or so, for discussion among his students, as well as his readers). At about the same time BK mentioned in a pretty good Cadre post on Uber-Turtles {g} that he didn't know a theist who rolled a particular way in regard to a certain ontological claim. On the ground of this curious, or perhaps providential, conflation of topics, I've decided to redate my "Heart of Freedom" post from Independence Day this year, back up to the top of the main page (with a couple of composition repairs). The first Eth&t3rdPers entry can be found here ; but the entry briefly referenced below, can be found here. Sceptics may appreciate that entry a lot, btw.] This week, the United States will celebrate our annual Independence Day (July 4th--the day in 1776 we declared, a bit...