More Basic History
My response to the comments on the history post below got kinda long.
It irks me to know Satan is snickering at people who profess faith in God and are bored with history because it’s a list of facts. Being bored with history is being bored with God.
The Dane:
Yep, you’re right. History is a fabrication in that it is our limited and twisted perception of what God has done. Being finite has given us extreme tunnel vision. Maybe we see so little of the Truth that it is tantamount to a lie. But that doesn’t mean we can or should stop telling stories because we are creatures made in His image, who ought to walk as He walked (1 John 2:6). Christ was a story-teller. Telling stories is part of what it means to be human.
Josh & Sarah:
History ain’t simply girly, but it’s probably more girly than certain of us might want to think. It is as girly as the gloriously pink and pastels painted into the sunset or the J.Lo colours on a peacock’s feathers. It is as girly as the jewel-bedecked skirts God commanded the priests to wear in the temple and the sweet, sweet perfume He loved to have in His house. Each of us see history from a different perspective, and so each of us see it in a different light, different garb.
In a sense, the facts of history are as scientific as the facts of chemistry. You can know the facts of history as well as the facts of chemistry, listing as everything you think probably happened like you can list everything you think you saw in the lab experiments. A coroner can dissect a corpse, noting a person’s height, weight, condition of all the internal organs, blood type and pH, DNA, and figure out the person’s habits and everyday life, but not know the person at all.
Just like God made each of us and we can never even start to know all there is to know about each other, He made history and our telling of it doesn’t even begin to be true unless we start and end the story with Him. And anyone who doesn’t marvel at it doesn’t understand it at all.
“More Basic History” has been splattered on 19 times.
It has been pointed out to me that between the two of us (and indeed, between me and prolly every person who uses the phrase, “Christ as Lord of history”), there is a notable difference in what we mean by history. It seems that you’re referring to history as all that has happened. And it should be pretty clear from my previous comments that I’m seeing history as all that we write as having happened.
I see Christ as directly Lord over the former (of course, every event and circumstance is providentially ordained) and indirectly Lord over the latter (that is, Christ providentially governs what facts, dates, and interpretive filters will be used through the wily vessel of human personality). But I’m not sure how one can actually incorporate this idea in a history text (as you want).
One might place occasional reminders, pointing out: Yes, God is still in control - even though there was a trail of tears. That’s acceptable, but doesn’t strike me as particularly useful - and the absence of such reminders would hardly be blasphemous.
A more dangerous option is to try to add a Christian interpretive framework over the recorded events. E.g., “It is likely that God providentially ordained the Trail of Tears because…” That actually would be blasphemous and a much more horrifying thing for a Christian text to set forth.
Perhaps if you could explain what it is that you want out of a text so that it could adequately posit Christ as Lord over history… I think one of my biggest difficulties with the issue is that no one has ever actually explained what they mean by the popular phrase.
In any case, I love stories and storytelling. And I especially love looking back at my life and seeing how God has used the variety of circumstances (good, bad, and ugly) in my life to mold me toward his goal for me: conformation into the image of his son. Of course, this kind of joyous storytelling only works with individuals, since only with individuals do we have knowledge of this kind of divine-yet-gradual teleology. Only with individuals can we know the goal towards which they are day-by-day charting.
Hm, I guess unless you’re postmillennial or something ;)
p.s. I like that the comments on girliness were in pink.
I don’t see how the idea that God “made history” can stand up to a theology of free will or, frankly, to a benevolent God. The celestial spheres may be perfect and unchanging, but I can invade Poland if I want to (pardon the reductio ad Hitlerum). This ends in Panglossianism or determinism.
Of course I’m a big fan of history, but I’m hesitant to give it theological support. There’s something in the fact that Christ’s storytelling was decidedly un-historical, and of the Gospel writers only Luke has any pretensions to history writing. Unless you fool yourself, the Gospels are lousy history. But the authors weren’t writing about something dead and gone, but alive and present—the true ktema eis aei, as it were.
hi tim, i’m not sure what u mean by the “celestial sphere,” but God qua Creator doesn’t necessarily clash with a theology that affirms free will or God’s benevolence. It’s quite obvious to Christians and even the authors of the biblical texts that evil happens and can happen.
For one, God exists outside of time and doesn’t seem to think that the world needs to be made all happy and clappy in a moment. Creation is like a work of art, and human sin is like the piece of art getting messed up on its own (cuz of free will). If God didn’t really love that piece of art, he’d trash it and make a new one. But precisely because he is benevolent and respects our free will and wishes to regenerate and resurrect that dead and messed up piece of art, he sends his prophets, his servants, and even his only begotten Son. It seems to make sense to me, and even if it doesn’t make *perfect* sense for me, I wouldn’t be surprised, since I’m a human and all. :) God just doesn’t seem to be in a hurry the way a lot of 12 year olds are. In the end I suspect it’ll all work out.
Furthermore, since we are beings with free will, it would be an insult and rejection of that free will if God just forced us to change and become all good and sinless. Rather, since he is a God who wants sincere humility and genuine love, he treats us as people with free will and uncoerced love to give. Where would the love be, if it were impossible for us to every do something wrong and if we did, for God to just force us again to do the right thing? That doesn’t seem all that great to me. A place where the love is genuine and comes from our free and humble wills seems the only way for a society of people created in imagine Dei.
Quick thoughts:
You perhaps misunderstood me. I also am a Christian. I agree that the problem of evil can be solved, although it remains the most troubling argument against God. The question is whether history can be meaningfully regarded as “God’s work,” such as is embodied in notion that”Christ is the Lord of history.” To the extent history is human work it is not God’s—we are in fact free not pretend-free. To the extent it is God’s works it runs square into the problem of evil.
It is evident that world is complex and confusing and that we will never fully understand it. We see through a mirror darkly. We can, however, see enough to know that history is not a benevolent, guided process. Once we might have fooled ourselves that this or that tragic event was the result of some immorality in the palace or the market. That sort of explanation is pretty unsatisfying today. A just God does not “break a few million eggs” to make an omlette, so to speak.
Put another way, God’s kingdom is not of this world. It’s ours, do with it what we may.
PS: As an aside, the notion that God stands outside of time is not a necessary one, either as religion or philosophy. One way you get around the problem “how do we have free will if God knows what we are going to do?” is to posit that God does NOT know what we are going to do. This is not because he is insufficiently omniscient, but because omniscence is not illogical. He cannot know what we haven’t done any more than he can do things he isn’t doing. My $.02.
I’m not sure I agree that God exists outside of time either - though maybe not for the reasons Tim holds. I think that it is most likely that time is intrinsic to the nature of God (even as existence is). So long as God is, time is.
contra both tim and the dane, I would wish to assert that God being outside of time is very important for xian doctrine. It’s certainly something that the church historic has asserted, and I think it has sometimes indirect but good biblical grounding as well. All the major theologians have asserted God’s being “outside” time and have affirmed that time is more-or-less an analogy and a humanly participation in divine eternity (cf. Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, Aquinas, et al). However, you may find a few scattered and random Christian theologians and philosophers here and there asserting that God “has time” as well (whatever that precisely means depends on who’s saying it). Wolterstorff comes to mind … I can’t say I can name any other significant figure off the top of my head who asserts this, though (and Wolterstorff really holds to a rather techincal understanding of God qua “everlasting”).
Now, as for omniscience, I’m not sure, Tim, that you believe in “omniscience.” Furthermore, the way in which you denied God’s omniscience is precisely the way (and reasons for which, as well) the Open Theists do. If God isn’t omniscient, that means he has potential which has not been actualized, which means he changes, inasmuch as he becomes fuller and comes to learn things which he didn’t know “before hand.” All of this is very fine, as long as we’re willing to give up the notion of God and substitute it for a god who’s a heck of a lot greater than we are, but not quite Anselm’s being the greater than which cannot be thought (aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari posit). Now, admittedly, Anselm stinks of onto-theology, but I do believe his theology was valid.
There have been significant and scholarly challenges made to open theism from a perfectly orthodox position. Dr. Joel Garver (La Salle) uses Aquinas to respond to open theists. In any case, I believe the orthodox position is well-balanced and grounded in scripture and tradition as well as fully reasonable (even if not perfectly comprehensible as is the case with all “theology” or any advanced theoretical discipline or art).
Anyways, I’m not sure if the Dane is misunderstanding the doctrine of eternity qua God being “outside time,” since the english language and every other that I know of hasn’t a proper preposition in this regard, but I believe it’s a doctrine of utmost importance and should be continued to be upheld strongly.
B, I’m open to the God Outside Time theory being either very important to Christian doctrine or correct or even both. But I haven’t ever seen any compelling evidence for this. Even greater, we find God continuously referred to in temporal terms. And temporal terms are applied to the period before creation. You mention thinking time is humanly participation in divine eternity, but I’m more inclined to see it simply as an attribute of being.
Still, I’m curious how God Outside Time is important to Christian doctrine. Other than it being accurate of course (for then it is obviously intrinsic to true doctrine), ‘cuz I’m not aware of anyway we can prove it accurate. It always seemed to me a ham-handed way of getting God off the hook for there being involved in something as seemingly finite as time.
the dane, it is perhaps essential here to not fall into the nominalist/ockhamist notion of univocal being distinguished only in predication. As Calvin (and really all the others too) notes, God’s being spoken of in temporal terms is an anthopomorphization–something we don’t take “literally” when we find the “hand of God” or the like. To follow Aquinas rather than Ockham would mean to say that we cannot univocally predicate anything of God and man; rather, whether it be goodness, holiness, love, knowledge, or the like, we predicate these things analogically betwixt God and man. Calvin seems to be quite in line with this analogical view as well (cf. ICR book I).
I don’t think any orthodox theologian thinks that we’ve “figured out” the problem between God and time, but it certainly seems a tad naive to think that God “exists” in the same way that we do throughout time. From what I gather, you’re what we call an “absolutist” about time (as opposed to, say, the Augustinian relativism with regard to time). This means that you probably concieve of time as a steady succession of irreversible moments. The Augustinian view, however, is that time is relative; time is the measure of change. If there is no change, there is no time. Furthermore, time is the very lack of duration, for Augustine, and only feels like true duration inasumuch as it participates in eternity, which is duration itself.
but I have an essay on this if you’re interested in this topic. I’m not sure it’s the best, but it may help. I generally try not to think about God and time for more than an hour at a time, since after that it usually induces a headache.
How Biblical authors refer to God—whether they use temporal or non-temporal terms—does not seem to me to have much bearing on the issue. The Bible no more encodes the answers to abstruse philosophical and doctrinal questions than it encodes the date of Prime Minister Rabin’s assassination or the height of the Washington Monument, whatever Minister Farrakhan may say.
The Church has worked through them over millennia and one may believe it was guided in doing so. I prefer to think God is utterly unconcerned with our opinion, except as it relates to the fact that we’re sitting at our computers mulling it over and not doing something more valuable with our lives.
There are various “moves” in Berek’s piece that bother me. They are, in order:
1. Attempting to undermine an argument asserting that another does not believe what they say they believe. You assert that you are “not sure” that I “believe in omniscience.” Since I say that I do and polite people converse on the assumption that the other is not lying, you must mean that my understanding of omniscience is illogical, doctrinally insufficient or otherwise defective. That’s fine.
2. I don’t think that philosophical arguments can be solved ipse dixit, or even ipse dixerunt. The opinion of theologians demands my respect. If the Church itself says it—speaking from a Catholic perspective—my obedience and humility may require me to avoid quarreling on the matter and pray daily that I may understand my error. But others’ opinions don’t make an argument true, and disagreeing by gesturing toward others’ opinions does not convince. Your second post, which I have not digested fully, seems to have more explicit argumentation.
3. I was amused to see Anselm’s argument brought up seriously, apparently as the standard to which “my omniscience” fails to rise. My omniscience also fails to embrace dogs, cats and dancing pink elephants of which no greater can be thought. These, as Anselm shows, all exist. Mine is an impoverished theology indeed!
It occurs to me that EmethHesed may not want her blog “splattered” in this way. My apologies if so. I need to get back to work!
Emeth loves having her blog splattered this way. This is exactly the way she loves having it splattered. She is very sorry she has been completely absent from this splatter-fest. She’s been insanely busy and chose sleep over croaking.
I s’pose you could say I’m an absolutist with regard to Time Proper, but a relativist to our experience of time. And yes, I agree that none of the temporality attributed to God in Scripture necessarily reflects The Way Things Are - anthropomorphisms being what they are. I only brought them up as a note to your hint that Scripture suggests the GOT theory.
I’m game to take a look at your paper - especially if it describe the reason why you believe your view necessary to Christian thought - but I confess I may have difficulty with the jargon. I ask this in the kindest of ways, but have you ever thought about writing to a more popular level? I’m sure your thoughts would be more widely accessible if your writing was more easily digestible. You’re a smart kid and I hate to see you get shuffled off to the philosophers pile when you might have valuable things to say.
hi tim … i guess you’ve just dismissed a rather significant portion of what we usually know to be Christianity: the Bible and church tradition. be that as it may, i did not mean to put words into your mouth concerning omniscience. Let me say, I believe your understanding here to be defective and perhaps even contradictory. As far as I know, people speak of “omniscience” when God knows not only everything there is to know, but knows it in an immediate way–somehow beyond our creaturely way of knowing which involves remembering, reasoning, etc. One would not be omniscient if one had to reason to certain conclusions or try to remember certain things. But you seem to have a greater problem with any traditional or conventional use of “omniscience” inasmuch as you use it, as far as I can tell, to mean something like “God knows everything that happened in the past and present.” There are several objections that can be made to calling this “omniscience.” Let me raise three: (1) obviously, it seems difficult to use “omni” when it only includes part of all that there is to know; (2) it also seems wrong because, given (1) and your view of time, God’s knowledge must be constantly changing; (3) God probably doesn’t know past and present events very well, since present and past events can only be truly known in their entirety if one knows future events as well. Thus, I have strong objections to calling what you think God’s sciental attribute is “omniscience.”
As for Anselm, I think you’ve probably misunderstood him.
The Dane, so far everyone i’ve known is a relativist with regard to “our experience of time.”
my paper doesn’t deal directly at all with why a relativist view of time is so necessary for Christian thought and often orthodoxy, but if you reason out the implications of various changes in it, it should be fairly obvious. It pretty much goes for granted that, say, open theists are absolutists when it comes to time.
Ah, but I am no open theist - as I’m sure you should know :-)
I’m a bit busy, so I’ll stay with Anselm and my “misunderstanding” of him. In fact, that is the standard critique of Anselm’s proof of the existence God. Imagine a pink elephant. It is a wonderful pink elephant, a really perfect specimen. It is a pink elephant of which no greater thing could be thought. Such an elephant would, clearly, be better if it existed. Therefore it exists. The example (the elephant is mine; the Devil is often provided instead) goes to the question “Is existence a ‘great-making property’?” Clearly it is not.
hi time, i suppose you’ve happened only to run into people and/or essays which didn’t take the argument seriously. it’s not at all as simple a topic as you make it out to be. if you don’t trust me on that, take a look at any of the following contemporary dealings of it (there’s a lot more historical stuff):
A. Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford, 1974)
Robert M. Adams, “Has It Been Proved That All Real Existence Is Contingent?” and “Divine Necessity” in The Virtue of Faith (Oxford 1987)
Anthony Kenny, “God and Necessity” and “Necessary Being” in Reason and Religion (Oxford, 1987)
Brian Davies, Philosophy of Religion: A Guide and Anthology, 304-352 (Oxford, 2000)
This is only a very small sample of some of the more significant publications. You may think it’s all stupid and simply dismissable, but be sure that there are a good deal of philosophers who don’t.
As for one of the simplistic and standard “refutations” of the ontological argument that you bring up, it really doesn’t prove anything, since “ipsum esse” (being itself) is what we’re talking about when we speak of the aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit. And if that is the case, its “esse” cannot be identical with that of a pink elephant, but “essentially” and altogether exceptional. Now, I only say that to show you that the discussion is much more complicated than people who don’t like it very much usually presume it to be. :)
btw, the dane, as for your most kind question a couple splatters ago … yes, it crosses my mind occasionally to write in ways that may appeal to a broader audience; however, i don’t think i need to be in any hurry to do that. i’d like to understand things better before i try to “explain it simply” or anything like that. it’s harder to do that without contorting the truth, often, than it is to speak in philosophical and theological coding. but there are other reasons i don’t either … i enjoy the coding, and i don’t think theology and philosophy of the more academic nature need to be done for an all-inclusive audience. this is not to dismiss ppl in general as being irrelevant, but to merely say that, just as health experts and doctors of various sorts read journals and speak a language most ppl don’t really need to, so also with theologians and philosophers; it’s certainly for some ppl, but almost as certainly *not* for some ppl. everyone needs a pastor and teachers, but not everyone needs to know, say, whether they should give any weight to the ontological argument.
Joel, I did have specific reasons for not posting the author and title, but what the heck … here you go.
Clarence B. Carson, A Basic History of the United States (6 Volumes)
emethhesed
emeth.hesed
Joel Weyrick | 2:18 AM, Tuesday, September 27, 2005
I don’t know if you decided to not mention the author of the history book for some specific reason, but I was wondering if you could post the name of the book and its author.