#201 Chesterton on Contentment

"There cannot be a nation of millionaires, and there never has been a nation of Utopian comrades; but there have been any number of nations of tolerably contented peasants."

-- G.K. Chesterton in Outline of Sanity CW. V. 192

#200 Interesting Links XXIII

Ben Witherington on the freedom of God and the free will of human beings.

Scott Horton did some excellent reporting on the Boumediene ruling. Here is one of the articles.

Via this map, I learn that the term "pop" is not necessarily a northern thing. It is a midwestern thing. Where I come from, it's "Coke" no matter what it tastes like.

George Will, who was a conservative long before the Republicans ever started calling John McCain one, slams McCain for his reaction to Boumediene. Why do I keep harping on this particular Supreme Court decision? Because it's an example of how the conservatives on the court do not always act conservatively, and the liberals do not always act liberally. And it's really important to boot.

Here is a Google Earth presentation of the crop circles of England. Pretty cool.

Sullivan points out the sponsors of the reintroduced Federal Marriage Amendment: Larry Craig & David Vitter. I'm speechless. Is that some kind of joke?

John Piper, watching End of the Spear has this observation: "The missionaries had guns when they were speared to death. One of them shot the gun into the air, it appears, as he was killed, rather than shooting the natives. They had agreed to do this. The reason was simple and staggeringly Christlike: The natives are not ready for heaven. We are." Amen, that's why I don't ever think I could shoot someone. As Paul says, why not rather suffer wrong?

Jonathan Rowe on Calvin's view of the divine right of kings. Being more of a social contractarian, I see the law as the highest authority, not the government, so the concept of honoring the king (found in I Pet. 2:17) takes on a whole new meaning for me because "Lex Rex", not the other way around.

Joel Garver reports on drama at Westminster Seminary regarding the Peter Enns issue.

And finally a picture that made me laugh because I know it would make Jerry Falwell turn over in his grave and John Hagee's mind explode. DOES... NOT... COMPUTE...

#199 Goodness and Power Part 1

The standard formulation of the problem of evil goes something like this.

Assuming God exists (and since we're on the subject we're assuming he exists) and assuming evil exists (I know it does because I feel it in my heart and head every day) the following two statements are mutually exclusive:

1. God is all-powerful.

2. God is good.

If God exists and is all-powerful, then he can't be good, because evil exists. Otherwise he'd put a stop to it.

If God exists and is good, the he can't be all-powerful, because evil exists. Otherwise he'd put a stop to it.

That's it in a nutshell and it really is the quintessential eternal question because we've been asking it for millenia. You might even say it's one of the major themes of the Old Testament. See Psalms, Lamentations, the Prophets, the stories of the wanderings of Israel and the slavery in Egypt. The question is always "why?" Why do the wicked prosper? Why have you forsaken me? And phrased differently, how long will you forget, O YHWH? The fact is that there is no answer per se, because it's illogical as shown above. Hence the need for repeating the question.

Athanasius was one of the earliest Christian writers to explicitly attempt to answer the question. He called it "The Divine Dillema" and considered it an imminent threat to humanity.

"... because death and corruption were gaining ever firmer hold on them, the human race was in the process of destruction... man was disappearing... death... prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape."

No there's a man who understands the gloominess of the situation. He doesn't whitewash over the details because death is an important part of the story of what comes next. He continues in despair, the kind ironically frowned upon today by cheery Christians who only speak of the joy of the Lord.

"The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting... that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption."

And he goes on, as I quoted in my last post,

"It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought on man by the devil... what then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than, having been created, to be neglected and parish."

So there we have Athanasius explicitly stating that God is good satisfying the first of our mutually exclusive statements above. So logically, did this then mean that God couldn't be all-powerful? That is Athanasius' next thought as well.

"... besides that, such indifference to the ruin of His own work before His very eyes would argue not goodness in God but limitation..."

And there we have Athanasius pointing out that the mutual exclusivity implies limitation, i.e. that God is not all-powerful. Thus we have "The Divine Dilemma."

To be continued...

#198 On the Incarnation

I recently finished reading On the Incarnation by Athanasius and a few things stood out to me.

First, to my modern evangelical ear, he seems to be the most orthodox Patristic writer I have read so far. The letters of Clement are in this league as well while some of the others I've read, all before Athanasius' time, would likely make 21st century American Christians cringe a bit. This leads me to believe that the modern church has been profoundly influenced by him more than most people know.

Second, he is one of the most engaging of the pre-Nicene fathers. He seems to take special care with each sentence. It is evident that he has really thought through the issues. He doesn't come across as speaking only to his 4th century situation but is incredibly relevant and his language is accessible.

Third, and as a counterpoint to my first comment above, though 99% evangelically kosher, he makes two shocking comments that demand explanation by any Patristics scholar. First, in chapter 7 (the chapter's are more like large paragraphs), speaking of the necessity of the incarnation, he says,

"It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil... As, then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do?"

Since Athansius commonly uses the title Word of God to refer to Jesus, is he implying in the above statement that Jesus was a creation? Surely not, since in Athanasius' scheme, the incarnation of the word was in fact the solution to the problem. Count me confused.

The other shocking comment comes near the end, in chapter 54, and it is the most commonly cited quote of Athanasius. You've all heard it before: "He, indeed, assumed humanity, that we might become God." My first thought would normally be to chalk this up to ancient figure of speech that I'm missing like when I read a Shakespeare play and only really get about half of it. But On the Incarnation, at least this translation, is easily understood elsewhere as I mentioned in my second observation above. The context is a discussion of the humble means by which God chose to reveal himself, but I don't see how it explains away this strange phrasing.

I'm thinking now that I'm done with the independent study class I've been taking I'll have more time to say more about Athanasius, but for now, I'll leave it at that.

#197 Cake and Breakfast Burritos

That's my favorite line in this video about a UPS driver who just drove his millionth mile in the same truck he's be driving for over 20 years

Cake and Breakfast Burritos

#196 Athanasius Against Blogging

"It is not safe that the writings of us babblers and private persons should fall into the hands of those that shall come after"

-- Athanasius, as quoted in the introduction to the St. Vladimir's Seminary Press' version of On the Incarnation.