The Well of Questions

Is hell just retributive punishment inflicted actively by God?  The language of “punishment” and the fact that God is a judge who casts people into the fires of hell seems to favor this understanding.  But is there any biblical evidence for the idea that the fires of hell (whatever they are) are self-lit?  Consider Isaiah 50:10-11: (more…)

I remember me and Mark had a conversation at lunch back when he was still a Calvinist, but had rejected penal substitution. I asked him “hey, what do you think justification is, if not imputed righteousness?” and he responded with a puzzled look. He went on to say something like “I donno, but it had better be connected to Christus Victor atonement somehow.” At the time this seemed absurd. After all, justification is obviously a legal term, so how could it have anything to do with being freed from the devil’s power? Right? (more…)

It seems like I’m always starting series of posts that I never finish. Oh well.

Anyways, this series is going to be about the biblical data and theological implications of the idea of “natural consequences”. To say that something has natural consequences for you basically means “what goes around, comes around” or “you asked for it”. Natural consequences are the non-intentional results of actions we take. They are not inflicted by an exercise of will that is aimed at retributively punishing us for our guilt; they just sorta happen because of the way the world is. (more…)

One of the most basic problems of epistemology is called “the problem of the criterion.” The problem reveals itself when one tries to figure out how to separate their beliefs into the categories of knowledge and of mere belief. How does one begin? There are two options: one could proceed by formulating a criteria for what qualifies as knowledge and seeing which beliefs meet the criteria; or one could start with instances of knowledge and try to come up with a criteria for knowledge based on features of these instances. If one picks the first option, then one is a “methodist” (obviously not of the religious variety), and if one picks the second option, one is a particularist.

Why are people often skeptical of particularism? Well, it seems to some people to be “cheating” to simply assert that we do know things and to work from there. This move is especially aggravating to the skeptic who demands proof that we know anything at all. However, it is important to recognize the importance that phenomenology and intuitions play in epistemology. Many arguments are nothing more than appeals to intuition about whether people would consider person X justified in situation Y. Although it might seem illegitimate, it really does seem to be the case that we do indeed know certain things, and it is unclear how the skeptic can simply dismiss this appeal to intuition. Much of what goes on in epistemology consists of philosophers attempting to figure out what we mean when we use the words “knowledge” and “justification.” It seems that there is a real phenomenon that people are referencing when they use the word knowledge, namely, the experience they have of knowing. In fact, if it is the case that one does not have an experience of being a knower, then they must mean absolutely nothing by the term knowledge when they use it. In order for discourse in epistemology to be meaningful, there ultimately needs to be some pre-theoretic grasp of what it means to know something, and I would argue that this can only come from experience. Thus, it seems to fairly clear that methodism is the wrong way to proceed out of the problem of the criterion.

Furthermore, I would argue that historically, methodism has led to skepticism. The methodology of Descartes and Locke ultimately led to the skepticism of Hume and others. It seems unclear how one could come up with criteria for what would qualify as knowledge if one had no instances of knowledge from which to base the criteria off of. A person might wonder how anyone could be justified in using a method for discerning knowledge, if that method itself was not rooted in any sort of knowledge. The method would seem to always be arbitrary. This seems to be a valid concern.

This is a paper I wrote for my class about free will and hell. The primary text for the course is R. Jay Wallace’s Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, a defense of compatiblism in the Strawsonian tradition. My paper is a critique of Wallace’s metaethics of responsibility: (more…)

I recently had a discussion with a friend who told me that classical music is “good for the soul” in a way that no other music is. He may have changed his position since then, but the question still remains - how does one go about deciding what a piece of “good music” really is? Is the goodness of a piece of music rest upon preference, or is there something about the piece that makes it good or bad of itself? In this post, I would like to suggest a possible way of answering these questions with reference to semiotics.

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Over at the Secular Web, the Great Debate about theism and naturalism has been updated recently. Instead of posting something about the exchange between Collins and Smith on science and the cosmos, or between Schellenberg and Jordan on faith and doubt, I want to reflect on the discussion about consciousness and free will that was between Melnyk and Goetz and Taliaffero. I will do this with the intent of answering a Freudian objection to their argument for libertarian freewill. (more…)

Much of Scripture is narrative. It is an account of events that happened in history to real people. But it is not just an historical report. It is supposed to carry meaning. In fact, some of it is meant to produce a kind of normativeness. There are some things we ought to do because stories tell us to. Some stories of the New Testament, for instance, are meant to tell us “do this” or “live this way” by providing an example that we should follow. So, for instance, when Jesus forgives and fellowships with sinners, this has a meaning behind it: “Do this. Fellowship with sinners and those that society considers unclean, because God accepts and loves all”.

But how are we to decide when something is supposed to be normative in a narrative, and when it is just any ole’ event? Admittedly, this isn’t going to be immediately obvious. But perhaps we can start with some *PARTICULAR* examples of places in a story where an event generates some kind of “oughtness”. In this post I will begin to outline a particularist approach to narrative and normativity. (more…)

For those that don’t know, superogatory actions are basically actions that go “above and beyond the call of duty,” actions that are good, but are not required deontologically.  A paradigm case for a superogatory action would be self sacrifice.  Think of a soldier jumping on a gernade to save his comerade. 

Well, this is all well and good for most systems of ethics, but does this category fit within the Christian paradigm?  I may be controversial in my position, but I think there is good reason to think that there are no superogatory actions for the Christian.  Here are a few simple arguments to try to motivate my intuitions on this:

1) In James 4:7 we are told that “to him who knows to do good, and does not do it, to him it is sin.”  This seems to me to be saying that anytime there’s a good thing that could be done, you ought to do it.  To not do it is sin.  Thus, if self-sacrifice is good, you ought to do it. 

2) Ethics by example:  The primary way ethics is taught in Scripture is by pointing to examples.  Philippians is a paradigm case of this.   Paul presents the Philippian believers with the example of Christ’s copmletely self-sacrificial/self-empting life and says that they ought to think and act this way as well.  The dialogue form would be something like:  Paul:  Be humble.  Philippian:  What’s humility?  Paul:  Look at Jesus.  That’s humility.  Be that.  In the same letter, Paul also provides the Godly examples of humility and self-sacrificial love in Epaphroditus and Timothy to teach them as well.  He tells the Philippians to honor men like Epaphroditus because he suffered for the sake of the gospel.  Finally, Paul describes his own journey to salvation, his own self-emptying; ackknowledges that he’s not perfect yet, but must keep striving; and tells the Philippians to imitate him. 

If our paradigm cases for what consitutes proper Christian behavior are Christ and the saints (who are all martyrs in one way or another), what actions could possibly be considered superogatory? 

3) Think about the deontological commands that are given in Scripture.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, sould, mind, and strength.  Love your neigbor as yourself.  We’re to love God with complete and total abandon; we’re to give everything of ourselves to hiim.  We’re also to love our neighbor as our very self because we are all members of one another.  So again, what would qualify as superogatory actions under this deontological system?

4) In another place, Christ says that if anyone is to be His disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Him.  This is not some weak acknowledgement the troubles we’ll all face in life or some pithy nonsense like that.  Christ is calling us to recapitualte all His suffering unto death, even death on a cross, and nothing less.  We’re called to total and complete self-denial.  So, again, what could be a superogatory action in this system of ethics?

These are only a couple of arguments running through my head right now.  I’m going to be writing a paper on this topic for my ethics class so I would appreciate any thoughts or feedback.  I will be posting more of my thoughts on this topic in the weeks to come.  Specifically, I will post some thoughts on virtue ethics, deification, ontological views of salvation vs. legal views, etc., and the effect these things have on the possibility of superogatory actions. 

Recently I have met various people and read about various characters (particularly villains in The Brothers Karamazov) who are cynics. I think most people are cynics to some degree and in some way, and some kinds of cynicism in small doses can be alright. Its radical, widespread, or categorical cynicism that I think is damaging to human well-being. Consequently, I am inclined to wonder if there are any good arguments against certain of the more damaging kinds of cynicism. Below, I will give an argument against what I call “mild intellectual cynicism” and “extreme intellectual cynicism”. If successful these arguments will show that mild and extreme intellectual cynics should probably give up their brand of cynicism. (more…)