*
Metaphysics is a very interesting subject - doubly so when it interacts with religion.
Interesting - and misunderstood.
*
Metaphysics describes the ultimate structure of reality - it is about the pre-suppositions or assumptions which underlie more detailed considerations such as specific philosophy (e.g. the philosophy of morals, beauty or specific religions) and science.
For a Christian, the most fundamental domain ought to be Christianity, which originates in revelation and revelation is in itself a complex product of tradition, scripture, authority, reason etc.
After this comes theology - but theology presupposes a particular metaphysics; for example monism or pluralism, serial time or eternal out-of-timeness, and some kind of point at which questions have to stop and the answer 'it just is' becomes accepted.
*
The underlying difference between Mainstream Christianity and Mormonism relates to metaphysics - Joseph Smith's Restored gospel is based on a different set of metaphysical assumptions - e.g. pluralism, dynamism, serial time, and the stoppage of questions at the terminus of the existence of the stuff of the universe and laws of nature.
The big question is whether a different metaphysics means that Mormonism is not Christian.
And the answer is: obviously not, because metaphysics is a matter of assumptions, and the Christian revelation did not refer to metaphysics.
(Or, at least, the metaphysics of Christian revelation is ambiguous - and can be interpreted in contrasting ways.)
*
But even though metaphysics is an assumption and not a discovery nor amenable to empirical investigation - it does make a difference.
Indeed, it can (for some people, at some times and/ or places) make a profound difference.
Thus a Christianity based on Platonic, or Aristotelian, or Pluralistic metaphysics will have very different emphases, gaps, biases, strengths and weaknesses.
And these metaphysical systems are incommensurable, meaning that one cannot be mapped onto the other, because each works by a different language - a different lexicon and grammar of belief.
But, they are all potentially Christian - why would they not be?
Christianity is prior to metaphysics.
*
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
Confessions of an unsystematic reader
*
I hate to be recommended books - to be strongly recommended I read a book often means I never get to read it.
Or, to be more accurate, I want to read what I want to read, as and when - and in the order - that I feel moved to read.
*
There was the famous Tarka the Otter incident when I was compelled by a school teacher to read this volume instead of my customary Biggles - I had to force myself through one page at a time, on a schedule.
When I audited courses during my MA (by thesis) in English, it was a kind of torture to follow the prescribed reading; whenever I tried to join a book club it seemed almost an intolerable imposition to have to read something that somebody else had chosen.
And it was a traumatic experience when, aged 18, I agreed to read a whole clutch of books recommended by my best friend.
*
Thus, I always have a stirring of sympathy about characters such as Samuel Johnson and Ralph Waldo Emerson who had similarly unsystematic habits.
I suspect that this disposition is evidence of high trait Psychoticism
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=psychoticism
and probably, therefore, indicative of the most fundamental human characteristic - and it is a marker of creativity on the one hand; and impulsiveness, wilfulness, egotism, unemployability and general recalcitrant troublesomeness on the other.
*
I hate to be recommended books - to be strongly recommended I read a book often means I never get to read it.
Or, to be more accurate, I want to read what I want to read, as and when - and in the order - that I feel moved to read.
*
There was the famous Tarka the Otter incident when I was compelled by a school teacher to read this volume instead of my customary Biggles - I had to force myself through one page at a time, on a schedule.
When I audited courses during my MA (by thesis) in English, it was a kind of torture to follow the prescribed reading; whenever I tried to join a book club it seemed almost an intolerable imposition to have to read something that somebody else had chosen.
And it was a traumatic experience when, aged 18, I agreed to read a whole clutch of books recommended by my best friend.
*
Thus, I always have a stirring of sympathy about characters such as Samuel Johnson and Ralph Waldo Emerson who had similarly unsystematic habits.
I suspect that this disposition is evidence of high trait Psychoticism
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=psychoticism
and probably, therefore, indicative of the most fundamental human characteristic - and it is a marker of creativity on the one hand; and impulsiveness, wilfulness, egotism, unemployability and general recalcitrant troublesomeness on the other.
*
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
Mortal incarnate life (human life) is an experience, not a test
*
Many Christians have said of implied that that mortal life is a 'test' - but for me this word is wrong; and I find it clearer and more coherent to think of mortal life (of being incarnated in a mortal body and then dying) as an experience.
Many Christians have said of implied that that mortal life is a 'test' - but for me this word is wrong; and I find it clearer and more coherent to think of mortal life (of being incarnated in a mortal body and then dying) as an experience.
This fits with the fact that so many humans never make it out of the womb, and so many more don't get past being born, and more don't make it to the years of responsibility - the idea of life as a 'test' therefore only fits a minority of the humans who have lived.
But I can certainly see that the experience of a pre-mortal spirit being - for however brief a time, and even if only in the womb - incarnate and mortal and then dying, might be necessary, irreplaceable for spiritual progress.
By analogy, it seems that for Christ to become our saviour, the experience of mortal life and death was necessary.
This line of argument suggests that experiencing death is as important, as necessary, for the spirit as is experiencing incarnate mortal life.
*
Monday, 8 July 2013
Evil cannot be destroyed - only sequestered (and that is why Hell is necessary)
*
Because time is linear and sequential, the reality and consequences of evil are permanent: it happened, it leaves a trace - changes the course of things.
Evil can be healed, but not reversed.
Because free will is real, some have not repented - and some perhaps may never repent.
Thus evil may be permanent - what then to do with it?
How can there be Heaven - how the New Jerusalem - when evil remains?
Evil must be sequestered - and that is what Hell is for: to sequester the unrepentant.
Hell is to sequester the evil, until they repent - or if they do not ever repent, if that is how they choose: then to sequester them for eternity.
*
Because time is linear and sequential, the reality and consequences of evil are permanent: it happened, it leaves a trace - changes the course of things.
Evil can be healed, but not reversed.
Because free will is real, some have not repented - and some perhaps may never repent.
Thus evil may be permanent - what then to do with it?
How can there be Heaven - how the New Jerusalem - when evil remains?
Evil must be sequestered - and that is what Hell is for: to sequester the unrepentant.
Hell is to sequester the evil, until they repent - or if they do not ever repent, if that is how they choose: then to sequester them for eternity.
*
Christian music - does it make a difference whether it is performed by believers?
*
I suspect it does.
I find myself more confused than moved by many performances of great, sacred Christian music - such as recordings and prestigious concerts - and perhaps this is a consequence of the music being performed by people who were not Christian, and the performance prepared and conducted in a setting and with a purpose that is not Christian...
*
Indeed, the manner in which a performance is done - the nature of making and selling a recording, the nature of rehearsing and performing in public - is often so powerfully anti-Christian that it seems to be able to overcome the fact of even sincere Christian beliefs on the part of the performers.
*
Given all this, and the fact that (a problem in the opposite direction to that described above) incompetent performance is also distracting, it is unsurprising how seldom sacred music seems to be effective in its primary purpose.
The fact is only disguised by our cultural tendency to mistake aesthetic feelings for religious 'uplift' - certainly, that was a mistake I made for several decades when (as an outsider to Christianity) I thought that sublime church music was also highly religious music.
*
This is, of course, the situation in the English choral tradition nowadays - where the secularization and corruption of the Church of England means that the norm at cathedrals and famous colleges at Oxford and Cambridge is aesthetically superb performances in glorious architectural settings - by unbelievers and Leftists who are actively subverting and destroying Christianity.
In such a context, the normal context; it is a case of the 'better' the performance, the worse it is religiously.
*
When a singer does not believe what they sing or a conductor the performance they prepare, it is a situation analogous to a preaching pastor being replaced by an actor.
The actor would probably be a better speaker than the pastor - more audible, more dramatic, more enjoyable... but the actor is just speaking his lines, and we know it.
At the end of that line of development we have a 'church' in which the most prestigious religious institutional manifestations are neither pastors nor priests nor saints nor anything primarily Christian; but singers and actors and academics and propagandists and diligent bureaucrats and so on.
And this is what we find.
**
Note: These thoughts came to me while watching a performance of Saint Nicolas by Benjamin Britten and reflecting that (even if I liked the music, which I didn't) it would be strange if I had been moved religiously when listening to the work of a subversive anti-Christian Leftist sexual revolutionary - especially in the original performance led by Britten's close friend and personal companion, Peter Pears - but that the Christian institutions which commissioned so many pseudo-Christian works and performances from Britten in the post-war era (when he and Pears had returned from sheltering in the USA) apparently did not think it odd. Even if I agreed that Britten was a major composer, I would find this odd - and revealing of the priorities of those involved
*
I suspect it does.
I find myself more confused than moved by many performances of great, sacred Christian music - such as recordings and prestigious concerts - and perhaps this is a consequence of the music being performed by people who were not Christian, and the performance prepared and conducted in a setting and with a purpose that is not Christian...
*
Indeed, the manner in which a performance is done - the nature of making and selling a recording, the nature of rehearsing and performing in public - is often so powerfully anti-Christian that it seems to be able to overcome the fact of even sincere Christian beliefs on the part of the performers.
*
Given all this, and the fact that (a problem in the opposite direction to that described above) incompetent performance is also distracting, it is unsurprising how seldom sacred music seems to be effective in its primary purpose.
The fact is only disguised by our cultural tendency to mistake aesthetic feelings for religious 'uplift' - certainly, that was a mistake I made for several decades when (as an outsider to Christianity) I thought that sublime church music was also highly religious music.
*
This is, of course, the situation in the English choral tradition nowadays - where the secularization and corruption of the Church of England means that the norm at cathedrals and famous colleges at Oxford and Cambridge is aesthetically superb performances in glorious architectural settings - by unbelievers and Leftists who are actively subverting and destroying Christianity.
In such a context, the normal context; it is a case of the 'better' the performance, the worse it is religiously.
*
When a singer does not believe what they sing or a conductor the performance they prepare, it is a situation analogous to a preaching pastor being replaced by an actor.
The actor would probably be a better speaker than the pastor - more audible, more dramatic, more enjoyable... but the actor is just speaking his lines, and we know it.
At the end of that line of development we have a 'church' in which the most prestigious religious institutional manifestations are neither pastors nor priests nor saints nor anything primarily Christian; but singers and actors and academics and propagandists and diligent bureaucrats and so on.
And this is what we find.
**
Note: These thoughts came to me while watching a performance of Saint Nicolas by Benjamin Britten and reflecting that (even if I liked the music, which I didn't) it would be strange if I had been moved religiously when listening to the work of a subversive anti-Christian Leftist sexual revolutionary - especially in the original performance led by Britten's close friend and personal companion, Peter Pears - but that the Christian institutions which commissioned so many pseudo-Christian works and performances from Britten in the post-war era (when he and Pears had returned from sheltering in the USA) apparently did not think it odd. Even if I agreed that Britten was a major composer, I would find this odd - and revealing of the priorities of those involved
*
Sunday, 7 July 2013
Hopelessness and alienation - brought-up against the one true story of Christianity
*
There are three broad categories of dissatisfaction with the mainstream secular world view:
1. The self-refuting nature of relativism.
2. The arbitrariness of ethics without religion.
3. Hopelessness and alienation.
*
Hopelessness and alienation are the hardest to identify and pin down, and are always deniable - but maybe they are the most damaging aspect of the modern malaise because - on the one hand - they render the individual unable to stand firm and make an effort to escape their situation; while - on the other hand - they lead the sufferer to escape his existential loneliness into distractions and intoxications (especially sexual) which take him further and further from the truth and from virtue.
*
Christianity solves all these problems; and that should be enough to recommend it conclusively when someone has nothing coherent or motivating to offer as an alternative - yet clearly this seldom happens, and conversion is typically a drawn-out process that is easily derailed (certainly it was for me).
What happens is that each Christian solution to each class of problem is met by a change of ground and criticized from a different perspective - so that the cure of alienation is met by the charge that Christianity is a made-up fairy story, while the cure of Christianity offering a coherent truth is met by objections that this system is immoral (according to modern secular norms); yet the grounded ethical system of Christianity is said to be arbitrary or alienating.
Such objections can go round and round without termination for weeks, years, decades...
*
It seems very difficult, in a world in of cognitive fragmentation/ specialization, to bring matters to a point - to force a total-world-view confrontation between Christianity and mainstream secular Leftism - a confrontation which Christianity would immediately and easily win.
Modern mass media culture, the partial professional cultures (e.g. politics, law, science, the arts), the weakness and wickedness of the human heart, and the cumulative corruptions of purposive evil at work around us all conspire to prevent such a confrontation.
But this is the great latent strength of Christianity. If, or when, a person brings themselves or is brought by circumstance to the point of balancing Christianity against secular modernity - and can hold themselves or be held at that point for more than a moment - then there is no doubt of the outcome.
*
There are three broad categories of dissatisfaction with the mainstream secular world view:
1. The self-refuting nature of relativism.
2. The arbitrariness of ethics without religion.
3. Hopelessness and alienation.
*
Hopelessness and alienation are the hardest to identify and pin down, and are always deniable - but maybe they are the most damaging aspect of the modern malaise because - on the one hand - they render the individual unable to stand firm and make an effort to escape their situation; while - on the other hand - they lead the sufferer to escape his existential loneliness into distractions and intoxications (especially sexual) which take him further and further from the truth and from virtue.
*
Christianity solves all these problems; and that should be enough to recommend it conclusively when someone has nothing coherent or motivating to offer as an alternative - yet clearly this seldom happens, and conversion is typically a drawn-out process that is easily derailed (certainly it was for me).
What happens is that each Christian solution to each class of problem is met by a change of ground and criticized from a different perspective - so that the cure of alienation is met by the charge that Christianity is a made-up fairy story, while the cure of Christianity offering a coherent truth is met by objections that this system is immoral (according to modern secular norms); yet the grounded ethical system of Christianity is said to be arbitrary or alienating.
Such objections can go round and round without termination for weeks, years, decades...
*
It seems very difficult, in a world in of cognitive fragmentation/ specialization, to bring matters to a point - to force a total-world-view confrontation between Christianity and mainstream secular Leftism - a confrontation which Christianity would immediately and easily win.
Modern mass media culture, the partial professional cultures (e.g. politics, law, science, the arts), the weakness and wickedness of the human heart, and the cumulative corruptions of purposive evil at work around us all conspire to prevent such a confrontation.
But this is the great latent strength of Christianity. If, or when, a person brings themselves or is brought by circumstance to the point of balancing Christianity against secular modernity - and can hold themselves or be held at that point for more than a moment - then there is no doubt of the outcome.
*
Saturday, 6 July 2013
Truth claims and Christianity - Jerram Barrs
*
In this very interesting and useful video, Jerram Barrs makes the excellent point that Christian evangelists must be very clear and careful to make the point that people need to believe Christianity because it is true, not because of the beneficial psychological or social effects it may have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NMGCLapxd0
Jerram Barrs has probably the most entrancing voice since the late Bob Ross - so just listening to him speak is extremely pleasant!
*
In this very interesting and useful video, Jerram Barrs makes the excellent point that Christian evangelists must be very clear and careful to make the point that people need to believe Christianity because it is true, not because of the beneficial psychological or social effects it may have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NMGCLapxd0
Jerram Barrs has probably the most entrancing voice since the late Bob Ross - so just listening to him speak is extremely pleasant!
*
Friday, 5 July 2013
A passage very important in my conversion to Christianity
*
From The Last Battle (the final volume of the Chronicles of Narnia) by C.S. Lewis
"I hope Tash ate the Dwarfs too," said Eustace. "Little swine."
"No, he didn't," said Lucy. "And don't be horrid. Thery're still here. In fact you can see them from here. And I've tried and tried to make friends with them but it's no use."
"Friends with them!" cried Eustace. "If you knew how those Dwarfs have been behaving!"
"Oh stop it, Eustace," said Lucy. "Do come and see them. King Tirian, perhaps you could do something with them."
"I can feel no great love for Dwarfs today," said Tirian. "Yet at your asking, Lady, I would do a greater thing than this."
Lucy led the way and soon they could all see the Dwarfs. They had a very odd look. They weren't strolling about or enjoying themselves (although the cords with which they had been tied seemed to have vanished) nor were they lying down and having a rest. They were sitting very close together in a little circle facing one another. They never looked round or took any notice of the humans till Lucy and Tirian were almost near enough to touch them. Then the Dwarfs all cocked their heads as if they couldn't see anyone but were listening hard and trying to guess by the sound what was happening. "Look out!" said one of them in a surly voice. "Mind where you're going. Don't walk into our faces!"
"All right!" said Eustace indignantly. "We're not blind. We've got eyes in our heads."
"They must be darn good ones if you can see in here," said the same Dwarf whose name was Diggle.
"In where?" asked Edmund.
"Why you bone-head, in here of course," said Diggle. "In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable."
"Are you blind?" said Tirian.
"Ain't we all blind in the dark!" said Diggle.
"But it isn't dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs," said Lucy. "Can't you see? Look up! Look round! Can't you see the sky and the trees and the flowers? Can't you see me?"
"How in the name of all Humbug can I see what ain't there? And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?"
"But I can see you," said Lucy. "I'll prove I can see you. You've got a pipe in your mouth."
"Anyone that knows the smell of baccy could tell that," said Diggle. "Oh the poor things! This is dreadful," said Lucy. Then she had an idea. She stopped and picked some wild violets. "Listen, Dwarf," she said. "Even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right: can you smell that?" She leaned across and held the fresh, damp flowers to Diggle's ugly nose. But she had to jump back quickly in order to avoid a blow from his hard little fist.
"None of that!" he shouted. "How dare you! What do you mean by shoving a lot of filthy stable-litter in my face? There was a thistle in it too. It's like your sauce! And who are you anyway?"
"Earth-man," said Tirian, "she is the Queen Lucy, sent hither by Aslan out of the deep past. And it is for her sake alone that I, Tirian your lawful King, do not cut all your heads from your shoulders, proved and twice-proved traitors that you are."
"Well if that doesn't beat everything!" exclaimed Diggle. "How can you go on talking all that rot? Your wonderful Lion didn't come and help you, did he? Thought not. And now - even now - when you've been beaten and shoved into this black hole, just the same as the rest of us, you're still at your old game. Starting a new lie! Trying to make us believe we're none of us shut up, and it ain't dark, and heaven knows what."
"There is no black hole, save in your own fancy, fool," cried Tirian. "Come out of it." And, leaning forward, he caught Diggle by the belt and the hood and swung him right out of the circle of Dwarfs. But the moment Tirian put him down, Diggle darted back to his place among the others, rubbing his nose and howling:
"Ow! Ow! What d'you do that for! Banging my face against the wall. You've nearly broken my nose."
"Oh dear!" said Lucy, "What are we to do for them?"
"Let 'em alone," said Eustace: but as he spoke the earth trembled. The sweet air grew suddenly sweeter. A brightness flashed behind them. All turned. Tirian turned last because he was afraid. There stood his heart's desire, huge and real, the golden Lion, Aslan himself, and already the others were kneeling in a circle round his forepaws and burying their hands and faces in his mane as he stooped his great head to touch them with his tongue. Then he fixed his eyes upon Tirian, and Tirian came near, trembling, and flung himself at the Lion's feet, and the Lion kissed him and said, "Well done, last of the Kings of Narnia who stood firm at the darkest hour."
"Aslan," said Lucy through her tears, "could you - will you - do something for these poor Dwarfs?"
"Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do." He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, "Hear that? That's the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don't take any notice. They won't take us in again!"
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs' knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn't much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn't taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had a bit of an old turnip and a third said he'd found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said "Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey's been at! Never thought we'd come to this." But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarrelling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said:
"Well, at any rate there's no Humbug here. We haven't let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs."
"You see, " said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out. But come, children. I have other work to do."
*
I can distinctly remember reading this passage, lying on a bed at home - although I cannot date the event, it was probably in the summer of 2008.
By that point I was getting close to becoming a Christian; but finding that for every particular item of evidence there was an alternative explanation. Everything that could be explained meaningfully, purposefully, personally by Christianity - could also be explained as a product of accidental, contingent, mechanical process. Every insight could be interpreted as a delusion.
I was, in short, behaving just like the Dwarfs - and, like the Dwarfs, was feeling smugly satisfied by my own skepticism.
And then I saw the self-destructive futility of living my life in this way. I could be living in a universe of purpose, meaning and relation - and yet I could all the time be stoutly maintaining that all of this apparent purpose, meaning, relation - truth, beauty, virtue - was an illusion, a cruel trick of chance...
What would be the point of going through life behaving like that, seeing things in that kind of way? Yet that was exactly what I had been doing for decades...
*
From The Last Battle (the final volume of the Chronicles of Narnia) by C.S. Lewis
"I hope Tash ate the Dwarfs too," said Eustace. "Little swine."
"No, he didn't," said Lucy. "And don't be horrid. Thery're still here. In fact you can see them from here. And I've tried and tried to make friends with them but it's no use."
"Friends with them!" cried Eustace. "If you knew how those Dwarfs have been behaving!"
"Oh stop it, Eustace," said Lucy. "Do come and see them. King Tirian, perhaps you could do something with them."
"I can feel no great love for Dwarfs today," said Tirian. "Yet at your asking, Lady, I would do a greater thing than this."
Lucy led the way and soon they could all see the Dwarfs. They had a very odd look. They weren't strolling about or enjoying themselves (although the cords with which they had been tied seemed to have vanished) nor were they lying down and having a rest. They were sitting very close together in a little circle facing one another. They never looked round or took any notice of the humans till Lucy and Tirian were almost near enough to touch them. Then the Dwarfs all cocked their heads as if they couldn't see anyone but were listening hard and trying to guess by the sound what was happening. "Look out!" said one of them in a surly voice. "Mind where you're going. Don't walk into our faces!"
"All right!" said Eustace indignantly. "We're not blind. We've got eyes in our heads."
"They must be darn good ones if you can see in here," said the same Dwarf whose name was Diggle.
"In where?" asked Edmund.
"Why you bone-head, in here of course," said Diggle. "In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable."
"Are you blind?" said Tirian.
"Ain't we all blind in the dark!" said Diggle.
"But it isn't dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs," said Lucy. "Can't you see? Look up! Look round! Can't you see the sky and the trees and the flowers? Can't you see me?"
"How in the name of all Humbug can I see what ain't there? And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?"
"But I can see you," said Lucy. "I'll prove I can see you. You've got a pipe in your mouth."
"Anyone that knows the smell of baccy could tell that," said Diggle. "Oh the poor things! This is dreadful," said Lucy. Then she had an idea. She stopped and picked some wild violets. "Listen, Dwarf," she said. "Even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right: can you smell that?" She leaned across and held the fresh, damp flowers to Diggle's ugly nose. But she had to jump back quickly in order to avoid a blow from his hard little fist.
"None of that!" he shouted. "How dare you! What do you mean by shoving a lot of filthy stable-litter in my face? There was a thistle in it too. It's like your sauce! And who are you anyway?"
"Earth-man," said Tirian, "she is the Queen Lucy, sent hither by Aslan out of the deep past. And it is for her sake alone that I, Tirian your lawful King, do not cut all your heads from your shoulders, proved and twice-proved traitors that you are."
"Well if that doesn't beat everything!" exclaimed Diggle. "How can you go on talking all that rot? Your wonderful Lion didn't come and help you, did he? Thought not. And now - even now - when you've been beaten and shoved into this black hole, just the same as the rest of us, you're still at your old game. Starting a new lie! Trying to make us believe we're none of us shut up, and it ain't dark, and heaven knows what."
"There is no black hole, save in your own fancy, fool," cried Tirian. "Come out of it." And, leaning forward, he caught Diggle by the belt and the hood and swung him right out of the circle of Dwarfs. But the moment Tirian put him down, Diggle darted back to his place among the others, rubbing his nose and howling:
"Ow! Ow! What d'you do that for! Banging my face against the wall. You've nearly broken my nose."
"Oh dear!" said Lucy, "What are we to do for them?"
"Let 'em alone," said Eustace: but as he spoke the earth trembled. The sweet air grew suddenly sweeter. A brightness flashed behind them. All turned. Tirian turned last because he was afraid. There stood his heart's desire, huge and real, the golden Lion, Aslan himself, and already the others were kneeling in a circle round his forepaws and burying their hands and faces in his mane as he stooped his great head to touch them with his tongue. Then he fixed his eyes upon Tirian, and Tirian came near, trembling, and flung himself at the Lion's feet, and the Lion kissed him and said, "Well done, last of the Kings of Narnia who stood firm at the darkest hour."
"Aslan," said Lucy through her tears, "could you - will you - do something for these poor Dwarfs?"
"Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do." He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, "Hear that? That's the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don't take any notice. They won't take us in again!"
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs' knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn't much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn't taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had a bit of an old turnip and a third said he'd found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said "Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey's been at! Never thought we'd come to this." But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarrelling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said:
"Well, at any rate there's no Humbug here. We haven't let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs."
"You see, " said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out. But come, children. I have other work to do."
*
I can distinctly remember reading this passage, lying on a bed at home - although I cannot date the event, it was probably in the summer of 2008.
By that point I was getting close to becoming a Christian; but finding that for every particular item of evidence there was an alternative explanation. Everything that could be explained meaningfully, purposefully, personally by Christianity - could also be explained as a product of accidental, contingent, mechanical process. Every insight could be interpreted as a delusion.
I was, in short, behaving just like the Dwarfs - and, like the Dwarfs, was feeling smugly satisfied by my own skepticism.
And then I saw the self-destructive futility of living my life in this way. I could be living in a universe of purpose, meaning and relation - and yet I could all the time be stoutly maintaining that all of this apparent purpose, meaning, relation - truth, beauty, virtue - was an illusion, a cruel trick of chance...
What would be the point of going through life behaving like that, seeing things in that kind of way? Yet that was exactly what I had been doing for decades...
*
Thursday, 4 July 2013
What is Heaven like?
*
The analogies are drawn from our own best experiences - but each points to a qualitatively different Heaven, an essentially different Heaven.
1. An endless timeless moment of ecstasy; to be blissed-out with empathic love, aesthetic arrest, sudden deep insight - always now but infinitely prolonged?
2. A perpetual adventure, a cornucopia of infinitely various pleasures of mind and body - always fresh; love in praise, in thanks, in song?
3. The perfection of perfect family life, in God's family; as Son or Daughter, as Brother or Sister, as Father or Mother; Aunties and Uncles, Nephews, Nieces and Cousins (by blood and by adoption): eternal growth of love in relations?
4. Perpetual triumphant war - courage, comradeship, excitement, alternating with rest and recreation, feasting and celebrating and planning the next campaign: to be God's warrior?
*
The main distinction is Heaven as a perpetual state versus Heaven as a perpetual process; Heaven as being or Heaven as becoming.
*
Which do you most desire?
Which is truest?
Or/ And: are there other Heaven's, essentially different; more true?
*
The analogies are drawn from our own best experiences - but each points to a qualitatively different Heaven, an essentially different Heaven.
1. An endless timeless moment of ecstasy; to be blissed-out with empathic love, aesthetic arrest, sudden deep insight - always now but infinitely prolonged?
2. A perpetual adventure, a cornucopia of infinitely various pleasures of mind and body - always fresh; love in praise, in thanks, in song?
3. The perfection of perfect family life, in God's family; as Son or Daughter, as Brother or Sister, as Father or Mother; Aunties and Uncles, Nephews, Nieces and Cousins (by blood and by adoption): eternal growth of love in relations?
4. Perpetual triumphant war - courage, comradeship, excitement, alternating with rest and recreation, feasting and celebrating and planning the next campaign: to be God's warrior?
*
The main distinction is Heaven as a perpetual state versus Heaven as a perpetual process; Heaven as being or Heaven as becoming.
*
Which do you most desire?
Which is truest?
Or/ And: are there other Heaven's, essentially different; more true?
*
Accepted limits on what God can do - Man's free will needs to be one of them
*
I think all Christians agree that:
1. God cannot do evil - His nature is to be Good - this is a Good God
2. God cannot do anything illogical, self-contradicting
So all Christians have a concept of God that is somewhat bounded, somewhat limited - and this applies even to the God of Classical Theology who is conceived as almighty, omnipotent, all-knowing and present in all places.
*
What is relatively neglected - and in a way which may be harmful - is that God is also limited by free will; He cannot violate human free will - humans are autonomous agents of will - centres of choice.
God awaits the result of Man's free will - God can plan up to that point, and from that point; and mobilizes incomprehensible and effectively-infinite power up to and beyond that point - but Man's free will stands apart from this.
*
The whole plan of salvation, the sacred history of Scripture, is predicated on this - on the fact that Men must choose, that their choice is real; and only because Men can choose, and because their choices are real is it just for the consequences of these choices to be treated as Good or evil (virtuous or sinful).
Thus we should add a third limit on what God can do - God cannot violate Man's free will.
These constraints can be expressed as what God must do, as well as what He cannot do.
1. God must be Good
2. God must be rational
3. God must work with Man's free will, must take account of the consequences of Man's agency.
*
This fact of Man's agency and free will is treated as theologically controversial, and indeed it may be theologically difficult to explain - but it needs to be accepted upfront and explicitly that what we are doing in life is the real thing - that our reflections and decisions are truly and ultimately our own - that we are responsible (awesomely responsible) for our lives.
Now decide.
*
I think all Christians agree that:
1. God cannot do evil - His nature is to be Good - this is a Good God
2. God cannot do anything illogical, self-contradicting
So all Christians have a concept of God that is somewhat bounded, somewhat limited - and this applies even to the God of Classical Theology who is conceived as almighty, omnipotent, all-knowing and present in all places.
*
What is relatively neglected - and in a way which may be harmful - is that God is also limited by free will; He cannot violate human free will - humans are autonomous agents of will - centres of choice.
God awaits the result of Man's free will - God can plan up to that point, and from that point; and mobilizes incomprehensible and effectively-infinite power up to and beyond that point - but Man's free will stands apart from this.
*
The whole plan of salvation, the sacred history of Scripture, is predicated on this - on the fact that Men must choose, that their choice is real; and only because Men can choose, and because their choices are real is it just for the consequences of these choices to be treated as Good or evil (virtuous or sinful).
Thus we should add a third limit on what God can do - God cannot violate Man's free will.
These constraints can be expressed as what God must do, as well as what He cannot do.
1. God must be Good
2. God must be rational
3. God must work with Man's free will, must take account of the consequences of Man's agency.
*
This fact of Man's agency and free will is treated as theologically controversial, and indeed it may be theologically difficult to explain - but it needs to be accepted upfront and explicitly that what we are doing in life is the real thing - that our reflections and decisions are truly and ultimately our own - that we are responsible (awesomely responsible) for our lives.
Now decide.
*
Wednesday, 3 July 2013
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
Phony advice: "Just draw what you see"
*
I got little enjoyment from, and had little natural ability at, peering down a microscope, and found it hard to make sense of what I saw down the instrument.
Therefore, it was very surprising to find myself a professional histologist (microscopic anatomist) for more than three years, as my interest in the human adrenal function led me into this realm.
I even had to teach this subject in practical classes - in the knowledge that the majority of students were simply copying the diagrams from their text books while pretending to draw what they could see.
Because, actually, almost the opposite is true: you can only see what you know is there.
And if you know something is there, then you will see it - especially when it comes to microscopes.
*
Before each class I would project up microscope slides and point out the major features that students should look for in their own examples - and when it came to the adrenal I found a great deal of trouble in matching what I saw projected on screen, with what was in the textbook.
In fact I couldn't make sense of the slides at all, and can remember waving the pointer vaguely and rapidly across the projected slide while talking fast, and passing swiftly onto the next topic.
Nonetheless, since the slides had been made in the anatomy department and had been used by generations of students, I naturally assumed that the fault was mine (as it normally would have been).
*
It was not until I met a pathologist with an interest in anatomy that I discovered what was wrong.
In the first place the anatomy textbooks were wrong - they had the human adrenal shaped more or less like an egg, with a cortex surrounding the medulla like the white encloses the yolk.
Whereas the human adrenals were asymmetrical, being either flattened or somewhat pyramidal; and there was not much medulla at all; and what little medulla there was, was squashed and scattered (plus there was a whacking great, flaccid, central vein - and nobody had a clue what it did).
*
So what was on the slides in the anatomy department?
As it turned-out - mostly pus.
The pathologist told me that the adrenal was one of the earliest parts of the human body to putrefy after death (second only to the pancreas) and indeed when death was painful and prolonged ('stressful') then the adrenal could become purulent even before death.
Therefore the only way to get post-mortem adrenals in decent condition was from rare sudden death victims (such as road traffic accidents) and within just a few hours of death.
By contrast, the post-mortem material in anatomy was from people dying of many causes and taken many days after death - so naturally, the adrenals were purulent.
So, in a nutshell, the students were being asked to draw carefully fixated and stained histological sections of rotten meat!
*
The fact that, despite this, generations of anatomists had come up with labelled diagrams of text-book adrenals, proved conclusively that everybody involved - staff and students - was seeing and drawing what they 'knew' was there, and never what they actually saw.
*
I got little enjoyment from, and had little natural ability at, peering down a microscope, and found it hard to make sense of what I saw down the instrument.
Therefore, it was very surprising to find myself a professional histologist (microscopic anatomist) for more than three years, as my interest in the human adrenal function led me into this realm.
I even had to teach this subject in practical classes - in the knowledge that the majority of students were simply copying the diagrams from their text books while pretending to draw what they could see.
Because, actually, almost the opposite is true: you can only see what you know is there.
And if you know something is there, then you will see it - especially when it comes to microscopes.
*
Before each class I would project up microscope slides and point out the major features that students should look for in their own examples - and when it came to the adrenal I found a great deal of trouble in matching what I saw projected on screen, with what was in the textbook.
In fact I couldn't make sense of the slides at all, and can remember waving the pointer vaguely and rapidly across the projected slide while talking fast, and passing swiftly onto the next topic.
Nonetheless, since the slides had been made in the anatomy department and had been used by generations of students, I naturally assumed that the fault was mine (as it normally would have been).
*
It was not until I met a pathologist with an interest in anatomy that I discovered what was wrong.
In the first place the anatomy textbooks were wrong - they had the human adrenal shaped more or less like an egg, with a cortex surrounding the medulla like the white encloses the yolk.
Whereas the human adrenals were asymmetrical, being either flattened or somewhat pyramidal; and there was not much medulla at all; and what little medulla there was, was squashed and scattered (plus there was a whacking great, flaccid, central vein - and nobody had a clue what it did).
*
So what was on the slides in the anatomy department?
As it turned-out - mostly pus.
The pathologist told me that the adrenal was one of the earliest parts of the human body to putrefy after death (second only to the pancreas) and indeed when death was painful and prolonged ('stressful') then the adrenal could become purulent even before death.
Therefore the only way to get post-mortem adrenals in decent condition was from rare sudden death victims (such as road traffic accidents) and within just a few hours of death.
By contrast, the post-mortem material in anatomy was from people dying of many causes and taken many days after death - so naturally, the adrenals were purulent.
So, in a nutshell, the students were being asked to draw carefully fixated and stained histological sections of rotten meat!
*
The fact that, despite this, generations of anatomists had come up with labelled diagrams of text-book adrenals, proved conclusively that everybody involved - staff and students - was seeing and drawing what they 'knew' was there, and never what they actually saw.
*
How is Biblical Prophecy compatible with genuine free will in a context of linear, sequential Time?
*
As it turns-out: in several conceivable ways.
*
Excerpted from The Mormon Concept of God - A philosophical analysis, by Blake Ostler:
*
How then do those who believe God's foreknowledge is limited explain biblical prophecy and faith in God's certain triumph over evil?
God can ensure triumph over evil though the future is not absolutely foreknown because he is like a master chess player. Even though he does not know exactly which moves free persons will make, he knows all possible moves that can be made and that he can meet any such moves and eventually win the game.
God may lose some pieces during the games, just as some persons may freely choose to reject God and thwart his plans so far as they are concerned individually, but God can guarantee ultimate victory...
*
God can ensure ultimate victory and the realization of all of his purposes not because of his omniscience, but because of his almighty power.
These features of God's knowledge ensure that God knows all possibilities and future events which are now certain given causal implications ... This view also allows for free choices among genuinely open alternatives ... These provisions suggest that God knows all possible avenues of choices... and, coupled with God's maximal power, entail that God's plans and declarations of future events will be realized...
Thus a complete picture of God's providence is possible even though God does not have infallible and complete foreknowledge.
*
Nevertheless, can limited foreknowledge be squared with scriptural predictions of the future? I will argue that: (a) scripture is consistent with limited foreknowledge, and (b) a number of scriptures require limited foreknowledge. There are several different types of prophecy, each of which is consistent with God's limited foreknowledge:
*
1. Predictions about what God will bring about through his own power regardless of human decisions
God can clearly predict his own actions and promises regardless of human decisions. If human cooperation is not involved, then God can unilaterally guarantee the occurrence of a particular event and predict it ahead of time.
For example, God can guarantee that his plan will be fulfilled because he will intervene to bring it about. Thus God can show prophets a panoramic vision of his plan from beginning to end. God can declare that he knows the beginning from the end in terms of his plan and what he will bring about himself...
However, the fact that God's plan will be carried out does not mean that he has to know each individual's free actions beforehand...
*
2. Conditional prophecies. Numerous prophecies express what God will do if certain conditions obtain
For example, several prophecies are predictions as to what will happen if human beings behave in one way rather than another... Conditional prophecies do not require absolute foreknowledge because God waits upon conditions to occur before a course of action is finally decided. Indeed, conditional prophecies are incomprehensible if God has complete foreknowledge. There would be no "ifs," only absolutes.
*
3. Prophecies of Inevitable Consequences of Factors Already Present
Since God's knowledge of present conditions is complete, it follows that he knows all things that are inevitable as a causal result of present conditions. He also knows the probability of any future event based on current conditions. For example, a skilled physician can predict the death of certain individuals because the causes of that death are already present. Similarly, God can predict future events that are causally implicated by present circumstances or otherwise inevitable...
*
4. Absolute Election of Nations and Conditional Election of Individuals
A number of passages in the New Testament speak of God's foreknowledge in the context of election or foreordination...
For example, Ephesians 1:11 discusses God's foreordination of persons, "in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined (prooristhentes) according to the purpose (prothesin) of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will (kata ten boulen tou thelmatos autou)."
This passage does not speak about what persons do to earn election; rather, it focuses exclusively on God's decision to choose a certain group of persons.
Now if individual persons were "predestined" or "elected" to salvation on the basis of God's own counsel alone, then free will would play no role in individual salvation. God would arbitrarily damn some and leave others to damnation for no act of their own...
However, passages speaking about God's election do not address individual election; rather, they speak of the corporate election of Israel, or the church, or of God's people as a whole...
Thus election is not a reward for an individual exercise of free will but a divine decision unilaterally made to elect a group of people as his "chosen" or "promised" people. Although the election is certain, the promises made to any individual member of the elect group are conditional upon faithfulness to God. Such corporate election is not inconsistent with individual free will.
By Blake Ostler:
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=8&num=2&id=226
**
As it turns-out: in several conceivable ways.
*
Excerpted from The Mormon Concept of God - A philosophical analysis, by Blake Ostler:
*
How then do those who believe God's foreknowledge is limited explain biblical prophecy and faith in God's certain triumph over evil?
God can ensure triumph over evil though the future is not absolutely foreknown because he is like a master chess player. Even though he does not know exactly which moves free persons will make, he knows all possible moves that can be made and that he can meet any such moves and eventually win the game.
God may lose some pieces during the games, just as some persons may freely choose to reject God and thwart his plans so far as they are concerned individually, but God can guarantee ultimate victory...
*
God can ensure ultimate victory and the realization of all of his purposes not because of his omniscience, but because of his almighty power.
These features of God's knowledge ensure that God knows all possibilities and future events which are now certain given causal implications ... This view also allows for free choices among genuinely open alternatives ... These provisions suggest that God knows all possible avenues of choices... and, coupled with God's maximal power, entail that God's plans and declarations of future events will be realized...
Thus a complete picture of God's providence is possible even though God does not have infallible and complete foreknowledge.
*
Nevertheless, can limited foreknowledge be squared with scriptural predictions of the future? I will argue that: (a) scripture is consistent with limited foreknowledge, and (b) a number of scriptures require limited foreknowledge. There are several different types of prophecy, each of which is consistent with God's limited foreknowledge:
*
1. Predictions about what God will bring about through his own power regardless of human decisions
God can clearly predict his own actions and promises regardless of human decisions. If human cooperation is not involved, then God can unilaterally guarantee the occurrence of a particular event and predict it ahead of time.
For example, God can guarantee that his plan will be fulfilled because he will intervene to bring it about. Thus God can show prophets a panoramic vision of his plan from beginning to end. God can declare that he knows the beginning from the end in terms of his plan and what he will bring about himself...
However, the fact that God's plan will be carried out does not mean that he has to know each individual's free actions beforehand...
*
2. Conditional prophecies. Numerous prophecies express what God will do if certain conditions obtain
For example, several prophecies are predictions as to what will happen if human beings behave in one way rather than another... Conditional prophecies do not require absolute foreknowledge because God waits upon conditions to occur before a course of action is finally decided. Indeed, conditional prophecies are incomprehensible if God has complete foreknowledge. There would be no "ifs," only absolutes.
*
3. Prophecies of Inevitable Consequences of Factors Already Present
Since God's knowledge of present conditions is complete, it follows that he knows all things that are inevitable as a causal result of present conditions. He also knows the probability of any future event based on current conditions. For example, a skilled physician can predict the death of certain individuals because the causes of that death are already present. Similarly, God can predict future events that are causally implicated by present circumstances or otherwise inevitable...
*
4. Absolute Election of Nations and Conditional Election of Individuals
A number of passages in the New Testament speak of God's foreknowledge in the context of election or foreordination...
For example, Ephesians 1:11 discusses God's foreordination of persons, "in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined (prooristhentes) according to the purpose (prothesin) of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will (kata ten boulen tou thelmatos autou)."
This passage does not speak about what persons do to earn election; rather, it focuses exclusively on God's decision to choose a certain group of persons.
Now if individual persons were "predestined" or "elected" to salvation on the basis of God's own counsel alone, then free will would play no role in individual salvation. God would arbitrarily damn some and leave others to damnation for no act of their own...
However, passages speaking about God's election do not address individual election; rather, they speak of the corporate election of Israel, or the church, or of God's people as a whole...
Thus election is not a reward for an individual exercise of free will but a divine decision unilaterally made to elect a group of people as his "chosen" or "promised" people. Although the election is certain, the promises made to any individual member of the elect group are conditional upon faithfulness to God. Such corporate election is not inconsistent with individual free will.
By Blake Ostler:
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=8&num=2&id=226
**
Monday, 1 July 2013
In what sense are Men 'gods' or Sons of God? (A part of refuting supposed Mormon 'polytheism')
*
Excerpted from Re-vision-ing the Mormon concept of deity, by Blake Ostler
53. Of course it may also be argued that [in late revelations and the King Follet Discourse] Joseph Smith somehow intended to replace the notion of three distinct persons united as one God with the idea that there are simply three Gods.
But I see no evidence in the text that something of that nature was intended. Indeed, it seems much more reasonable to me to assume that Joseph Smith intended later revelations to be bound in the same volume with the earlier revelations and thus contemplated that they would be read in pari materia or in light of one another. [...] What was needed was a clarification that the divine persons are more distinct than the Saints previously understood.
54. It has also been asserted that later Mormon scriptures adopt polytheism straight out. Polytheism is the view that there are a number of deities having distinct spheres of sovereignty. However, such an assertion is not sensitive to the way the word 'God' operates in Mormon scriptures. [...]
56. An 1832 revelation known as the Vision calls humans 'gods' for the first time in Mormon scripture: "as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God." (D&C 76:58). However, this language merely reflects Psalm 82:6: "I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High." This same Psalm was quoted in the gospel of John in response the charge of blasphemy when Christ claims to be the Son of God who is one with the Father. (John 10:30-38) These scriptures probably assert only that humans are gods in the sense that they have been commanded to be holy as God is holy.24
57. The only other scripture that calls humans 'gods' straight out is D&C 132, which states that: "Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue, then shall they be above all things because all things are subject to them. Then shall they be gods because they have power and the angels are subject unto them." (132:20)
This scripture does not entail polytheism because humans are always subordinate to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and dependent on their relationship with them for their divinity. They are never pictured as separately worthy of worship. The Godhead has communicated to them the attributes of divine power, knowledge and presence Humans, as subordinate 'gods' are not independent rivals for worship in the sense required for polytheism.
Blake Ostler
http://www.smpt.org/docs/ostler_element1-1.html
**
In this closely argued essay, Ostler (Mormonism's premier modern theologian outwith the LDS Church Authorities) shows, to my satisfaction, that Mormons are not polytheists any more than mainstream Christians are polytheists (or alternatively, if Mormons are polytheists, then so are all Christians who are Trinitarians and who take seriously that the saved will become Sons of God.)
Ostler shows that the Mormon concept of the Godhead (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) is both coherent and Scriptural/ Biblical (in a way that Classical Trinitarianism is not) - and is indeed formally identical with the 'Social Trinity' theory elucidated and argued by (among others) Reformed Christians such as Cornelius Plantinga - ex President of Calvin Theological Seminary (I presume this implies Plantinga is therefore a Calvinist?).
And in the above passage he shows that by the salvific work of Jesus Christ, Christians are promised divinity as Sons of God - this divinity is to be distinguished from the divinity of the Godhead/ Holy Trinity in the sense that to be a Son of God is to be dependent upon God for this divinity. Thus each Sons of God is NOT a God in his own right but - as being dependent, Sons of God (the future state of Christians, after theosis is complete) are not beings worthy of worship.
Hence (according to Ostler) there is not polytheism in scriptural Mormonism, any more than there is in the most scriptural forms of Reformed Protestantism.
*
Excerpted from Re-vision-ing the Mormon concept of deity, by Blake Ostler
53. Of course it may also be argued that [in late revelations and the King Follet Discourse] Joseph Smith somehow intended to replace the notion of three distinct persons united as one God with the idea that there are simply three Gods.
But I see no evidence in the text that something of that nature was intended. Indeed, it seems much more reasonable to me to assume that Joseph Smith intended later revelations to be bound in the same volume with the earlier revelations and thus contemplated that they would be read in pari materia or in light of one another. [...] What was needed was a clarification that the divine persons are more distinct than the Saints previously understood.
54. It has also been asserted that later Mormon scriptures adopt polytheism straight out. Polytheism is the view that there are a number of deities having distinct spheres of sovereignty. However, such an assertion is not sensitive to the way the word 'God' operates in Mormon scriptures. [...]
56. An 1832 revelation known as the Vision calls humans 'gods' for the first time in Mormon scripture: "as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God." (D&C 76:58). However, this language merely reflects Psalm 82:6: "I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High." This same Psalm was quoted in the gospel of John in response the charge of blasphemy when Christ claims to be the Son of God who is one with the Father. (John 10:30-38) These scriptures probably assert only that humans are gods in the sense that they have been commanded to be holy as God is holy.24
57. The only other scripture that calls humans 'gods' straight out is D&C 132, which states that: "Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue, then shall they be above all things because all things are subject to them. Then shall they be gods because they have power and the angels are subject unto them." (132:20)
This scripture does not entail polytheism because humans are always subordinate to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and dependent on their relationship with them for their divinity. They are never pictured as separately worthy of worship. The Godhead has communicated to them the attributes of divine power, knowledge and presence Humans, as subordinate 'gods' are not independent rivals for worship in the sense required for polytheism.
Blake Ostler
http://www.smpt.org/docs/ostler_element1-1.html
**
In this closely argued essay, Ostler (Mormonism's premier modern theologian outwith the LDS Church Authorities) shows, to my satisfaction, that Mormons are not polytheists any more than mainstream Christians are polytheists (or alternatively, if Mormons are polytheists, then so are all Christians who are Trinitarians and who take seriously that the saved will become Sons of God.)
Ostler shows that the Mormon concept of the Godhead (Father, Son, Holy Ghost) is both coherent and Scriptural/ Biblical (in a way that Classical Trinitarianism is not) - and is indeed formally identical with the 'Social Trinity' theory elucidated and argued by (among others) Reformed Christians such as Cornelius Plantinga - ex President of Calvin Theological Seminary (I presume this implies Plantinga is therefore a Calvinist?).
And in the above passage he shows that by the salvific work of Jesus Christ, Christians are promised divinity as Sons of God - this divinity is to be distinguished from the divinity of the Godhead/ Holy Trinity in the sense that to be a Son of God is to be dependent upon God for this divinity. Thus each Sons of God is NOT a God in his own right but - as being dependent, Sons of God (the future state of Christians, after theosis is complete) are not beings worthy of worship.
Hence (according to Ostler) there is not polytheism in scriptural Mormonism, any more than there is in the most scriptural forms of Reformed Protestantism.
*
What happens when we have had *enough* sleep?
*
In my experience, the same dream is recycled with only minor variations.
I get stuck in a dream - a dream that repeats with minor variations - or, at least, a continuation of a theme without closure or any apparent tendency for closure.
A situation which is dull, annoying, futile; indeed it feels counter-productive, such that it feels like sleep is doing more harm than good.
That is the point where restorative sleep tips over into over-sleeping - when more sleep makes me more tired.
*
In my experience, the same dream is recycled with only minor variations.
I get stuck in a dream - a dream that repeats with minor variations - or, at least, a continuation of a theme without closure or any apparent tendency for closure.
A situation which is dull, annoying, futile; indeed it feels counter-productive, such that it feels like sleep is doing more harm than good.
That is the point where restorative sleep tips over into over-sleeping - when more sleep makes me more tired.
*
The Kingdom of God is brought about by mutual Love, not unilateral power
*
Further, whereas Mosser envisions the kingdom of God as being brought about by God's unilateral power, Latter-day Saints expect the kingdom of God to be brought about through our love for God. Only when we truly do the will of God freely will his kingdom reign. The kingdom is not brought about by coercive power, but by loving persuasion. The kingdom of God is not found in the sky but inside of us. If the kingdom is not drawn from our loving hearts and our willingness to do God's will on earth as it is done in heaven, his kingdom cannot come.
Blake Ostler
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=15&num=1&id=473
*
Further, whereas Mosser envisions the kingdom of God as being brought about by God's unilateral power, Latter-day Saints expect the kingdom of God to be brought about through our love for God. Only when we truly do the will of God freely will his kingdom reign. The kingdom is not brought about by coercive power, but by loving persuasion. The kingdom of God is not found in the sky but inside of us. If the kingdom is not drawn from our loving hearts and our willingness to do God's will on earth as it is done in heaven, his kingdom cannot come.
Blake Ostler
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=15&num=1&id=473
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