Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Speculative Theology

Memories, Personhood, and God’s Grace

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Around this time, I get a bit somber during the days the birthday of a friend who died a few years ago. He was an unusual guy in a good way. And while I feel I’ve never struggled to be clear, I have struggled to be understood as a person (and who hasn’t?). Anyway, my friend [we’ll called him Bradley] understood me and I think I understood him. Many of his life struggles mirrored mind and a great deal of his personal suffering and demons surpassed mine by a long way. While some of his life struggles made it difficult for us to hang out, we saw each other regularly until he disappeared, which led to his untimely death.

I think about Bradley a lot, probably every day. Spontaneously, at this point, I mostly recall the good and the dark spots of his life only come up when I call them to mind. Bradley’s influence on me, particularly in high school, remains to this day. I was a dorky do-gooder with a chip on my shoulder because I was picked on, thought I was funny but nobody liked my jokes, and when I did good things I wasn’t applauded or I was ignored. When I met Bradley, I thought, “Here’s a guy who’s smart enough for me to admire and whatever mischief he cares to get into, he plans a way to do it just for fun.” And so coinciding with my conversion to Christianity, Bradley and I became friends. We were in a band called the Exploding Chaos Parade and had a lot of fun doing it. Our rag-tag group of friends studied scripture together, went spelunking, got in trouble for parading without a permit, learned to write music, pranked the band director, pranked the whole school, and on and on. And so my whole life since, I’ve learned to let social conventions go when they contradict the things that really matter. Strangely, through learning to be more free from Bradley and learning to obey the gospel command to “treat others as you wish to be treated” my social problems disappeared. Since about my sophomore year of high school, I’ve made many friends in all walks of life and I’ve learned to really care about people in their circumstances. Incidentally, at Bradley’s funeral, it was powerful to learn how much he was willing to sacrifice for literally anybody with a need, because he just didn’t care how things looked…unless the appearance of it was part of the joke.

Bradley was and is part of who I am. The Geoff Smith that exists now, as a father, husband, teacher, Christian, son, and brother is necessarily in relationship to Bradley. David Bentley Hart makes this observation more generally, “After all, what is a person other than a whole history of associations, loves, memories, attachments, and affinities? Who are we, other than all the others who have made us who we are, and to whom we belong as much as they to us? We are those others.”

In other words, there is no sense in which I am the person that I am without the existence of the other people I have known, and in the case of Bradley or my wife or my parents, I am who I am even in the sense that approximations of these people are in my mind that lead me to make choices wondering what their input would be or how they would interpret my choices or thoughts. This raises a serious question, “In what sense could I be redeemed from death, the world, and sin in isolation of any one of those people?” And it’s a serious question because what it means to be me is necessarily tied up in what it means for Bradley to be Bradley. If I am to be redeemed, what of my memories of those who made me me, how can those memories and the relationships that form them be redeemed except in the redeeming of the relationship itself? Elsewhere Hart described persons this way, “But finite persons are not self-enclosed individual substances; they are dynamic events of relation to what is other than themselves.”

So here’s a syllogism:

  1. A finite person is a dynamic event of relation to what is other than themselves.
  2. Redemption in Christ is for finite persons.
  3. Therefore redemption in Christ for a person must be ultimately inclusive of the relationships that make a finite person themselves.

If we accept Hart’s definition of a person, I think we have to entertain the possibility that for a person to be redeemed, so too, the persons that made that person themselves must be redeemed. Now, I harbor no doubts about Bradley’s faith or his reception into God’s grace. I just use our friendship as an illustration in this case because the melancholy of the time of year has overtaken me. Now, I do not doubt the existence of hell, the necessity of God’s justice, or the moral prescriptions of Scripture and plain reason. I merely mean to reflect on what it means for an individual to be redeemed. C.S. Lewis imagines even animals in close relationship to saints finding themselves with spiritual bodies in the New Heavens and Earth.

Bruce Charlton and John’s Gospel

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Over the past few months, Bruce Charlton has been reading John’s Gospel exclusively in order to better understand the meaning of Jesus. He’s come to some startling conclusions. He compiled them all here. In his final post reporting on this process, he made these observations:

I regard the Fourth Gospel as chronologically the first, and qualitatively the most authoritative, source on the life and teachings of Jesus. As I read and re-read, I found that the discipline created a situation as if the Fourth Gospel was the only scripture.

And indeed, whenever I turned to other Gospels, or to the Epistles and Revelation, they looked very much inferior; very much like rag-bag collections of theology, memoirs, theories and folk tales about Jesus; and of very mixed validity – since many things in them contradict the Fourth Gospel…

This downgrading [of John’s gospel through church history and in academic theology] seems inevitable, given that the Fourth Gospel provides no authority for churches, nor for a priesthood, nor for celibacy, nor for the ritual communal life that has often dominated Christian practice; the Gospel’s vision of the Christian life is highly individual, personal, un-institutional. 

In the Fourth Gospel; Christians are seen to more like a new kind of family, than a new version of ancient religions. 

And the historical church has mostly portrayed Jesus as a rescuer of an otherwise-doomed Mankind – a double-negative description, with Jesus negating the negative state of a ‘fallen’ world. Whereas the Fourth Gospel shows a Jesus dealing with individual persons to enhance their existence – a positive addition to human possibility, with Jesus making possible a qualitative transformation of mortal to divine Life.

I think it’s best to portray apparently contrasting pictures in the Bible as complementary. I will say that John’s gospel does include hints of the institution of a Church:

  1. In John 20:19-23, Jesus gives a specific group of people a form of authority with respect to distributing God’s benefaction. Jesus is still the Way, but the disciples are ways to the way in an institutional manner.
  2. In John 15:9-17, there is a distinction made between general disciples and believers (those who became loyal students of Jesus) and his inner circle of potential preachers (whom Jesus instructs specifically to reap the harvest of potential believers in John 14:31-38). To be a friend of Jesus is, in John’s gospel, to follow his commands but it also carries the connotation of being one of those to whom he revealed the secrets of his ministry (the 12 and maybe a few others).
  3. John’s gospel was written and given to a trusted individual or groupwith an implication that it needed to be read, copied, and even explained (see 1 John 1:1-4). In other words, there was a church with institutional features that supported the writing and transmission of John’s gospel.

Charlton’s points are helpful, but may need some tweaking. His article and collection of articles are certainly worth reading. He’s thinking big ideas about Jesus, which is something that few these days dare to do.

On the Importance of Philosophical Reasoning for Biblical Exegesis: Edward Feser and Romans 1:18-23

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Introduction
In my mind, the ability to engage in philosophical reasoning in order to tease out the implications of particular interpretations of the Bible and other truths is indispensable for reading the Bible and teaching it to others.

Example

Edward Feser, in a post titled, “Repressed Knowledge of God?” comments that the common interpretation of Romans 1:18-23 is mistaken. Here is the passage in question from the ESV, I would translate it differently, but it reflects the most common interpretation:

Romans 1:18-23 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (19) For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. (20) For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (21) For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (22) Claiming to be wise, they became fools, (23) and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

The common interpretation is that the atheist is the person to whom these verses refer. This can be seen in the writings of many schools of Christian apologetics. The idea is that atheism is always a matter of intellectual dishonesty because the Bible teaches that knowledge of the God of the Bible is so obvious that it can only be suppressed by sheer force of will. Personaly, I think that some people are atheists because they accept bad arguments just like some people believe in God for silly reasons.

Without thinking about Christian theology, the psychology of all atheists, and broader philosophical conclusions, the text of Romans 1:18-23 itself militates against seeing atheists in this passage. The passage is not about people who believe in no gods, but rather those who have good reason to worship the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, but choose to worship idols.(See the footnote of this post about the passage in question for an alternative interpretation). The passage gives good insight into the results of idolatry, which is related to atheism, but it is not directly about atheism at all.

Feser, without attempting to exegete the Bible passage in question, refutes the view that God’s existence is so obvious as to only be denied on purpose rather handily. Here is the relevant portion of his argument:

Do we have a natural tendency to believe in God? Yes, but in something like the way in which someone might have a natural aptitude for music or for art. You might be inclined to play some instrument or to draw pictures, but you’re not going to do either very well without education and sustained practice.  And without cultivating your interest in music or art, your output might remain at a very crude level, and your ability might even atrophy altogether.

Or consider moral virtue.  It is natural to us, but only in the sense that we have a natural capacity for it.  Actually to acquire the virtues still requires considerable effort.  As Aquinas writes: “[V]irtue is natural to man inchoatively…both intellectual and moral virtues are in us by way of a natural aptitude, inchoatively, but not perfectly…(Summa Theologiae I-II.63.1, emphasis added), and “man has a natural aptitude for virtue; but the perfection of virtue must be acquired by man by means of some kind of training” (Summa Theologiae I-II.95.1).

Now, knowledge of God is like this. We are indeed naturally inclined to infer from the natural order of things to the existence of some cause beyond it.  But the tendency is not a psychologically overwhelming one like our inclination to eat or to breathe is. It can be dulled.  Furthermore, the inclination is not by itself sufficient to generate a very clear conception of God.  As Aquinas writes:

To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude… This, however, is not to know absolutely that God exists; just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching… (Summa Theologiae I.2.1, emphasis added)

In other words, from a philosophical point of view, to claim that God’s existence is only and ever obvious, is simply untrue. Now, that does not automatically mean that Paul doesn’t teach the falsified point of view. But for those with a conservative evangelical definition of the Bible, it means alternative interpretations should be sought. 

Why is Covetousness Idolatry?

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In Colossians 3:5, Paul equates covetousness with idolatry:

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (Colossians 3:5)

Why?

Well, in Genesis 1:29, man is given explicit permission to eat any plant.

In Genesis 2:16-17, God forbids consuming one fruit (incidentally, the eating of animals is not prohibited, not is their use for sacrifices).

So in the whole field of potential possessions, man is limited. Why? Because to limit man’s desires implies that they are not meant to receive total fulfillment in created things (Ecclesiastes 2:9-10). Man’s desires are functionally infinite (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The created order is simply not suited to the vastness of human desire.

Covetousness is the notion that created things are the primary point of human desire. It arises from the attempt, whether implicit or not, to fill the infinite void in the human soul with the limited field of creation.

When God placed limits on consumption in the garden, the lesson was, apparently, that humanity cannot possess all of creation and the attempt to do so results in futility and meaninglessness.

And so coveting, by replacing God with created things, is idolatry in a way that other sins besides actual idol worship are not.