Tag: philosophy

My aversion for theology, particularly of the modern sort, is well-known here. But that aversion has never extended to St. Thomas Aquinas, whom I admire enormously, and as I was reading selections from his Summa Theologica, as I do on occasion, I thought it might be interesting to consider my own thoughts on his various positions. So, I returned to the beginning, which is the ten articles on the nature and extent of sacred doctrine.

I answered them – my answers are in italics – prior to re-reading his answers, so as not to compromise my own reactions.

To place our purpose within proper limits, we first endeavor to investigate the nature and extent of this sacred doctrine. Concerning this there are ten points of inquiry:

(1) Whether it is necessary? YES

(2) Whether it is a science? YES, although not as science is presently defined by post-modernity or in the scientodic sense.

(3) Whether it is one or many? ONE, in the sense of true Sacred Doctrine. Of course, there are many false sacred doctrines.

(4) Whether it is speculative or practical? PRACTICAL, albeit with speculative consequences.

(5) How it is compared with other sciences? UNFAVORABLY in the modern context. I assume Aquinas is viewing it from the “Queen of Sciences” perspective here, but I could be wrong.

(6) Whether it is the same as wisdom? NO

(7) Whether God is its subject-matter? YES

(8) Whether it is a matter of argument? YES

(9) Whether it rightly employs metaphors and similes? YES

(10) Whether the Sacred Scripture of this doctrine may be expounded in different senses? YES

I’ll compare my answers with the Great Ox’s and attempt to ascertain where I went awry in a future post.

DISCUSS ON SG

A number of Christians are, quite understandably, deeply appalled at the idea that Satan can not only quote Scripture and inspire the publication of false and misleading Scriptures, but can even ex post facto alter the historical texts. However, 2 Thessalonians appears to suggest that in the rebellion that follows the exit of the Restrainer, the man of lawlessness will “exalt himself over everything that is called God”.

Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

Does this include “the Word of God” in the context of the physical texts of the Bible? It’s not conclusive, but it certainly would appear to be a potentially viable interpretation, particularly when all of the Christian organizations that supposedly represent “the Bride of Christ” have observably prostrated themselves before the spirit of evil.

And we know that God’s words can be perverted. Are you so absolutely certain that you know the limits to which it can be done?

Every man’s word shall be his burden; for ye have perverted the words of the living God, of the Lord of hosts our God. – Jeremiah 23:36

This is not an opinion. This is merely observation and hypothesis. Perhaps the Mandela Effect skeptics are completely correct and nothing has ever changed in any text or corporate logo despite our unreliable childhood memories of something having been different in the past. But the hypothesis is important, because it provides a predictive model concerning the possibility of future, more spiritually significant alterations.

Here is why I would caution those who insist upon the absolute impossibility of any such changes – and I freely admit that they are, to the best of my understanding, absolutely impossible. Anyone who is armed by the awareness of the possibility of quantum editing is unlikely to be deceived, whereas those who insist upon the eternal immutability of the text under any and all circumstances will find it very hard to avoid being deceived.

Note for the midwits: don’t even start with your ridiculous “X can’t be Y, because that would mean Z isn’t Z” illogic. In fact, please just excise the whole binary “if-then” routine from your repertoire. The subject is observably beyond you.

DISCUSS ON SG

Martin Giddes on how the events of recent years have separated those who seek the truth from those we previously believed to have been friends and family:

The people who we thought were friends turned out to be merely acquaintances with a shared context and past. They didn’t understand who we really are in terms of our values, and neither did we see them clearly for who they are. The scamdemic in particular has resolved such misconceptions, as you cannot hide whether you are a colluder or resister. Those with whom we share a blood relationship may have notionally been family, but many have belatedly realised there was no true love there, and that duty was one-way.

We are having to build new families of choice, as our families of origin have abandoned our delight in life for an adulation of death. Once someone starts to suffocate and imprison children, indoctrinate them into premature and perverse sexualisation, and inject them with poisons, there is no going back to how we used to relate. Occam’s Mirror has shown the stark divide between those willing to engage in human sacrifice, and those who will resist it with all their might — and make sacrifices to do so.

To discover that your parents or siblings will maim and sterilise their own children for group approval is disturbing, but at least we now know. No matter how difficult things have been, there is no way I would want to go back to the world we had 5, 15, or 25 years ago. I have looked in the mirror, and seen both the beauty and ugliness in far starker terms than ever before. I am no longer confused by claims that prettiness is putrid or vice versa. The transvestigated false idols in the mass media look hollow and pathetic. In contrast, fluffy clouds and fruity bushes have become magical wonders of everyday living.

I have found who my true friends are, and it is those who will not compromise when it comes to harming children. Each of us faces personal strife, life setbacks, and the occasional sagging morale. There has been a toll extracted by this psychological warfare, social division, and barbaric genocide. Yet none of these loyal friends ever discusses with me whether we should switch from the narrow to the broad path. The protection of the young from predation is literally the issue we are willing to die for.

For me, the separation appears to be primarily between those who live by truth and those who live by fear. While I neither hate nor despise those who live by fear, I simply don’t have much to say to them anymore. What can you say to those who spend their days jumping at every narratival shadow while blithely ignoring the very real, and very substantial, threats to their families, their nations, their nominal faith, and the human race itself?

It’s rather like the IQ Communication Gap, only worse. And it doesn’t help that one cannot possibly hide one’s opinion of those literally sacrificing their children to their fears.

DISCUSS ON SG

A SocialGalactician observes how the pattern applies to the Christian view of debt to the modern debt-based economy.

The law said you weren’t to charge interest to your fellow countrymen, only to strangers. You weren’t to enslave your fellow countrymen (same thing as getting them into debt), only strangers. We now have the worst of both worlds, where our own political class are working to endebt us (enslave us) all – to foreigners.

This is a good illustration of evil’s primary tell: inversion.

Evil always inverts.

Inversion is the stink of sulfur that tells you wickedness is at work. Inversion is precisely what the Prophet Isaiah warned of in Isaiah 5:20. When you see inversion justified or rationalized – the conservative case for feminism, the Christian case for immigration, the polite case for using selected pronouns – then you have a reliable indicator of both which side of the line you should stand as well as the people you should never trust.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

DISCUSS ON SG

“To be anti-fascist or anti-communist is to fight with the shadow of the past. The real challenge is to be anti-liberal.” – Alexander Dugin

It’s very, very difficult for the good-hearted, well-intentioned peoples of the West, whether they style themselves liberals or conservatives, to understand or accept that all of the freedom and liberty and equality rhetoric to which they respond so emotionally is pure Enlightenment poison. None of it is good, none of it is real, and none of it is true.

It is all inversion.

Jesus Christ promises us freedom from sin. The Enlightenment devils promise us freedom from God.

The Old Testament defines liberty is freedom from debt and immigration every fifty years. (Leviticus 25:10). The Enlightenment devils define liberty as permission to commit sins against both Man and God.

The Bible tells us that we are all fallen short of the glory of God. The Enlightenment devils promise us equality with God.

The fruits of the Enlightenment have come to pass. Its evils are now undeniable and its precepts have proved themselves to be unsustainable for families, nations, and societies. The Enlightenment virtues have turned out to be vices that destroy the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.

Therefore, embrace the challenge.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Tree of Woe contemplates four theodicies and finds none of them to his satisfaction:

An answer to the problem of evil is often called a theodicy, a term coined in 1710 by Gottfried Leibniz in his book Théodicée. A number of theodicies have been developed over time. In chronological order:

Isaiahic: Evil exists because God created it (and/or compels or permits his subjects to create it). Named for Isaiah 45:7, where God states “I form the light, and create darkness: I make good, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” Isaiahic theodicy rejects God’s omnibenevolence to emphasize His omnipotence and omniscience. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away” is an Isaiahic platitude. Isaiahic theodicy is accepted by many Jews and Muslims, but most Christians reject it, believing that God is all-loving.

Irenaean: Evil exists for our own good. Goodness develops from the experience of suffering. In the words of contemporary theologian John Hicks, our world is a “vale of soul-making” that enables us to become spiritually perfected. But Irenaean theodicy leaves unanswered the question of inexplicable evil. If a mother dies in childbirth and her infant starves to death, with none to mourn for them, whose soul is being “made”? Irenaean theodicy asks us to just trust that God has configured our world to be the best possible world for human development. “God always brings good out of evil” and “God works in mysterious ways” are Irenaean platitudes. Irenaean is the main theodicy for Orthodox Christians and some liberal Protestants.

Augustinian: Evil does not exist except as privation from, or absence of, God. When humans freely chose to reject God, committing Original Sin, they thus introduced evil into the world. Augustinian theodicy leaves unanswered the question of foreknowledge. Why would an omniscient God create Adam and Eve knowing they would commit original sin? Isn’t a father who puts his curious child in a room with a loaded gun, knowing the child will pull the trigger, responsible for the harm when the child pulls the trigger? Augustinian theodicy also leaves unexplained why original sin is inherited. Even if the child is to blame for killing someone, why should the child’s great-great-great-great-grandson still be in prison? Questions like this split Orthodox from Catholic and Reformed into Calvinists and Arminians and continue to plague all denominations. Because of this critique, Augustinian theodicy has in practice tended to either collapse back into Irenaean theodicy or progress into Boydian theodicy, depending on whether omniscience or omnibenevolence is emphasized.

Boydian: Evil exists because of the free-willed choices of the beings over whom God has given authority over the world. Named for theologian Greg Boyd, this theodicy is distinguished from Augustinian theodicy because it denies God’s omniscience. Boyd is the creator of open theology, which asserts that God is not all-knowing about future contingent events. When God created Satan, Adam, and Eve, He delegated to them a libertarian free will that enabled them to make choices He would not know in advance that they would make. Because God vested great power into Satan (“the prince of this world”), and gave Satan free will, Satan causes great harm. Satan, not God, is responsible for 200 billion dead fetuses and 50 billion dead children. But Boydian theodicy is troubled by this question: why God doesn’t intervene to stop Satan now that Satan has chosen evil? If God cannot stop Satan, then He is not omnipotent. If God could stop Satan, but doesn’t because Satan’s evil actions are part of His plan, or because Satan’s free will is mysteriously part of the greater good, then we’ve reverted to Irenaean or Isaiahic. If God could stop Satan, but doesn’t because he made an irrevocable covenant to let Satan be prince of this world, then God is not just lacking in omniscience, he’s lacking in heavenly legal counsel — who writes a job contract without a termination clause for wrongful behavior?

If you are satisfied with any of those four theodicies, you should stop here. You have my gratitude for being a reader of this blog, and I do not wish to challenge your faith. The rest of this essay is just for troubled souls.

It’s an interesting and intelligent essay. I will share my thoughts on it in a future post, and probably on a future Darkstream as well. In the meantime, it’s no secret that I incline toward the Boydian theodicy, although in doing so I think it is necessary to distinguish between three types of evil: primordial, spiritual, and material if one is to seriously address the topic. The mere fact that there is a Lake of Fire and Outer Darkness into which Satan is to be cast is sufficient to distinguish between the first two, and the fact that humanity links the latter two indicates a need to distinguish between them.

But, as I have repeatedly stated, there is no such thing as a “problem” of evil for the Christian in the first place. To the contrary, Christianity is entirely dependent upon its existence; if the world is not fallen, there is no need for salvation. One need not believe in God to recognize the reality of evil, but once one begins to grasp the material existence of evil and the extent to which it permeates the world in which we live, the absolute necessity of God’s Son becomes readily apparent.

DISCUSS ON SG