Monday, August 21, 2023

The Sabbath

 Months ago I did complete some research into the nature of the Sabbath for my study of the book of Hebrews. My research led me to read Seventh Day Adventists, Progressive Dispensationalists and Progressive Covenantalists. I found Pastor Dale Ratzlaff of Life Assurance Minstries (LAM) and Dr. Rob Solberg of Biblical Roots Ministries very helpful. Pastor Ratzlaff’s book Sabbath in Christ is a definitive work on the Sabbath from a former Seventh Day Adventist. DA Carson’s book On the Lord’s Day was also consulted. The Tablets of Stone by John Resinger was also read. Finally, I listened to Tony Costa debate a Seventh Day Adventist.  


I prepared lecture notes. I gave two lectures. Only one lecture made it to YouTube: 


https://youtu.be/xHTs8SgsOY4




 

Monday, May 29, 2023

The Intermediate State and Heaven

 Heaven is God’s presence which is manifested to incorporeal creatures. The beatific vision is required. 


I find it odd that there is very little scholarly work written on the nature of the intermediate state. Yet non-scholarly work like Randy Alcorn’s Heaven is quite popular. Alcorn provides an ad hoc speculation that the intermediate state is a physical location in which God bestows disembodied souls temporary (loaner) physical bodies. I can provide an alternative proposal with equivalent or greater explanation power and scope. Suppose at death our disembodied souls are consigned by God to the intermediate state. The intermediate state is a created spiritual/mental realm with temporal location but not spacial location or extension. The obvious objection to my alternative is Christ dwells with His people in the intermediate state with a physical glorified body. But if we stipulate glorified bodies may voluntarily take on the property of incorporeality. Much like angels who are pure spirits can voluntarily materialize. Souls can communicate the property of immateriality to their glorified bodies. The objection is overcome. Yet it must be kept in mind this power of souls is divinely mediated. In the intermediate state, Christians dwell with Christ in comfort. Non-Christians suffer mental anguish and misery. Both await for the final bodily resurrection and judgment. 


Aquinas thinks the intermediate state is a place. A place in which disembodied souls are able to reside. It has both spacial and temporal location (E.g. souls and bodies). It has spacial extension by Christ’s glorified body alone. The disembodied souls of the saved are in union with Christ.  


William Lane Craig’s speculation:


https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxskWq8O95830kSU-I1gSNX9j3a5kBe3o2



The Trinity, Divine Simplicity, Tropes

 If one rejects strong divine simplicity (DDS) and construes God as a complex substance is there still a path to show theism is explanatorily better than priority monism or priority pluralism? I don’t see (DDS) as required given the work of Gregory Fowler and Matthew Baddorf. I think God's intrinsic attributes are not numerically identical. God's love is numerically distinct from God's power. They are identical only in the sense they are all divine attributes. Or to use Scotus's formal distinction. God's attributes are formally distinct from each other but inseparable from God (given unitive containment). What is intrinsic (e.g. numerically distinct but inseparable attributes) to God is grounded by God and is God. If God is taken as a fundamental substance that grounds His necessarily numerically irreducibly distinct properties, parts and powers. If the divine persons of the Trinity are taken as proper parts like Dr. Chad McIntosh with symmetrical, mutual dependence in which they ground each other and ground their shared properties.


Or consider Dr. Joshua Sijuwade’s DDS aspectival account I think it can be reformulated to accommodate a stronger Trinitarian monotheism. If substances or entities are a complex or bundle of tropes. In which case, the Father is an omnipotence module trope that grounds or self-exemplifies the Son and Holy Spirit tropes. The three tropes are a complex or bundle that is one entity or substance not three independent entities or substances. 

Homiletics

Do not say everything you are thinking off the cuff. It may come across as ill prepared and scatter minded.


Speak with carefully selected words to effectively communicate with confidence, competence and conviction. Do not use unnecessary words; better to use fewer words to promote clarity.  


Prevent filler words (e.g. like, umm, know what I mean etc.) or frequently repeated words. Use variety of transitions of thought, if possible. 


Prevent distracting mannerisms. 

Remember your audience sees hand movements as mirrored (e.g. your right hand is seen as left).  


Voice projection must be natural or organic not forced or constrained. 


May be intense but not insulting to the ears as yelling. 


Be relaxed. Speak from your diaphragm not throat. Do not come across as yelling but rather elevated inflection and tone must communicate clearly confidence, concern and seriousness. 


Consider preaching or teaching as a conversation that requires at times vocal projection to include multiple people— without coming across as yelling. Do not compete with the microphone rather use it. 


Enthusiasm and excitement must be natural and organic. 





 

Philosophy from a Christian Worldview

Some introductory lectures on Metaphysics and Epistemology 


https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeyAlQUS0aJZHjL8vY-nh7K7y5Q5n1cR2

Merelogical Tu Quoque

 Does Classical Conciliar Trinitarianism commit a mereological tu quoque?

Two ways of being divine is found in all Trinitarian models. The Trinity is collectively wholly and entirely God yet each divine subsistence is not distributively the Trinity

 

 

Trinitarianism, Unitarianism and Processions

If unitarianism and trinitarianism both affirm divine simplicity does it not minimize the differences. How so? If one concentrates on any given Trinitarian person—given simplicity—each person wholly and entirely exhausts God. So any epistemic ignorance of ad intra divine relations of origin distinctions within God will make no difference if at least one divine person is known—since each divine person is wholly and entirely God. It seems divine simplicity undermines the necessary and essential property of Triunity that belongs to the divine substance and not the divine persons


As I see it the traditional Trinitarian model affirms the Monarchy of the Father (MOF). The Father as fundamental, asymmetrically grounds the Son and Spirit (through the Son). Typically strong aseity is somehow salvaged by emphasizing the general essence is a se while the individual essence of the Son and Spirit depends upon the Father. This move weakens aseity. People like Mark Makin following Calvin make this move (e.g. essential dependence model). Tim Pawl does something similar (perhaps ad hoc) by restricting aseity’s necessary and sufficient conditions to simply be any given general essence that is neither caused nor depends on another general essence. Such a definition of aseity allows individual essences to be dependent. The worry (or counterexample) is unitarians have a more robust aseity given such a definition.  


 It seems if the processions are denied a mutual dependence relation obtains between the persons and if the processions are affirmed an asymmetrical dependence relation obtains given the MOF. Unless of course the Trinitarian individual essences each ground the shared general essence. There would be a trivial asymmetrical dependence relation between the individual essences to ground the single concrete general essence yet all individual essences of the single concrete general essence would be fundamental. But such a solution would be counter to a mereological model of the Trinity (e.g. Chad McIntosh’s model with Strong PSR).


Or perhaps a robust aseity cannot be salvaged but ontological subordination (e.g. Mullins Reply to Mark Edwards) can be avoided by denying the processions. On such a view the principle of individuation between the persons will be de re beliefs or mental tokens rather than relations of origin.


To preserve aseity and mereology model perhaps the persons ground the conjunction or unity of the parts but do not ground each other’s part. 


Even if most Trinitarian models on offer today precludes robust aseity it is better to have a weaker aseity in which there is intrinsic dependence ad intra between the divine persons than mutual dependence ad extra on creation (e.g. in order for God to be God He must create to be actually loving). 


If God is the truthmaker of all propositions either intrinsically or extrinsically to God then the relation between truthmaker and truth bearer is grounded by God. Does this entail some truths are univocal? E.g. the laws of logic are divine thoughts


What is the relevant difference between unitarianism with concurrent modal distinctions and Trinitarianism with modal distinctions.  Both may affirm an unbegotten mode that eternally generates the begotten mode through which spirates the binding mode that conjoins the unbegotten mode with the begotten mode. Both affirm God is one self in three modes with one will. If relations of origin is the sole relevant difference between Unitarianism and Trinitarianism and Unitarianism can accommodate such modal distinctions it seems relations of origin is too thin to define a relevant difference.