God in a box?!?!

One of the primary difficulties about reading so much philosophy is all of the thinking - or, at least for me it is. When I think too much I become melancholy. Anyway, I was reflecting on my views of God today as opposed to 18 months ago, and so much has happened in this last year and 1/2 that many of my views (or maybe I) have changed. I used to be more concerned with some of the more legalistic practices within Christianity, e.g. drinking, and though one ought not to drink if one is in a position of leadership within the church it is not something that people ought to break felloship over. I used to think that I really knew who God is [was], but part of this is relying upon what everybody tells you, especially our culture in the U.S. See, the problem with the evangelical culture in the U.S. is that we make God out to be who we want Him to be. The more conservative evangelicals make God to be somekind of divine rulemaker, listen to God so that your family, e.g. wife, and children will obey you. Usually for the conservatives, God is all about the family, God cares nothing about anything else but the family (though, maybe, sometimes, God wants us to preach the gospel, but family always comes first). The more moderate Christians focus upon God as love, God loves us and doesn't care what we do (often neglecting the fact that God is also just). We ought to emphasize the fact that God loves families and that God is love - obviously grace is greater in God than justice because if justice and grace were equal everyone would go to hell. There is a mixture of truth in both positions, but evidence that we only want to hear about the parts of the Bible that we agree with is a lack of preaching against divorce. Why don't we hear about divorce more in the church? Because most of the people in our churches are divorced, it's ok to preach on the sinfulness about homosexuality, but never on divorce. People don't want to hear about why they are sinners and what they have done wrong. Obviously all of us are sinners, but it's still important to correct the problems that we have - by the grace of God - as best as possible. Yet, people don't want to change for God because they want God to change for them! We don't want to worship a God that demands something of us, we want to demand something of God.

This last year beginning on April 16, 2003 my dad died, then four weeks later one of my best friends from high school committed suicide, in June my brother was found dead in his apartment (cause of death still not known), then about 3 weeks later one of the people that was at my church in Gainesville who I used to stay with died. All of these people I prayed for God to heal, I prayed for God to allow to live on this earth. Now some preachers, Rod Parsley, Joel Osteen, would tell me that God did not answer my prayers because I did not have enough faith and I did not pray right. (If I were to question their theology concerning this matter they would say "don't judge me" though it would be ok for them to judge my faith.) Why didn't God answer my prayers? I don't know, I honestly don't know. All I know is that God did not answer my prayers - and it sucks, it really sucks. Now I can come up with arguments about God such as Divine Hiddeness and not knowing God's reasons and that's fine, I still believe in God. However as the Quoholeth says in Ecclesiastes "God does as God wills." I cannot control God w/ my prayers, God is not a dog that I [or we] can train to do tricks and serve our will. So like Job I am just going to trust God.

So because of all this have many of my views changed about God. You bet they have, I think today I know less about God than I ever have before, but that's becasue I never knew God as well as I thought I did - I was like everyone else who put God in a box, I was using Scripture to suit my own needs and wants.

The death of classical foundationism

Alvin Plantinga - though he himself is a foundationalist, but not a classical foundationalist - has given religious people reason to hold to their religious beliefs without using any arguments. His claims that belief in God can be properly basic. A properly basic belief is one in which a person does not need to argue for it, such as I am being appeared to treely - I see a tree. I don't need to argue that I see a tree in front of me, but rather this belief is basic, meaning I don't need any inferences to form this belief. Plantinga rejects the classical foundationalists' view of a properly basic belief and defines it accordingly:

Classical Foundationalists PBB - A proposition p is properly basic for a person S if and only if p is either self-evident fo S or incorrigible for S or evident to the senses for S.

The problem with this claim is that I believe for lunch I ate a spicy chicken sandwich, which meets none of the above criteria. Yet the belief concerning what I ate for lunch is properly basic for me. Eventually Plantinga will argue that belief in God can be properly basic, but some problems will occur such as the Great Pumpkin Objection (GPO). I will attempt to better exegete and explain Plantinga's views in later posts, and help answer the GPO.

Life in Grad School

As I said before, everyone - or nearly everyone - is intelligent in grad school. Now some may work harder than others and some may be more intelligent than others, but there are not any idiots in grad school. The interesting thing about it is that you can have reasonable conversations with people also. If someone disagrees with another person, they tell that person why he is wrong and attempt to refute his seemingly incorrect statements. Now, obviously everyone is biased whether emotionally or intellectually. Also, people bring presuppositions and premises to every argument that they might not have grounds for, but they attempt to argue for other beliefs and ideas based upon their previously held presuppositions. It is refreshing to talk to people who are genuinely intelligent and not emotionally driven pseudo-intellectuals and not able to think coherently. I like grad school.

A little bit of gluttony at the relatives

Well, last night I stayed with my Uncle & Aunt. That is always a relaxing visit b/c my Uncle is always laid back and no one knows how to relax and hang out like he does. He is a rancher and has about 50 head of cattle, also a retired mechanic from American Airlines and an advocate of the union. His wife is always baking and cooking food for me when I visit, so I always eat too much - way TOO much. It was an interesting day today at their house because I got in a political conversation with them, talking a little bit about political theory. My Aunt hates (HATES - I cannot emphasize this enough - she does not care who knows how much she hates Bush) W. She told me that he was ugly and not ugly looking. My Uncle explained that though Kerry is not much better sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils. I was able to explain a little bit about my libertarian/Aristotlean political theory, though we were just talking about the disaster in politics today how people mostly vote based on emotions and the looks of the person running for office. Back to the gluttony, for breakfast my Aunt scrambled 5 eggs, fried 3 hash brown cakes, and cooked 2 sausage patties - ALL FOR ME! Now I did not want to eat this much, so about 2 eggs and 1/2 hash brown cake were fed to the dogs, I would have preferred to eat a bowl of cereal but some people like to cook. Then for lunch my Aunt asked me if I'd like steak and of course I replied "yes." She fixed me two :)

Now I am at my cousins in MO and I ate two hamburgers for dinner - which were excellent and my cousin and I ate so much we had to go for a walk after dinner. Well, after the walk I thought woo-hoo now it's time for ice cream and brownies. All I can say now is "whoa" my stomach hurts! When will I ever learn, sin does not pay, including the sin of gluttony - but I must admit I did enjoy eating all the food.

A Christian Philosopher

Lately I have been struggling with what the role of a Christian Philosopher is. I think for myself I will emphasize philosophical theology as a Christian Philosopher. Obviously, a Christian Philosopher will do philosophy from a Christian worldview. Which means emphasizing Scripture first and foremost, then Church Creeds, then lastly teachings of the Church Fathers. This is not to say that creeds or the fathers are authoritative for the believer, but they can both give guidance as to what the traditional, orthodox teaching of the church is. So, one who is doing philosophy in a Christian manner, would definitely not go against anything that Scripture teaches - when Scripture is rightly interpreted, but that's a different matter altogehter - and probably use Church Creeds and Patristics to inform her theology.

Now about doing philosophical theology - I take philosophical theology to be the task of a theologian, though a theologian who is trained in philosophy. Any fool can find a contradiction in Scripture but it is the task of a theologian to resolve the contradiction. A biblical theologian exegetes Scripture and explains what Scripture means, sounds simple enough, but the biblical theologian is not concerned with background material - she is concerned with the text in the context of Scripture. Historical theologians are concerned with the history of theology and properly understanding the setting and the background in which the theologizing has occurred, e.g historical theology involving the Reformation. A systematic theologian combines, historical theology, biblical theology, and philosophical theology. Now I will explain the role of a philosophical theologian. I take a philosophical theologian to be one who understands church tradition and biblical theology but attempts to clarify difficult issues. So an issue such as the Incarnation, e.g. how can Jesus be both fully God and fully man? Or an issue as the Trinity, how can God be three seperate persons, yet one whole being? Another issue is that of God and time, how can God know the future and humans still have free will in such a manner that humans are responsible for their actions?

Two areas that I am intrigued by right now are the Trinity and the Atonement, along with the Trinity and time. For the Atonement, one cannot say that Jesus went to the cross against His Father's will, or on His own initiative, nor can one say that the Father commanded (unitarily) the Son to go to the cross. For Jesus went willingly to the cross while the Father sent Him (or asked (suggested) Him to). As for the Trinity and time, I would like to propose a model where the Father reigns outside of time with the Son at His right hand, while the Holy Spirit acts within time. ...As you can tell, there is still a lot of work for me to do on these issues to maintain my orthodox thinking.

'A' Game

Well, went to OU today to take care of a few things before school started - I had to get these things done before school started because I won't move to Norman until the weekend that classes start - and I realize that it is about game time. OU is probably a top 3 (no less than 5) school for philosophy of religion in North America. As my friend who recently graduated with his JD and MBA told me, "everyone in grad school is smart." Though seminary (relgious grad school) is not easy, I expect OU to be more cutthroat and difficult. There will not be much mercy given by prof's and students will have to prove themselves. I usually compare PhD's in the humanities to that of big time football programs, it is important to go to the top-rated programs, yet a student who works hard in a 'lesser' ranked program can get into a top research university with a tenture-track job - but it's difficult. So, needless to say, I will have my work cut out for me and expect to study about 8-12 hours a day.

On a side-note, I noticed that the social sciences building at OU was quite nice and I bet OU takes good care of the Social Word program and treats those enrolled in the Social Work program as royalty.

Black Evangelicals and the Democratic Party

A recent article has shed some light upon why there have not been as many black pastors endorsing Democratic candidates as they have in the past - because the Democratic party no longer represents the Christian worldview. Black pastors in the DFW area have rejected the Democratic viewpoint on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. The faith based initiative has also quieted some that oppose Bush because they were recipients of Bush's policy. One black pastor expressed his outrage at the Democratic party's desire to have candidates to come to his church and campaign by proclaiming that he would not "pimp" his church. Denny Davis, a megachurch pastor (african-american) claimed that politics was not as important as spiritual matters - he considered politics to be of a material nature - so he would not allow candidates to come to his church and campaign. Tony Evans, pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Church, endorses Bush due to Bush's conservative and somewhat biblical stance on moral issues. The party of Lincoln, it seems, is slowly regaining the support of the African-American community once again. Or, Black Christians are realizing that the Democratic party may very well be morally bankrupt. I am confused by John Kerry's proclaimations that his faith does not affect his politics. Then what kind of faith does he have? I think James would say that his faith is dead!