CADRE Comments

Because some guy with a highly over-convenient interpretive scheme thinks the Rapture will occur in the next 24 hours. Surely, none of us will be left behind, right...? {wry g} All kidding aside: if we are not looking for the fulfillment of justice in the world, especially against ourselves where we deserve it, then we're doing something wrong. We're rejecting justice at all, or we're putting our own selves up as being the final standard of justice, in mere competition with other persons. So, whether we're Christian or not, whether we believe Harold Camping's prediction or not (and obviously I don't), let us take this opportunity as a reminder to be penitent of our sins, whether those we have already renounced and left behind, or those we are still being freed from, and cry for justice--to the farthest extents we can see and beyond! Because, after all, whether or not the world begins to end tomorrow, I can predict with 100% certainty that, barring an outright m...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 55, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 56.] It's only fair--isn't it? God will intentionally set Himself up, to be rejected by all His people: by His special chosen who carried His light, and by His other children who perhaps have been doing the best they can with what they have. Not only those who we might consider desperately evil will reject Him, but those we would be inclined to consider the very best. For even the best of us have sinned, abusing the grace of God Most High. He will have done plenty of things, to show He is good; but He will also give them just enough rope to hang Him, if they want to--on His own timing, if not theirs. And the unjust of this world--very likely even some of the (relatively) just ones who just don't understand!--will want to hang Him. The unjust of any worlds intersecting this one, will certainly want to hang Him, too. Why, you ask, w...

[Note: The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 54, can be found here. ] [This entry constitutes Chapter 55.] I have no clear idea of how this Child would think, as He grows into manhood. God will have poured Himself out, continuing to enact His own specific part in the story of humanity. We might say the finger of God will be gently touching the earth; a mere hum of His voice; a finite trickle out of the river of His eternity. I can only use metaphors, and I am well aware of the problems involved in imagining this accurately--which, I am also well aware, is likely to prove a stumbling block for an honest sceptic. But I appeal to the reasonableness of what I have said before. I am quite sure God exists, and has particular characteristics including a particular personal character. I am quite sure of my own sin and corrupted character. And I am reasonably sure of how this all fits together. Consequently, I am quite sure that sooner or later, God ...

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...

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 [beware!--long summary paragraph approaching! {g}] 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 inf...