CADRE Comments

This is a bit of an in-house dispute among trinitarian theologians. But I don't much appreciate being lumped in with people who deny the transcendent omni-capable final reality of God as God, by a fellow trinitarian who appeals to concepts of impersonal classic theisms in order to defend his notion of the not-impersonal (??) theism of the Trinity of Persons from critiques that could only possibly have weight if God was in any way relevantly personal. I know, that's... kind of spaghetti-ish. Sorry. If your eyes aren't crossing yet, and you dare to jump into 8-1/2 pages of some hardcore metaphysics, click here. Don't say I didn't warn you! {g}

Well, since we're still here... {lopsided g} I suppose we should get back to the work of, as I put it Friday, "helping people believe God lives and cares about such things". The following argument ( unlike the galumphing 600+ page monster I finally finished posting up sometime before Easter this year) does not arrive deductively at trinitarian theism, despite its deductive form. Rather, it illustrates that ortho-trin theology (if true) offers the most assurance of a person being ultimately 'saved' compared to other philosophies and theologies (broadly categorized). Usually I would qualify 'saved' as meaning something like 'saved from sin', but for purposes of this argument I have allowed a broader and more general notion of salvation: as will be seen below, I mean something more like assurance that a person shall be saved from injustices or suffering sooner or later. This would, however, also include being saved from sin (whether from other perso...

[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, starting Chapter 45, can be found here. ] [This entry continues Chapter 45, "A History of the Fall".] The first sinners have breached the derivative unity between themselves and God, insofar as it was possible for them to breach it. If God did that to Himself, if the Persons of God did that to Themselves, utter death would immediately entail for God, and for all of reality. We humans can only have been designed along similar, if derivative, principles. These creatures with great power and responsibility have chosen to rebel against the reality upon which they nevertheless inescapably depended. As I reach this point, I remember something I deduced earlier: humans are 'human', to whatever degree, due to what I have called the synthetic shape. This shape is itself the most fundamental relationship to God that we have: all our other relations to Him, including our personal relations to Him, d...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 43, can be found here. ] [This entry begins Chapter 44, "The Fall".] In my previous chapter, I probably sounded as if I was waxing rhapsodic about death, and how great it was, and how much I need it. In a way, I was doing precisely that. But I agree it seems specious for me to sit here in my comfortable chair, sniffling over whatever puny sins I have committed in my life and trying to resolve myself to Face Death Like A Man; when all across our planet tonight vicious rapes and murders and grotesque physical and psychological violations are being performed by human fiends upon people whom I cannot possibly have definite grounds for saying 'the victims deserved that'. No, I refuse to argue that each and every victim of atrocity is receiving the just deserts of their own sins. There is no way I can possibly know that, and I staunchly insist that it certainly doesn't look that wa...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding Chapter 42, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 43, "Death".] I have previously decided that the consequences of my sin must logically, ethically entail that I shall certainly die. And I have been discussing what kinds of death should take place in me as a consequence of my sin. I decided that my utter annihilation was a technical possibility, but that it would be inconsistent with the hope of the fulfillment of God's love to me if He allowed the total fulfillment of the consequences of my wishful, willfully chosen intransigence. So although that type of death is possible for me--and even remains possible for God Himself, although He never has and never shall choose it--I think I can deductively conclude it shall never happen to me. My physical dissolution makes no difference: I, me, myself, shall by God's grace somehow continue. And, perhaps I will continue re...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting Chapter 42, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes Chapter 42, "Death". Incidentally, this would be another good time to read that disclaimer over there to the right, about how not every journal entry necessarily reflects the beliefs of every Cadre member. Some of us may now, or in the future, be annihilationists, and are free to post defenses of that insofar as they can see to do so (or may have done so already). Links to annihilation defenses are also welcome in the comments below. One popular internet-accessible defense of annihilationism can be found here in a chapter from Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi's Immortality or Resurrection? While I could engage in a exegetical analysis of the topic, too, my series is designed to proceed along a different route.] Part 2 of 2 (Incidentally, this would be another good time to read that disclaimer over there to the right, about how not every...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting Chapter 41, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes Chapter 41, "The Consequences of Sin".] I am now in a position to explain why I, myself, am not remotely disconcerted by the anti-theistic argument from evil. For many people, this is a powerful argument, if not against a supernaturalistic God altogether (strictly speaking it couldn’t be against that anyway), then at least against any kind of ethical God Who also holds an ontological position traditionally accepted by proponents of various religious theisms (primarily Judaism, Christianity and Islam in modern times). The problem then, is not with God or God’s supernatural character per se, but with the combination of these properties plus ethicality. Eliminating one or more of the properties, eliminates the problem--or so it seems to many people. Thus, eliminating the morality (tacitly or explicitly) could leave the theism and the o...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, concluding Chapter 40, can be found here. ] [This entry starts Chapter 41, "The Consequences of Sin".] In the previous chapter, I began to discuss the concept of evil--not in the abstract, nor for potential special-cases (such as particular individuals who may honestly not recognize any responsibility they have to actual reality)--but in the most concrete and personal way I could find. I began examining the concept of evil, by examining myself. The person who thinks ethics are something we humans have created, says that good and evil are what we personally define them to be. I have noticed that such a person rarely, if ever, admits, "What I have done is evil". Usually, the gist of this sort of person is that we define 'good' as whatever we ourselves want to do, and 'evil' as whatever someone else wants to do (or wants us to do) that threatens our desires. Or he may perh...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting Chapter 40, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes Chapter 40, "An Introduction to the Concept of Sin".] I have inferred that it is possible for God to enact one kind of death, and indeed that He does enact this: the submission of the Son to the Father (while maintaining the distinctive existence of the Person of the Son) in order to complete the circuit of the Unity and thus actively maintain self-existence. I have further deduced from this that it is technically possible for God to partly kill Himself in other ways, so that true creation of not-God entities and systems may be instituted; after all, here I am, a not-God entity. It is therefore not in principle impossible for God to subject Himself to several sorts of death. I conclude, in extension of this principle, that it must be possible that God could take actions that would result in the breaking of the Unity and His consequ...