the distinction between criticism and attacks.

I can take criticisnm of my ideas. I welcome criticism. But you have to know the difference between criticism of ideas and personal attacks. When you start talking about how bad I am, how I'm stupid, I am mean, I don't do this, do do that, that's personal. then I don't post it. I have been doing this for 10 years. I have been on literally hundreds of boards for years. I posted on carm and argued with Dawkies, atheist and know nothings every day for 10 years. I do not have time to give you the university education you never got. You are going to have to start trying to read books and learn so you will understand what's being said.

This blog is not here for Dawkies (Dawkins atheists aka Dawkinsians) to have as a punching bag. It's not here to give you the education you missed. Its' here for people who like to think, who have strong background in related fields and who seek serious discussion about theological ideas.

If you don't want that go away little Dawkie!

Policy for this blog,

Ignorant people who are too lazy to learn theology, who have no hope of contributing anything of importance to the conversation, have no business posting here. Some of the little know nothings form that ass hole Rassmusen site came over and tried to post comments, which were very stupid. But those comments ended in personal attacks. so I will not post them. I have always said I will not post personal attacks, on anyone.

Now I am also adding a new rule. To take part in the discussion here you must be willing to learn enough to contribute to it. Just demanding your feelings are superior and that you don't have to learn anything is not good enough. You are wasting our time. This blog is for the discussion of theology. If you don't want to learn about theology then you know nothing and your criticisms are invalid. One does not have the right to criticize that which one does not understand or know about.

If that coward was willing to debate, I could show the world how much smarter I am than he is. But he knows I would kick his ass and he's not about to debate. So we have nothing to say to each other.

I will point out one lie in the posts they tried to make. they accused me of shutting down discussion, they accused Christians of it. that is imbecilic. They think discussion is nothing but a soap box for them rant and rave about their uninformed opinions. that is not what discussion is.


The atheists Dawkinsians are the one's who have closed down discussion. The open and proudly announce that they do not need to learn anything and they think they can criticize what they don't know about. They open and proudly boast that Christians don't deserve respect but they want me to respect them!

Respist is not something I owe you. yo must earn my respect and you can never never never do that with your attitude of pride in ignorance.

I think you have to be there

I am beginning to feel that atheism is complex, and people hold it for many reasons. People like Mike are trying to work through their former world view which they no longer find enhancing and now trying to explain, understand, and gain closure on the change. The Sort of rabid hate monger Dawkinsia who says "I don't need to study theology be I know it's bull shit, so even though I don't know anything about it, I know all about and I don't need to learn" that type of rabid hateful brown shirt type (aka from now on I call them "Dawkinsians") are just trying to find a place to hang their hates. It's just like Hitler's Brown shirts, hating Christianity is a social cement that binds them together. They have such a negative cement because their rejection of God has led them to a place where black is white and negative is positive and having no hope is the only hope they have. In words of the immortal Richard Farina "Been Down So long it Looks like up to me."


Christian theology, especially in the liberal Protestant mold, requires a life time of learning. It's for bookish people. Anyone who could say "I refuse to learn about these ideas becasue I disagree with them so I will not pay attention, but I'm sure they are stupid and I don't know about them to say that" is the sort of person who si unbookish and who does not enjoy learning, doesn't understand the world of letters.

Sot heir persecution of Christianity is nothing more than the brown shirts beating up the Jews. they are giving in to a primal urge for mob rule and to persecute and destroy the unknown. In other words, they are bullies. This is nothing more than the school bully sees the smart kid with books under his arm and goes over and takes the books through them away and smashes the kid's violin.

When I was an atheist atheists wanted to learn and think. My atheists never said "I don't want to learn about unicorns becasue they don't exist so don't tell me about theology." My atheists said "I want to learn all about Christians so I will know if I agree or not and if not I will know how to refute it." But the Dawkinsians are not in it to gain knowledge or to think, they are gaining a sense of power and sense of identity by fomenting their hate and by hurting religious people. In the final analysis they are only hurting themselves.

why the heck to do they bother religious people? Why do they pretend they want discussion and argument? why put up message boards? IN other old days message boards were supposed to be a way people could communicate. But to communicate you must accept the fact that people have their own ideas. The art of respecting others is to listen to their ideas. How can we discuss ideas if we are not willing to learn about ideas we don't accept as well as those we do? The Dawkinsians don't want communication. They want power, they want to be the bully boy, they want hate.

why can't they just go else where? I am not asking people to read my blog. I'm going to talk about theology on this blog. you would think hey would get the picture. If you don't' want that just go away. Because they really want to ridicule religious people so they can feel superior.

Don't worry, I know all atheists are not like this. But the one's that are have ruined message boards. Now they are ruining blogs.

Challenge to Rasumssen

I have issued a challenge to that guy to meet me on my boards, Doxa Forums On the 1x1 board.

I promise the firs one to insult loses. I am willing to allow the judges to be atheists, as long as Mike and Tiny are two of them.

the resolution: Religious belief is rationally warranted.



I insist upon rules, it doesn't' have to be my format. But I suggest a modified Lincoln/Douglass such as used by National Forensic League.


If Christians are all so stupid, what you got to lose? Let's just see if Christians are too stupid to kick your ass in debate?


I wish everyone would look at my boards. They are a model of how Christian/atheist discussion should be conducted.

What is the "Courtier's Reply?"

Atheists are always coming up with little gimmicks. Anytime you trump them with real knowledge they get up set and find a gimmick. The Jesus myth theory was such a gimmick. Jesus was such a compelling figure and there is some decent evidence he rose from the dead, so to counter that they just pretend he never existed, and give it a little name and make up some pseudo intelligent sounding crap pertaining to it. The "default" and the "extraordinary evidence credo" these are all gimmicks atheists made up and they are passed off as pseudo official sounding quasi logical tactics that in actuality mean nothing.

The latest is the Courtier's reply. This is it:

I recently referred to the "Courtier's Reply", a term invented by PZ Myers to rebut the claims of believers who insist that their superstitious beliefs are ever so much more sophisticated than the simple version that Dawkins attacks.

PZ's response deserves much more publicity because it goes to the heart of the debate between rationalism and supersition. I'm going to post his original Courtier's Reply below (without permission, but I'm sure he'll understand) but before doing so I need to remind everyone about the original fairy tale [The Emperor's New Clothes].

This is a statement by a reductionist scientism king Larry Moran is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. He's on a blog called Sand Walk.

So what this couriter's reply is saying is that if the sketpic says stupid things about theology and demonstrates that he knows nothin gabout it and the theist says "O your criticism is invalid because you don't understand what you are criticizing" then al lthe atheist has to do is say "that's the courtiers reply" and the theist is supposed to go "O my God, I've violated a law of logic!" and give up and stop believing in God. But in realty it's nto a log of logic, I never heard it in a logic class.It's not in a lgoic text book, and the menaing of it is silly. I'ts just saying 'You can't point out my ignorance of theology because I will not allow theology to have any kind of validity or importance and religous people may not not any sort of human dignity." That's all it's saying. It's nothing more than anti-intellectual stupidity.


Here is Myers statement about it:


The Courtier's Reply
by PZ Myers

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk.

Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.

Personally, I suspect that perhaps the Emperor might not be fully clothed — how else to explain the apparent sloth of the staff at the palace laundry — but, well, everyone else does seem to go on about his clothes, and this Dawkins fellow is such a rude upstart who lacks the wit of my elegant circumlocutions, that, while unable to deal with the substance of his accusations, I should at least chide him for his very bad form.

Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.

In other words, knowledge of theological subjects is just plain bull shit and it doesn't matter if Dawkins doesn't understand it because it's not worth understanding. So it's not valid criticism of him to say that. Except the problem is, if he understood theology he would see that his criticisms are wrong. The criticisms he makes are almost always about fundamentalists views. Since he refuses to accept that there are other non fundamentalist types of theology, when you point it out he just says O that's ridiculous because all theology is crap so it doesn't matter--but if he knew that he might not make the criticisms becasue they don't apply. But it's not worthing knowing that. he's just reasoning in a cirlce.

Here's his logic:

Him: religion is evil superstiion because fundies believe X

Liberal: we don't beileve x

him: that doesn't matter becasue religion is all crap no matter what. so even if you don't believe the thing I say is crap you still your own crap that must be stupid because you are religious. I know it's stupid because religion is stupid. Of course that's based on the stuff that you don't believe but that doesn't matter.

Narrow minded anti-intellectual brinkman ship in a most unsophisticated manner.

A very emotionally immature atheist tried this on me recently. Here's how it went.

Brent: All religious people believe in big man in the sky.

Me: process theology doesn't believe in big man in the sky

Brent: that's nonsesne all religous people do so they mustt.

Me; you clearly don't know enoguh about theology to say that

Brent: Courteiers reply! Courtiers' replay!

Like some magic king'x X that's suppossed to mean something. Clearly it's stupid because they are only trying to dodge the fact that their criticisms are based upon things they don't understand and that don't apply. Its' an attempt to hide their ignorance. They are committing an informal fallacy with the use of this gimmick. It's called "ipsie dixit." It means "truth by stipulation." They are saying in effect "I simply stipulate that I will not allow you to have knowledge. AT this point on your knowledge is now void becasue I declare to be so, since it's religion and religion is stupid."

Again their reasoning is quite circular since the reasons they would give for reducing religion to superstition don't' apply to modern sophisticated theology, but the fact that it can be labeled "theology" and they don't even know what that means, they stipulate that it must be stupid. So even though their reasons don't apply they just demand that they must do so any way.

Again they are merely stipulating truth and insisting they are right without any just reasons. It's idiotic to try and criticize a whole field you know nothing about. To make up for appalling ignorance they imply a third rate gimmick that is actually made up of two informal fallacies: ipsie dixit and circular reasoning.

Case For God Stronger than Case for Doubt

Recently a poster made a comment on the comment section:

If god does not exists, then N years of university an M doctorates from prestigious universities on theology are not worth anything, with regards to supernatural statements.

The fact is that the case for the existence of any gods is very weak, and until that has been remedied by the ones claiming such entities exist, musings on the true nature of the gods is just meaningless noise, hence the invisible pink unicorn.

Trying to impune my motives, as though I have some cognitive dissonance about going to seminary and to convince myself the money wasn't a waste I have to convince my self God really exists after all. This is quite an uninformed opinion. The case for God's existence has never looked stronger. I wonder why this person would think I have some sort insecurity about belief? But the truth of it is, even if I came believe somehow that God does not exist, that would not mean that my seminary training was a waste. This makes me think the only thing this guy knows about seminaries, if anything at all, is through some of kind of little bible college fundie gig. I can see why a washout from the fundie ranks, who knows nothing about theology anyway would be confused. There are two major reasons why going to Perkins would be good even if one did not believe in God:

(1) It's a fantastic education.

One can always treat the material as sociological artifacts. To graduate with a Masters degree from Perkins, especially in the academic side of it (not a professional degree which is for ministers but like mine, the academic side) one must become well versed in many areas in addition to theology: Philosophy, social sciences, literature, history, world religions. Yes, I studied world religions at a United Methodist seminary. The course was taught by a methodist minister but he lived in Japan and studies Japanese religion for about 30 years. He was a leading expert on what is called "the new religions" of Japan. That course alone made the education itself worth while.

(2) Theology would still be of value without God

AT Perkins I learned about phenomenology, my understanding of existentialism shot up from the level of an undergraduate to almost that of an expert, and I was exposed to a deep understanding of oriental religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto. There is quite a bit of theology to be done without God.

Of course there is no need for that becasue the case for God has never looked better. This guy's statement is quite false. The case for God is almost a certainty. first, before going into that, I will present a brief look at the problems at the heart of atheism. Lack of belief in God is fraught with problems. Essentially it's an illogical ideology.



Limitations of Naturalistic Reductionism

I.Closing off other valid forms of knowledge
and losing the phenomena.

The upshot of this entire argument is that scientific reductionism reduces the full scope of human experience and reduces reality from its full frame to preset conclusions than are already labeled "science" and "objectivity" and which screen out any other possibility. One of those possibilities is the phenomenological apprehension of God's presence through religious experience.

In the conclusion to his famous Gilford lectures, Psychologist William James, whose Varieties of Religious Experience, is still a classic in the filed of psychology of religion, concluded that reductionism shuts off other valid avenues of reality.

"The world interpreted religiously is not the materialistic world over again, with an altered expression; it must have, over and above the altered expression, a natural constitution different at some point from that which a materialistic world would have. It must be such that different events can be expected in it, different conduct must be required.This thoroughly 'pragmatic' view of religion has usually been taken as a matter of course by common men. They have interpolated divine miracles into the field of nature, they have built a heaven out beyond the grave. It is only transcendentalist metaphysicians who think that, without adding any concrete details to Nature, or subtracting any, but by simply calling it the expression of absolute spirit,you make it more divine just as it stands. I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. It gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything real must claim, some characteristic realm of fact as its very own. What the more characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state and the prayer-state, I know not."

"But the over-belief on which I am ready to make my personal venture is that they exist. The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in. By being faithful in my poor measure to this over-belief, I seem to myself to keep more sane and true. I can, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist's attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But whenever I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the word 'bosh!' Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow scientific bounds. Assuredly, the real world is of a different temperament,- more intricately built than physical science allows. So my objective and my subjective conscience both hold me to the over-belief which I express. Who knows whether the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own poor over-beliefs may not actually help God in turn to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks?"

II.Philosohpical naturalism based upon
Circular Reasoning and Contradictions

A. Cause and effect.

In fact this way of arguing is wrong on two counts. First, it is based upon circular reasoning. The reasoning behind this notion goes back to the Philosopher David Hume who argued that miracles cannot happen because we do not have enough examples of them happening."A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, form the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can be imagined." (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Open Court 1958, 126-27) We see this same sort of thinking used over and over again. Scientists sometimes resort to it. Nobel prize winning geneticist A.J. Carlson, "by supernatural we understand...beliefs...claiming origins other than verifiable experiences...or events contrary to known processes in nature...science and miracles are incompatible." (Science Magazine Feb. 27, 1937, 5.)

The great Theologian Rudolf Bultmann, "modern science does not believe that the course of nature can be interrupted or, so to speak, perforated by supernatural powers"(Jesus Christ and Mythology, New York: Schribner and Sons, 1958, 15). The context of Bultmann's comment was in proclaiming the events of the New Testament mythological because they "contradict" scientific principles.B. Hume's Argument against Miracles.The nature of this circular reasoning is pointed out by C.S. Lewis, who wrote: "Now of course we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely uniform experience, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all reports of them have been false. And we can know all the reports of them to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle." (Miracles: a Preliminary Study. New York: MacMillian, 1947, 105).

The circular nature of the reasoning insists that there can be noting beyond the material realm. Any claims of supernatural effects must be ruled out because they cannot be. And how do we know that they cannot be? Because only that which conforms to the rules of naturalism can be admitted as "fact." Therefore, miracles can never be "fact." While this is understandable as a scientific procedure, to go beyond the confines of explaining natural processes and proclaim that God does not exist and miracles cannot happen far exceeds the boundaries of scientific investigation. Only within a particular situation, the investigation of a particular case can scientists make such claims.C. Philosophical Naturalism based upon Metaphysical assumptionsPhilosophical naturalists go beyond the claims of scientific methodology to take up a metaphysical position. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy which seeks answers beyond the confines of the physical realm. Philosophical materialists claim to know that there is no God, or at least to be convinced of it. They rule out miracles from a philosophical basis rather than an empirical one. This is in fact a metaphysical position. But philosophical materialists also claim to debunk metaphysics. Since metaphysics holds to knowledge of things beyond the material realm philosophical materialists must count themselves its enemies. But to say that there is no God is to make a metaphysical statement. To claim to know that there is no God is claim to have knowledge of things beyond the material realm. Philosophical materialists are, in fact, taking up a position contradictory to their stated philosophy.What I am saying should not be construed as an argument against scientific investigation of miracle claims. Science should investigate with all the scientific techniques and assumptions fit for the task of valid investigation, but to the extent that such claims are ruled out science should not make blanket assumptions that God does not work miracles, but must pronounce only on those particular cases.





III. Reflections on Method:
Science vs. Philosophy




This post is partly aimed at RG for his instance that atheists demand "evidence." I don't think atheists care about evidence. Evidence just means that one has something to reason from. What atheists demand is absolute proof, and at a level that can't be given for anything. I would bet that if for some reason atheists didn't like science, no amount of scientific "proof" wood suffice to prove to them that science works; because they would demand absolute proof, which can't be gotten.

In thinking about the two other threads I initiative over the last few days, and the atheist take on my arguments and their 'dicing' of my thought processes, and their refusal to acknowledge standard resiances that I give all the time, I find the following state of affairs to be a good description of the current state of dialectic between atheists and theists on the boards:

(1) Theists have a vast array of knowledge and argumentation built up over 2000 years, which basically amounts to a ton evidence for the existence of God. It's not absolute proof, because true, sure enough, actual absolute proof is just damn hard to come by on anything--even most scientific things; which is why they invented inductive reasoning. Science accepts correlation's as signs of caudal relationships, it doesn't ever actually observe causality at work. But that kind of indicative relationship is not good for atheists when a God argument is involved. Then it must be absolute demonstration and direct observation.

(2) This double standard always works in favor of the atheist and never in favor of the theist. I suspect that's because Theists are trying to persuade atheists that a certain state of affairs is the case, and at the same time we are apt to be less critical of our own reasons for believing that. Atheists make a habit of denial and pride themselves on it.

Why is it a double standard? Because when it works to establish a unified system of naturalistic observation the atheist is only too happy to appeal to "we never see" "we always see" and "there is a strong correlation." We never see a man raised from the dead. We never see a severed limb restored. The correlation's between naturalistic cause and effect are rock solid and always work, so science gives us truth, and religion doesn't. But when those same kinds of correlation's are used to support a God argument, they are just no darn good. to wit: we never see anything pop out of absolute noting, we never even see absolute nothing, even QM particles seem to emerge from prior conditions such as Vacuum flux, so they are not really proof of something form nothing. But O tisg tosh, that doesn't prove anything and certainly QM proves that the universe could just pop up out of nothing!

(3) "laws of physics" are not real laws, they are only descriptions, aggregates of our observations. So they can't be used to argue for God in any way. But, when it comes to miraculous claims, the observations of such must always be discounted because they violate our standard norm for observation, and we must always assume they are wrong no matter how well documented or how inexplicable. We must always assume that only naturalistic events can happen, even though the whole concept of a naturalism can only be nothing more than an aggregate of our observations about the world; and surely they are anything but exhaustive. Thus one wood think that since our observations are not enough to establish immutable laws of the universe, they would not be enough to establish a metaphysics which says that only material realms exist and only materially caused events can happen! But guess again...!

(4) The Theistic panoply of argumentation is a going concern. Quentin Smith, the top atheist philosopher says that 80% of philosophers today are theists. But when one uses philosophy in a God argument, it's just some left over junk from the middle ages; even though my God arguments are based upon S 5 modal logic which didn't exist even before the 1960s and most of the major God arguers are still living.

(5) They pooh pooh philosophy because it doesn't' produce objective concrete results. But they can't produce any scientific evidence to answer the most basic philosophical questions, and the more adept atheists will admit that it isn't the job of science to answer those questions anyway. Scientific evidence cannot give us answers on the most basic philosophical questions, rather than seeing this as a failing in science (or better yet, evidence of differing magister) they rather just chalice it up to the failing of the question! The question is no good because our methods dot' answer it!

(6) What it appears to me is the case is this; some methods are better tailed for philosophy. Those methods are more likely to yield a God argument and even a rational warrant for belief, because God is a philosophical question and not a scientific one. God is a matter of faint, after all, and in matters of faith a rational warrant is the best one should even hope for. But that's not good enough for atheists, they disparage the whole idea of a philosophical question (at least the scientistic ones do--that's not all of them, but some) yet they want an open ended universe with no hard and fast truth and no hard and fast morality!

(7)So it seems that if one accepts certain methods one can prove God within the nature of that language game. now of course one can reject those language games and choose others that are not quite as cozy with the divine and that's OK too. Niether approach is indicative of one's intelligence or one's morality. But, it does mean that since it may be just as rational given the choice of axioms and methodologies, then what that taps out to is belief in God is rationally warrented--it may not be only rational conclusion but it is one ratinal conclusion Now i know all these guys like Barron and HRG will say "hey I'm fine with that." But then when push comes to shove they will be back again insisting that the lack of absolute proof leaves the method that yields God arguments in doubt, rather than the other way around. I don't see why either should be privileged. Why can't we just say that one method is better suited for one kind of question, the other for the other?

and if one of them says 'why should I ask those questions?' I say 'why shouldn't we leave the choice of questions to the questioner?

The Case For belief


The standard for which I argue is not absolute proof. What I just said above should indicate why I think absolute proof is nonsense. But the standard I advocate is rational warrant. Belief in God is rationally warranted, and being so, it is rational and not irrational.

See my 42 Arguments for the existence of god.


I can defend each of these arguments just I will just present one here.


Argumnet: Cosmological Necessity


(1) The Universe is contingent upon "prior" conditions (conditions that existed "prior" to our understanding of space/time:

(a) Prior condition being space/time, or gravitational field.

Matter, energy, all physical phenomena stem from 'gravitational field' the prior condition of which is he big bang, the prior condition of which is the singularity, the prior condition of which is...we do not know.

(b)All naturalistic phenomena are empirically derived, thus they are contingent by their very nature.

As Karl Popper said, empirical facts are facts which might not have been. Everything that belongs to space time is a contingent truth because it could have been otherwise, it is dependent upon the existence of something else for its' existence going all the way back to the Big Bang, which is itself contingent upon something.(Antony Flew, Philosophical Dictionary New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979, 242.)



(2) By definition the "ultimate" origin cannot be contingent, since it would reuqire the explaination of still prior conditions (a string of infinite contingencies with no necessity is logical nonsense;the existence of contingent conditions requires the existence of necessary conditions).

(3) Therefore, the universe must have emerged from some prior condition which always existed, is self sufficient, and not dependent upon anything "higher."


(4) Naturalistic assumptions of determinism, and the arbitrary nature of naturalistic cosmology creates an arbitrary necessity; if the UEO has to produce existents automatically and/or deterministically due to naturalistic forces, the congtingencies function as necessities

(5) Therefore, since arbitrary necessities are impossible by nature of their absurdity, thus we should attribute creation to an act of the will; the eternal existent must be possessed of some ability to create at will; and thus must possess will.

Corollary:


(6) An eternal existent which creates all things and chooses to do so is compatible with the definition of "God" found in any major world religion, and therefore, can be regarded as God. Thus God must exist QED!




Analysis:


The state of understanding most Christian apologists use for the cosmological argument is very bad. Most of us are still back in the enlightenment, or even earlier. In fact if one reads the Boyle Lectures (that's 1690's) one sees all the issues of a modern apologetics message board, with very little real advance by the Christian apologists.

The problem revolves around the notion of causality. Causality requires linear direction and time. A causes B, it follows that a precedes B in a sequential effect. No Time means no sequential order, thus no cause. Time begins sequentially simultaneously with the Big Bang. So there is no way to speak of "before" the big bang because there can't be a "before time." Since time is the beginning of sequences there can be no scenic before the beginning of sequences; without sequences there is no begging and no "before." So the problem is that it is meaningless to say things like "everything that begins requires a cause." This is meaningless because we can't really speak of "the beginning" of the universe since the begging of the universe is also the beginning of time, and causality requires time. Thus there is no cause before the beginning of causes. Thus the whole idea of a final cause beginning the sequence that eventually leads to sequences is a lame idea. Yet most Christian Apologists use the Kalam argument (made so poplar by William Lane Craig) which begins "everything that begins requires a cause." The statement itself is self contradictory.

Of course the atheists muck things up even worse with their notions of Quantum theory (AKA "QM"). It seems that everything that begins doesn't require a cause. QM particles pop into exist seemingly out of nothing with no prior casual agent that can be decreed and thus, it seems something could come from nothing. Now it gets tricky at this point, because this not really what's happening, but the best that can come out of this observation is a big muddle.

It seems that we really don't find QM particles "popping" out of "nothing." They emerge from something called "vacuum flux." This is just a fancy name for more QM particles, that doesn't' matter, because it really is not actual nothingness. The problem is that physicists speak of VC as "nothing." So while one finds physicist speaking of QM being something from nothing, they know quite well its not. Now the tricky part is, the Christian apologist suspects, but we cannot prove, that there is a cause in there somewhere. But the skeptic can always elude the obvious implication of a cause since we don't have a direct observational proof of the need for a final cause. Our assumptions about final causes are pinned upon logic and not upon empirical observation (and this is of necessity, since we can't observe final cause since we can't observe "before" the begging of sequential ordering in time).

It seems that the skeptic has a built-in fail-safe to create a stalemate without he CA (cosmological argument) because our thinking as Christian apologists is often rooted in the thinking of the Robert Boil and the 1690's. We still think in terms of cause and effect, things begging, things needing causes and beginnings and logic proving this rather than empirical observation; although a large part of this argument is merely psychological, since in all fairness the skeptic can't prove anything either and we know darn well there has to be a cause back there somewhere.

I have developed an approach which I feel resolves this dilemma and lends a positive presumptive appeal to the CA. I feel that my approach changes the burden of proof in the debate because lends the apologist presumption, by meeting the prima facie burden of proof. This approach works in two phases:

(1) Sets up a "comfort zone" for the argument, or in other words, establishes criteria through which the bar is lowered for the standard of proof and the lower standard can be met; lower standard meaning "rational warrant for belief" rather than "proof."

We are not out to prove the existence of God. We are out to prove only that it is rational to construe the universe as the creation of God.


The outcome of a prima facie argument is that the burden of proof is reversed. Now it becomes the other side's burden to show that the PF case has not been made. What is it in my version of the CA that swings this point over from burden of proof to PF case? It's the way I deal with the notion need for causality.

The standard Christian apologetics approach is usually to say "everything we observe needs a cause, so the universe must need a cause." This leaves the skeptics cold and they just keep harping on their QM stuff. My approach is to move away from the need causes. I no longer call my argument "first cause." I use the term "cosmological" but not "first cause" or "final cause." I don't speak of causes and I never claim "everything that begins to exist recks a cause." Most skeptics will be expecting this, usually they are thrown into a state of total confusion when they learn that I don't bother with this.

My approach is to use the scholastic model of necessity and contingency rather than cause and effect. Now one might think this is so old fashioned and pre modern that it would be untenable. But no, it's the basis of model logic. One can easily argue, what with the return to the impotence of the model aspects from Hartshorne and Platinga, and with Godell's OA being based firmly upon necessity/contingency, that category is alive and well. Now skeptics will remain incredulous of course, but the category can be defended easily with Spinoza's chart of modalities. The categories are there in logic and cannot be denied.

Moreover, move on from that point to speak of "prior conditions," rather than causes. The idea of prior conditions is tricky, since we all there is a cause lurking somewhere behind it. But the skeptic is lambasting us for speaking of causes, and with this approach we need not speak of them. That way the obvious need for one is enthemimatic; that is the skeptic will pick it out himself, but he can't really say anything about it we aren't claiming it as part of the argument. If the skeptic brings it up, well it's a straw man argument, even though it's really there in the background.

Prior conditions is a tricky category and I have the following analogy. In QM theory we face the concept of the VC and the particle emerge from it. We know from observation that this slows way down the closer one gets to the singularity, and we know that we have no observations whatsoever from timeless state (how could we)? Three conditions obtain in which Amp's emerge: (1) the emerge amid physical law. Even though they seem to contradict our previous understanding of law, they are not opposed to it and QM theory is the business of showing how we can assume their harmonious existence with physical law; (2) They emerge in time; since we have no counter observation we must assume so; (3) They emerge from VF. Skeptics have howled and said "that must means more particles." But so what? that's still something. It means they aren't coming form real nothingness. As long as something exits prior to the "first" existent, that existent is not first and what prior to it must be accounted for. IF we don't wish to end up in an infinite causal regress, then we have to assume that there is some prior conditions which is the basic condition of all existence.

Analogy:

It's like fish. Fish are not caused by water. You can't say "water = fish." But, fish are always found in or near bodies of water. You dot' find fish living in the sand in the desert. There are fish which are native to the North American desert, but they live in water deep in caverns and have actually lost eyes because they live in total darkness. But again, the one prior condition we have for fish is water. Now someone will say "but there is causal relationship there." Yes, but my argument doesn't require that there be no causal relation, but I don't have to push the causal relation to win the argument; all I have to do is demonstrate that there must be some eternal prior condition that is necessary for all contingent conditions to be; and of course we construe this "eternally prior condition" as God.

Another important aspect of this argument is to get away form time. We must get over the simplistic idea that BB is the moment of creation and "before" that (which there is no "before") is God in eternity. That treats time like a place that one could go, where God is. Time may be running eternally, it has a "reassert" with the Big Bang but it doesn't' have to be a "place" one could go to visit. Thus it may not be that we can think of the timeless void as a realm beyond the natural realm.

In this argument I set up the contingency of the universe as the predication of an ultimate prior condition. Anything naturalistic is automatically contingent (this can be backed up by Carol Popper and many others). Thus the ontological necessity which predicates these contingencies is a priori some from of prior condition which must be understood as eternal and boundless, otherwise the idea of a contingent universe filled with individual contingencies makes no sense.

From there the argument that this eternal prior condition is equivalent to or can be construed as an object of religious devotion is easy. Of course atheists will fight tooth and nail to keep from accepting the notion that the universe is contingent. They will charge that this is the fallacy of composition. Don't let them! The fallacy of composition only works when the parts are different. In other words, if a brick wall is made up of all bricks then it is not a fallacy of composition to say "this is a wall of bricks." Thus, one case say "this is a universe of contingencies, thus, it is a contingent universe." Moreover, Dr. Kooks (Univ. Texas--our fine main branch in our Glorious UT system) uses mermeology (a funky kind of math stuff) to argue that wholly contingent parts make for a wholly contingent situation. In other words, a universe made up of all contingent parts is a contingent universe. Establishing this point will be the hardest part of the debate, but the skeptic will be scratching his head and asking "what's mermology?"

From there one directs them to Dr. Koons' Website.

I think this approach offers some unique features that get us way from the 1690s and put Christian apologetics in the 21st century.

Protestant Miracles

"Protestant" Miracles: Good medical evidence.

I call this section "Protestant" not because Protestants are necessarily involved in all of these examples, in face some may involve Catholics, but because most of them do not have the rigor or backing of the Catholic miracle machinery. Some of them are actually scientifically rigorous, but even those don't have the same sort of rigor of the Catholic miracles, and some are merely anecdotal. But we can learn something from all examples, even the bad ones. Mainly what we learn is that there are tons of miracle claims still being made all the time. Just because most of them are not well documented does not mean that many of them are not actual miracles. Most people are not prepared to document the amazing things that happen to them. When one's loved one is stricken down, and than by some amazing stroke that loved one is restored, totally unexpectedly, the last thing one thinks of is documenting what happened. It is with this realization that I present the following cases.


Some Medical Evidence.

Study: The Miracles: A Doctor says "Yes"
by Richard H. Casdorph.(Logos International, 1976)


Richard H. Casdroph collected medical evidence, x-rays, angeograms, and other data from 10 cases associated with the Kathryn Kulhman ministry. Now it will of course strike skeptics as laughable to document miracles of a faith healer. Ordinarily I myself tend to be highly skeptical of any televangelists. I am still skeptical of Kulhman because of her highly theatrical manner. But I always had the impression that there was actual documentation of her miracles, and I guess that impression was created by the Casdorph book.


The Casdroph book goes into great detail on every case. Since these were not the actual patients of Casdroph himself, there are 3 tiers of medical data and opinion; Casdroph himself and his evaluation of the data, several doctors with whom he consulted on every case, and they very from case to case, and the original doctors of the patents themselves. The patients gave their permission and were happy to provide the medical data on their healing since they were all people who had written to the Kulhman ministry with words of their healing. Not all of them were healed immediately in the meeting. Some were healed latter when they got home. Naturally no one had a x-ray machine standing by at the faith meeting to crank out results like a x-rox copy, so all of them took some period of time to see the results. Not all of them were totally healed immediately. But all the cases were either terminal or incurable and all of them, within a year, returned to full health and pain free existences.

Dr. Richard Steiner, of the American Board of Pathology, head of department of Pathology Long Beach Community Hospital reviewed several of the slides. William Olson, American Board of Internal Medicine and head of Isotope Department at Long Beach Community Hospital, and several radiologists form that Hospital also consulted on the rest of the cases.


1)Reticulum cell Sarcoma, right pelvic bone.
2)Chronic Rheumatoid Arthritis with Severe Disability
3)malignant Brain Tumor (Glioma) of the left Temoperal lobe
4)Multiple Sclorosis
5)Arterioscloratic Heart Disease
6)Carcinoma of the Kidney (Hypernephroma)
7) Mixted Rhumatoid Arthritis with Osteoarthritis
8)Probable Brain Tumor vs Infarction of the Brain
9)Massive GI Hemorrhage with GI shock (instantly healed)
10)Ostioprosis of the Etire Spine

All of these people were totally healed of incurable or terminal states. The one commonality they all have is that they were at some point prayed for by the same person, Kulhman. Let's look at a few examples:

1)Lisa Larios: Cell Sarcoma of the right Pevic bone.

Larios didn't know she had cancer. She had developed a great deal of pain in her pelvis and was confined to a wheel chair, but the doctors had not found the evidence of the tumor at the time her mother took her to hear Kulhman. Yet, when Miss Kulhman said "someone over here is being healed of cancer, please stand up" she stood up without knowing why. She had already started feeling a strange heat in that area and had ceased to feel pain. She went up onto the stage and walked around without pain. She was than "slain in the spirit" which is that odd thing when the healer palces his/her hand on the forehead and the person falls over in a faint. It took some time to receive the next set of xrays becasue she only learned after the meeting some days latter that she had cancer. Than the next set of xrays showed vast and dramatic improvement. It would still be some time,almost a year, before her pelvis was completely resorted. But she did return to full health. The Catholics wouldn't except this miracle because it could be confused with a normal remission. The power of suggestion can be ruled out because the heat started before she was called to the stage, and because she didn't even know she had cancer, but responded to a call for healing of cancer. The first dramatic improvement which was immediate within a few days, and walking on the stage is not characteristic of remission. Casdroph has the medical evidence from several hospitals to which she had been taken.

3)Mrs. Marie Rosenberger: Milignant Brain Tumor.

"Three things make this case an exceptionally excellent example of divine healing. 1) medical evidence of the case includes biopsy proof of the malignant nature of the tumor. The slides were obtained from Hollywood community Hospital and reviewed by the head pathologist at Long Beach community Hospital who confirmed the diagnosis of malignant astrocytoma or glioma class II. 2) When the healing occurred Marie Rosenberger was down to 101 pounds and was expected to die."

The healing began to manifest immediately and by the next moring was evident. She recieved no further drugs or medication from that point on. 3) The third thing that makes the case good is the long term nature of the healing. Her diagnosis was in 1970 and by the time Casdroph wrote the book in 76 she was still healthy and happy with no sign of the disease since the healing (which was in 1971 one year after the diagnosis).


8)Anne Soults: Probable brain tumor vs. Infarction of the brain.

"This lady's brain abnormality was well documented by the standard diagnostic techniques and she was seen by man specialists. Elecrtoencepholagraphic study was performed in each of her hospitalizations.The repeat study dated January 6th reported 'abnormal EEG suggesting left temporary pathology, there is no significant change since 12/27/74.'...the clinical impression was that of brain tumor and her symptoms suddenly and completely disappeared following a visit to the Shrine service."

When she went to the service an unknown Christian placed his hands on her shoulders and prayed for her. The symptoms immediately disappeared and subsequent tests found that the abnormality had disappeared. This is not normal remission. Remission does not mean that the symptoms immediately vanish.

9)Paul Wittney Trousdale:Massive GI Hemorrhage.

Trousdale was a prominant civic leader and builder in California in the early 70s. On December 12, 1973 he was admitted to St. John's Hospital in Sana Monica with massive hemorrhaging which required many transfusions.His wife called Reverend John Hinkle to his bedside, they prayed and he was instantly healed. All the medical values returned to normal and he went on to live a normal and productive life, Subsequent examinations revealed no abnormalities.

10) Delores Winder: Osteoporosis of the Complete Spine.

"Mrs. Delores Winder presents us with an unusual case of severe, chronic, disabling pain secondary to Osteoporosis, which her physicians tried to relieve by five different spine operations. The patients symptoms had begun ealry in 1957. By 1962 she had worn a full body cast or brace of some sort...although at the time of her healing she was in a light weight full body plastic shell. Although she did not believe in instant miraculous healing she attended a lecture by Miss Kulhman in Dallas on August 30. 1975.She was miraculously healed beginning with a sensation of heat in both of her lower exremeties.She has been resorted to full health, wears no brace or support, takes no medication and has completely normal sensations in the lower extremities. This is unusual becasue the spinathalamic in the spinal cord had been interrupted on both sides, and in such cases the resulting numbness is usually permanent."

Time Magazine Article

Time Magazine did an article on Miracles and Nacy Biggs documented several examples which are backed by medical evidence. Some where anecdotal accounts, but at least she interviewed the principles. While she doesn't document the crucial medical evidence such as doctor's names, nor does she interview the doctors, the fact of medical diagnosis is at least present.

TIME DomesticApril 10, 1995 Volume 145, No. 15

Nancy Gibbs

Author Dan Wakefield, a lapsed Presbyterian turned Unitarian, Expect a Miracle (to be published by HarperSanFrancisco next month). Wakefield finds that many miracle claiments are very respectable and conservative, those who would not be taken for "crackpots" or religious zealots.

Biggs:

"He [Wakefield]recalls a woman in Atlanta whose teenage daughter was hit by a car while Rollerblading. Doctors told the mother there was no hope; the best prognosis they could offer was that her daughter would be able to feed herself someday. "The family were Episcopalians and engaged very seriously in prayer, as did their church and the Sunday school," he says. "Two weeks later the girl woke up, and she is now back in school. These are not kooks. They only spoke to me because their minister asked them to. The stories I have are not all religious, and they are from all different religions. It is very vast, and serious. People like to dismiss it as the fringe, but there is a real, mainstream thing."

Biggs Interviews Five Chruch goers in California, each of a different stripe of theology and of faith, but all have encountered miracles in their lives:

"But as they get to talking, they discover that they all have one thing in common: every one of them believes they have experienced a miracle at some time in their lives and were forever changed by it. Roulston was electrocuted on July 29, 1985. "I took 600 amps of 575 volts - it takes 0.15 amps to kill you," he recalls. "I spent a long time in a burn unit. But I survived, the way sometimes people survive being hit by lightning. So now I understand about people who would like a miracle in their life to 'show me that God exists.'"

John Simpson went in for surgery to remove a kidney stone, only to have doctors find that it had disappeared: he credits a prayer wheel of more than 3,000 people that his wife, a Charismatic, organized. Leslie Smith recalls hurtling down a steep hill on her bike when she was seven years old. She began to slip off the seat - and felt hands lift her back up onto the bike. Dorothy Pederson, the most skeptical in the room, believes a miracle saved her husband's life after a brutal mugging in a hotel room seven years ago. John Lashley has had six strokes and two heart attacks. Twice, he says, he was pronounced dead. "Now, this body of mine has been through an awful lot," he says, "but my faith has been up to the task in every phase because my belief works. The miracle is in what it delivers."

Throughout the article she strings us along with the true story of "Elizebeth" an infant with a brain tumor. The story illustrates the power and the difficulty in documenting miracles.

"For five days, says Lennie Jernigan, an attorney, "we prayed for our daughter with a passion uncommon to both of us. And we waited for the diagnosis." The parents agreed to exploratory surgery, which carried a 1-in-5 chance of leaving Elizabeth permanently brain damaged. Surgeons removed part of the tumor from the nerve that controls the movement of the right eye. Trying to get at the rest of it was too dangerous. But when they were finished and the pathology reports came back, the news could not possibly have been worse. Their baby was suffering from an extremely rare malignant meningioma, which has killed everyone who ever had it. Her prognosis: continued growth of the aggressive tumor, grievous paralysis and certain death."

[Fluid began to build up in the child's brain and she had to have an immediate opporation.]

"The night before the scheduled shunt surgery, a doctor arrived in Elizabeth's hospital room and removed so much thick, infected fluid from her brain that he asked to postpone the operation for a few days. But 12 hours later, when he returned to do another tap, he could barely find any fluid, and it was totally clear. The doctor was baffled. Elizabeth was back home two days later. "We now know it was one of those lesser miracles that presage a greater miracle," her grandfather says."

"A month after the first operation, the same surgeons made a last-ditch effort to remove the rest of the tumor. But when they went into Elizabeth's brain, they couldn't find the lesion. As planned, they removed a section of the nerve that the cancer had invaded, knowing that it would leave her blind in her right eye but agreeing that it represented her best hope of surviving. When the tissue was examined, the pathologist could not find any cancer. Regular cat scans since then have revealed no evidence of a tumor. The medical community calls what happened "spontaneous resolution." The family call it a miracle. Even a resurrection."

The case illustrates the problem; thousands of cases happening to ordinary people all the time. The child is on the verge of death, it has in incurable condition, it doesn't die. Medical scinece recognizes the amazing nature of the case but can't call it a "miracle." So, was it a miracle or not? Boarderline cases like this happen all the time, the person affected personally by the situation, the one whose loved one is spared and whose prayer is answered certainly has reason to place faith in God for answering prayer, but the skeptic always has "wiggle room" to claim "naturalistic healing process not clealry understood, amazing things just happen." So which is it? We can't prove it either way, but there is celarly room for belief.

What is Liberal Theology?

Kandinsky Painting reflects spiritual themes in modern art




Most Christians have a juandiced view of liberal theology; for most Evangelicals, the term "liberal theology" conjures up images of the Jesus Seminar, Bishop Sprong assaulting the truth of Holly Scripture, questions about Jesus' exisetence, and the foamenation of dobut and unbleief.Liberal theology has had a long tradition that very much pre-dates the Jesus seminar. The liberal tradition in Christinaity is actually called "the liberal reivisionary tradition" and it streches back to a certain brand of Orhtodoxy that was far more the majority than was the Evangleical movmenet just after the enlightenment. In this series I will breiefly examine the history of liberal theology, and overview a few of my favorite "liberal" theologians.

A fine definition, perhaps the best I've seen, is given my my friend who calls him "Urbild" (Logos in German) on my Doxa Message board. Urblid is a doctoral student in Theology at a major liberal seminary, and this was in the "Theology/Bible" section;Posted 03/06/2005 08:27:34 (03/06/2005 03:27:34 PM)

The difference between conservatives and liberals is rooted in two fundamentally different methods of doing theology. The conservative tradition is authoritarian in method. The liberal theological tradition, by contrast, adopts a method in which truth claims are subjected to experience and reason.

Conservative theology begins with the assumption of some divine revelation. This revelation is held to be immune from rational critique, vouchsafed by the testimony of miracles, understood as supernatural intervention. If there is any kind of evaluation of religious beliefs, the evaluation will be governed under norms derived from the tradition. "X is true because the Bible or the church says so."

The liberal theological tradition assumes that Christian stories and belief systems can claim no exemption by virtue of unique origin. No truth claim is immune to criticism. The liberal theologian is not merely responsible to an internal criterion of a particular religious tradition, but is also responsible to the same kind of criteria and debate that guides other fields of knowledge. In other words, theological statements must conform to publicly defensible and revisable canons of investigation and validation. The liberal will humbly concede that this method is fallible, while acknowledging that only God can claim the realization of total knowledge.

Liberal theology is often mistakenly defined as simply a challenge to orthodox belief. On the contrary, liberal theology seeks continuity with the dogmatic tradition. A theologically liberal Christian will attempt to develop all of the possibilities that a particular doctrine has to offer, while recognizing that any doctrine may finally be exhausted. The church's doctrines are respected for what they can teach us, but they are not treated as a set of immutable truths. As in the conservative theological tradition, doctrines will receive a great diversity of interpretation. But this diversity is welcomed, not shunned, as the liberal understands that the cohesiveness of a religious community is not based on agreement, but on the mutual enrichment acquired from encountering differing points of view

We could add to this definition that in the modern era, especially since Baultmann, the impetus of liberal theology is not so much to subject the Bible to reason, as to translate the Gospel into terms meaningful to contemporary society. Be that as it may, I'll get back to that shortly.Liberal theology is most often thought of as a counter to "orthodoxy," but for most of its history the liberal view was more in line with Orthodoxy and the Evangelicals and their forerunners were on the lunatic fringe. Three major movements that preceded the Evangelical; the Pruitans (sixteenth century England), the Pietists (seventeenth century Germany) and the Evangelicals (nineteenth century England and America), all were kept at bay by the mainline orthodoxy which controlled the major denominations, and all three were radical movements that sought o restore a bogus ancient flavor to Christianity whil moving away from the liberals who had come to control the Orthodox centers.

The dichotomy between reason and faith in religion goes very far back in Christian origins. In Early modern times it emerges as rationalism vs. voluntarism, but it can be found in the middle ages between Scholastics and nominalists. We should not be at all surprised to find the Enlightenment as a major source of liberal theology, and so it was. Nevertheless, there are other sources that even preceded the enlightenment. Since a major motivational force for liberal theology has been rationalisms, many antecedents from the Reformation and skeptical crisis in Europe can be found, thus pre dating the enlightenment. The same antecedents which pushed the Enlightenment also forged the impetus for liberal theology.

Reformation Antecedents:


In The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries an epistemological paradigm shift occurred in English thought that left in ruins the scholastic ontology of the supernatural. The transcendent realm of God was cut off from human concern, the immanent ealm of nature became the source of epistemic authority. Moreover, the new paradigm became the watershed of enlightenment thought and scientific hegemony over the “big Scientific Revolution.” (Kuhn, 90). The paradigm shift was really the culmination of a long process beginning with the discovery of the new world, the rise of the new science, the reformation, and the skeptical crisis in 16th century Europe, and finally, the foundationalist project of Descartes, Newton, and Boyle. It was this culmination of the development in the works of Newton and Boyle, and their reception by the social elite that marks the paradigm shift, and conditions thinking for latter enlightenment anti-clericalism. In trying to create political space for their foundational project, Newton and Boyle, together with their latitudinarian allies created a vacuum in epistemic authority that was filled by a turn from divine revelation to the “book of nature,” and in so doing conditioned future anti-clerical attitudes.

The Christian ontology of the supernatural, the medieval synthesis, bound together the realms of nature and that of grace in a two sided unity; grace exhausted nature raised it to a higher level, nature illustrated grace analogically. This ontological structure offered social stability through a sacramental system that ordered society according to means and ends in relation to their ultimate ends. Civil authority was part of this sacramental system. Nature was understood as an expression of grace, of the supernatural. Thus the supernatural was the ground and end of the natural. Human nature derived meaning from its relation to the higher realm, and all knowledge of the natural world was a marker which pointed to a higher aspect of reality, (Fairweather, p.237). In the late 12th century all of this began to change, as technological advancement and economic need brought about a greater interest in how things on earth worked rather than the ultimate concerns that marked their reasons for being. The real movement away from grace and toward nature as an epistemic source, however, came in the early 15th century with two events, the discovery of the new world, and the Protestant reformation.

Martin Luther began the long process that led to the foundationalist project. When Luther nailed the 95 thesis to the door of the church at Whittenberg (1517) , there were already forces at work pulling thinkers toward an interest in nature, and away form interest in divine revelation. The “discovery” of the “new world,” and Kepler’s discoveries in astronomy were chief among these forces; Amerigo Vespucci’s letters created so much excitement about a whole new realm beyond European knowledge that the new continent was named after Vespucci even though he did very little exploring. Vespucci also created excitement about both elemental nature and human nature in his description of a whole race of people with no knowledge of the Bible or of European society, but drew their understanding of life totally form their contact with nature itself (Popkin, Philosophy… p.4). Nevertheless, it was really Luther who started the actual turn to nature as the source of epistemic authority. Luther began his crusade to refor the church like so many other reformers before him, appealing to the authority of the church in combating ecclesiastical abuses. None of he 95 theses on the Whittenberg door challenged the nature of church authority. He soon found, however, that there were too many authorities in contradiction with on another. He could not privilege his sources above those of his opponents. Why should his councils, popes, and saints be any better than the councils, popes, and saints which were quoted against him?

In 1519, at the Leipzig Disputation, an din his work on the Babylonish Captivity of The Church (1520), Luther went to far as to deny the rule of faith; he critically attacked the criteria of authority itself. He narrowed the filed to just one authority: sola scripture. Scripture alone had epistemic privilege. “It was in this period (1519-20) that he developed from just one more reformer attacking the abuses and corruption of a decaying bureaucracy into the leader of an intellectual revolt that was to shake the very foundations of Western civilization” (Ibid.). The solution backfired, however, and the problem of many authorities resurfaced in a new form. “Scripture alone” still had to be intepreted. Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of the believer made each believer an authority in her own right. Now, the problem was multiplied by as many times as there were believers who could read.

The problem of many authorities intensified with Calvin. “John Calvin, who led his own challenge to authority in the 1520s, made the reformation’s claim to certainty still more explicit,…the faithful are illuminated through the activity of the Holy Spirit” (Stout, p.43). Failure to agree on this point was taken by Calvin’s followers as a sign that the opponent was just not intended to understand (not of the elect). Sebastian castellio of Basel, himself a reformer, developed a skeptical attitude toward certainty. He saw this appeal to inner persuasion, not as a sign of the self-authenticating nature of faith, but as a sign of uncertainty. The heretic Miguel Servetus had been burned for his anti-Trinitarian views. What of Servetus’ inner persuasion, Castellio reasoned, “who is so demented that he would die for denial of the obvious?” (Stout, p.44). Opinions within the reformation began to fragment. Luther, Calivin, Zwingli, and on the “radical wing,” Minos Simmons, all had major doctrinal differences which they back up with scripture. The reformation opened the door to the problem of many authorities, but another religious movement, Christian humanism, opened the door to the anti-foundationalist project.

Renaissance Antecedents:

The rise of the Protestant reformation coincided with the rise of Desiderius Erasmus’ humanist project. Erasmus was the principle force behind the humanism of the northern renaissance. He produced hi own edition of the Greek text of the New Testament. These texts “…revealed in most shocking fashion the perspectives that could be opened up by abandoning the entire scholastic way of understanding and replacing it by pious human study” (Popkin, Philosophy, p.3). Erasmus hated scholasticim and sought a model of faith based on the simplicity of the New Testament (Ibid.). Moreover, through his scholarly research, he showed that the crucial Trinitarian formulation in the Vulgate version of John’s Gospel was no found in the oldest manuscript. “Erasmus ridiculed the whole intellectual and moral world built up to support Christendom. His inordinately popular and influential work, In Praise of Folly…was like the Emperor’s New Clothes (Ibid.). Both Erasmus and Luther became popular voices of the rebellion against the established order, hence the saying, “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched” (Popkin, p.4). Each of the trends that Erasmus started played into the 18th century and became crucial in the paradigm shift (from divine revelation to nature and scientific authority). His major contribution to that process, however, came through his interest in ancient learning, which helped spark the re-discovery of Greek skepticism, a decisive move in the rise of anti-foundational ism (Ibid.). Erasmus was so influential that Luther sought to enlist his aid in the cause of the reformation, but soon discovered that Eramus was not willing ot abandon the Catholic Church (Donner, p.554). Erasmus argued against Luther that scripture does nt interpret itself. Faith must fall short of certainty. Humans should give up the quest for certainty and rest content with “simple faith” (Stout, p.43). This turn marks the opening salvos of the foundationalist/anti-foundationalist battle.

The English enlightenment (1690-1734) did not leave the church in a bad position. Christianity was still the order of the day. In fact due to the work of Newton and Latitudinarians Christianity was identified with science in a way it has not been since that time. The influences of England upon the continent were immense. It has been said that England was the nursery where European free thinking was taught to take its first steps. The attitude of anti-clericalism was more pronounced in France, due to the French management style.The English method for dealing with heretics was much more subtle. The English would simply not invite the hertics to tea. They would publish against their view and argue with them, decliar pamphlet wars and bombard them with a thousand pages, but when it came to coercion they would do nothing worse than not invite them on the fox hunt and not invite to Westmoreland for the weekend, and not give them honors. In a class oriented system like that of England's, this amounted to social execution. But it also meant that coercion was largely social and thus not violent. In France it ranged from beign beaten by thugs for almost no reason, to be thrown in the Bastille or shot on the street. The church of England amassed a hoard of great thinkers to defend the Trinity, half of them (including Newton himself) did not believe in the Trinity, but they defended it because they knew who which their bread was buttered. In France, the King was absolute and his Bishop was his right hand, and that was a very heavy right hand that was not afraid to rule by violent means.

For this reason the English enlightenment was friendly to the Orthodoxy of the Church of England, while in France the enlightenment was rabidly anti-clerical and anti-Christian (although the Philosophies were a very religious lot). The British squared off against the heretics and beat them in intellectual and social combat. The heretics largely went away. But at the end of the century they brought deism and socinianism and atheism back as imports from the continent, and under a new situation, with the Church of England identified as the King's taxing agent, the new continental import caught on like wild fire (and there was no Robert Boyle to defend the faith by this time). In Fance, meanwhile, the anti-clericalism of the enlightenment turned into atheism under the influence of d'Holbach and his circle, and latter that of LaPlace. Under this new situation, and with the emphasis taken off the creeds, scholastic logic, and authority of revelation, and placed upon science, logic, and reason, the new Divine drew upon reason as the bulwark not upon the Bible.

The English Enlightenment chose sides with reason and natural reliigion winning the day, even among orthodoxy. The latitudinarians were Christians, but they took their stand against most forms of scholastic thought and placed revelation on the back burner. That attitude, which included emphasis upon the empirical aspects of science, translated to the contingent in terms of reason over revelation.

The Bible is treated primarily as a human project;the world is explored by human investigation, and only what can be established rationally and scientifically is to be believed;religion itself must be validated by human experince, human values and human reason.(Alasdair Heron, A Century of Protestant Theology,1980)

Nineteenth century theology tended to be liberal from the outset. It was caving to pressures of romanticism and strapped by a Kantian philosophy which removed God form sense data, and thus form language. The enlightenment as it has been received in the rest of Europe was an administrative enlightenment, meaning it was not an organic social movement arising from educated masses, as in England and France, but imported by princes in the form of French or English educated tutors, administrators, bureaucrats, tax collectors and governors and military men. There were two German enlightenments, one Protestant and one Catholic. Thus a large part of the German enlightenment was the development of the historical critical method in certain universities and the fomentation of romantic Hegelian and Kantian philosophy in the others (Porter). That is not to say that German thinkers were not serious about the enlightenment. Germany formed the last crucial phase of enlightenment, and Kants' essay "What is Enlightenment?" kicked off that final phase. When Kant got through with Christianity, god had been reduced to a regulatory concept and nothing else. One of my professors at Perkins remarked "Hume was the guy you didn't want to be against you, Kant was the guy you didn't want on your side." Hume was a sneaky opponent, Kant was the kind of overly honest defender who would give away the store before he began his defense.

Under the influence of the latitudinarians British Christian thinkers had placed revelation on the back burner and made scientifically based arguments the thing. The argument from design was one of the major arguments. Up to the time of the enlightenment proper (1754 in France) it was generally assumed that this argument was part of science and proved the existence of God. David Hume, however, dealt the argument a crushing blow as part of the general drift of enlightenment anti-clericalism. He argued that there was no way to deterine from a single enstance if an artifact was designed or not. The world is a single artifact, we have no knowledge of a derringers nor do we have an undesigned world to compare it to (Heron, 16).Thus, we can have no knowledge of the divine. Kant deepened the blow, although it was not his purpose, since he was a devout believer. Kant was very much influenced by Hume, however, and in trying to rebuild metaphysics in such a way that did not fall into the traps of empiricism, but did not assume the overconfidence of the rationalists, he reduced God to a mere regulatory concept. He argues that the nature of knowledge cannot be understood if we are merely passive recipients of knowledge fed into us form outside sources. We have no access to things "in themselves" apart from our minds, which are our experinces of the objects of our knowledge.Kant's notion of concepts and precepts is crucial here; knowledge is the interaction between concepts and precepts. Precepts are mediated by sense experince, and concepts are a means of ordering and interpreting percepts.

We use fundamental categories, such as space and time, to supply the framework of knowledge. But there is no means of validity beyond our own experince through which we may check or understand these categories. This does not invalidate the categories, but it locates them firmly within the mind's encounter with experince. For the notion of God this means that God can only be meaningful if God is directly amainable to our sense data, or if God was a category demonstrably necessary like 'space' and 'time.'This left God as a nice concept that is important for establishing an ethical theory, but not a certinty that one could cling to. (Herdon, 17). This situation removed God as an object of theological discourse, since God is not given in sense data, why speak of him?

Schleiermacher

It was out of this Kantian quagmire that liberal theology proper really gets going. Libeal theology begins with the attempt of a faithful follower of Kant, Frederich Schliermacher,(1768-1834) to restore God as the object of theological discourse. As a Kantian Schleiermacher knew that God is not given in sense data. Also as a Kantian he knew that God had to be on a par with the necessary categories but that we had to have to some form of interaction with experince. It was out of this problemt that he realized that one could go around the sense data and find interaction of the mind with God in the form of our basic consciousness of the concept of God itself. From this notion Scholeiermacher emerged with his famous dictum, the "feeling of utter dependence." Though this concept God was once again placed as the object of theological disourse and the basic method of liberal theology was born. Schleiermacher is known as "the father of liberal theology" for this reason.

Schleiermacher was important to three theological traditions; he is called "father of liberal theology," meaning liberal protestant theology, during hte nineeth century he was important in circles of German piety and popular among the Evangelicals, and he is also traced as one of the prgeniters of the Unitarian Universalism tradition (Brockie). He's largley forgotten by all three today, although still studied in liberal seminaries. Other figures became important to nineteenth century liberal theology:

Schleiermacher, in On Religion: Speeches to it's Cultured Dispisers, and The Christian Faith .sets forth the view that religion is not reduceable to knowledge or ethical systems. It is primarily a phenomenological apprehension of God consciusness through means of religious affections. Affections is a term not used much anymore, and it is easily confussed with mere emotion. Sometimes Schleiermacher is understood as saying that "I become emotional when I pay and thus there must be an object of my emotional feelings." Though he does vinture close to this position in one form of the argument, this is not exactly what he's saying. In the earlier form of his argument he was saying that affections were indicative of a sense of God, but in the Christian Faith he argues that there is a greater sense of unity in the life world and a sense of the dependence of all things in the life world upon something higher.What is this feeling of utter depenedence? It is the sense of the unity in the life world and it's greater reliance upon a higher reality. It is not to be confused with the stary sky at night in the desert feeling, but is akin to it. I like to think about the feeling of being in my backyard late on a summer night, listening to the sounds of the freeway dying out and realizing a certain harmony in the lfie world and the sense that all of this exists because it stems form a higher thing. There is more to it than that but I don't have time to go into it. That's just a short hand for those of us to whom this is a new concept to get some sort of handle on it. Nor does"feeling" here mean "emotion" but it is connected to the religious affections. In the early version S. thought it was a correlate between the religious affections and God; God must be there because I can feel love for him when I pray to him. But that's not what it's saying in the better version.

The basic assumptions Schleiermacher is making are Plaontic. He believes that the feeling of utter dependence is the backdrop, the pre-given, pre-cognitive notion behind the ontological argument. IN other words, what Anselm tried to capture in his logical argument is felt by everyone, if they were honest, in a pre-cognitive way. In other words, before one thinks about it, it is this "feeling" of utter dependence. After one thinks it out and makes it into a logical arguemnt it is the ontological argument."Life world," or Labeinswelt is a term used in German philosophy. It implies the world of one's culturally constructed life, the "world" we 'live in.' Life as we expeirence it on a daily basis. The unity one senses in the life world is intuative and unites the experiences and aspirations of the individual in a sense of integration and belonging in in the world. As Heidegger says "a being in the world." Schleiermacher is saying that there is a special intuative sense that everyone can grasp of this whole, this unity, being bound up with a higher relatiy, being dependent upon a higher unity. In other words, the "feeling" can be understood as an intuative sense of "radical contingency" (int he sense of the above ontological arguments).He goes on to say that the feeling is based upon the ontological principle as its theoretical background, but doesn't' depend on the argument because it proceeds the argument as the pre-given pre-theoretical pre-cognitive regularization of what Anselm sat down and thought about and turned into a rational argument: why has the fools said in his heart 'there is no God?' Why a fool? Because in the heart we know God. To deny this is to deny the most basic realization about reality.


Albrecht Ritschl

Schleiermacher is called the "father" of liberal theology, but the other foundational figure which spured the development of liberal theology in the 19th century was Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889).German Protestant, taught theology at Bonn (1851-64) and Gottengin (1864-89). His major work translates into English as The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (Vol. I and III, 1872 and 1900).(Columbria Encyclopedia, Barelby.com

Further works byRitschl:Instruction in the Christian Religion, (1875); Theology and Metaphysics,(1881).

Ritschl was in line with Schleiermacher's thinking, he believed religion was primary a matter of revelation and personal experince. He worked agaisnt Hegel and his ilk in ridding theology of speculative metaphysics and philosophical frameworks. This puts him in line with Schleiermacher since Hegel hated Schleiermacher (the two had been class makes in college) and Schleiermacher's feeling of utter dependence worked direct against Hegel's notions of philosophical speculation. Ritschl sees theology as practical and not speculative. He grounds his inquiry in historical criticism and history, and in the revelation of God through Jesus Christ.

With Ritschl we see three lines of theological development shaping up. The first being Schleiermacher and Ritschl with religious experince and historical criticism. The second is an indirect line running thorugh several seeming contradictory figures: Hegel,theolgoian A.E. Beidermann (1819-85), New Testament scholar F.C. Bauer (1792-1860)--Bauer taguht Ritschl but was rejected by him, Philosphers Ludwig Fuererbach (1804-72) Karl Marx (1818-83) Soren Keirkegaard (1813-55).

The third line demonstrates the way the first two began to come together toward the end of the century to produce a distinctive liberal climate for theology. This line is dominated by Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), but just began his carrer at the even end of the century. Johannes Weiss (1863-1814). William Werde (1859-1906), Martin Kahler (1835-1913) Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) (Troelstch would turn out to be the teacher of Paul Tillich). By the end of the century a vast aray of skeptical style theology had been produced, with theolgoians and Bible scholars more skeptical of the validity of the Bible than any atheists every thought about being.Most of what we see on the net, with skeptical boards like the Secular Web are rehashes of arguments raised by ministers and Bible scholars from this era. The emphasis was upon de-mythologizeing the Bible. Chrstainity was seen primarly as an ethical pltform, or a social organization deciated to helping society make a better world.


Liberal Theology in the 20th Century


Until the end of World War I liberal theology proceeded as it had done in the previous century. The first world war changed everything. Liberal theology had become an ivory tower pursuit with nothing to say tot he common man. Suddenly Europe found itself in a crushing war, thousands dying everyday, a whole generation slaughtered on the battle. Massive dissolutionment set in as no one found liberal theology comforting. Karl Barth arose with a new take on theology which came to be called "Neo-Orthodox." Barth was a liberal Calvinist, he understood the Bible not as the word of God but containing the word of God. He under revelation through a dialectic between the reader and the text. Thus theology was infused with divine comfort in the face of over whelming tragedy. Liberal theology responded after the war by seeking out the existential roots in Christian thought. Theology in that century, before the second world war, was dominated by two major camps, Bartian neo-Orthodoxy, and Bualtmannian existentialism (led by Rudolph Bultmann). Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr (as well as his verbose brother H. Richard) would be major champions in the existential camp. This basic division held throughout the rest of the century, but in the 1960s it began to change tremendously.

Theology in the sixties was very exciting. This was the era when liberal theology came into its own. The major event that put liberal theology front and center was the conference called "Vatican II" held in the early 60s. The Church reformed many aspects of its liturgy modernizing itself both in cosmetic appeal and theology. It adopted a position of ecumenism allowing for the salvation of those outside the catholic or even Christian camps. It took most of the Latin out of its Mass, allowed the use of native instruments such as guitar, nuns began wearing civilian clothes and so on. In the field (Latin America) even more radical steps were taken. Priests began joining revolutions and fighting for social change. Some Priests even took up arms and joined liberation forces in the mountains. The first priest to do so was Father Camillio Tores in Columbia. Out of this period a whole movement evolved known as "liberation theology." It swept through Latin America, it was a major force in the U.S. anti-war movement (the Barigan brothers, both priests went to jail for pouring blood on draft records). Martin Luther King Jr. was a liberal theologian. His doctoral dissertation was on Paul Tillich's concept of God as Being itself. The whole civil rights movement was infused with Christian participation and leadership (such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and this fed into the anti-war movement and contributed to the popularity of liberation theology.

Soon Feminist theology followed, just as Feminism grew out of the civil rights and anti-war movements. New calls for all kinds of theologies were going out all the time. It was a very exciting period of fement. Theology was a battle ground. The popular musical Godspell was written by a theology student at that time and was basically a musical "Gospel according to the hippies" (Godspel = Gospel). The most radical movement of all was the God is dead movement. The major leader was Frederick J.J. Altizer. He argued that God poured himself out in Hegelian dialectic, just as Christ gave up his life on the cross, the God himself poured is very life into his creation giving it (man) the ability to make his own way. The phrase "God is dead" began with Nietzsche who meant by that that modern Western culture had killed the spirit of true reverence for the good by codifying it in a hypocritical institution like the church. Altizer just turned that around into a positive act by God on man's behalf. The movement fragmented, it's core idea was never really understood, the mainstream church reacted very harshly. The net outcome was the liberal church turned its focus to the world. An armay liberal Christian social workers and sociologists went forth to serve the good of humanity, to fight in revolutions, to lead political activism, to fee the hungry and protest war and so forth. Marxism was its chief tool for social analysis.

Rather than death of God theology, the new army of socially minded Christian liberals took up process theology. This allowed them to regard God as a depersonalized ideal of Goodness and yet still be motivated by a sense of divine truth. Process theology became the spiritual force of liberal theology in the last quarter of the twentieth century, thus united it with its late nineteenth century forbearer.Process theology and Marxist analysis drove liberal theology pretty much form the 60s to the 90s. After the fall of communism, in the early 90's liberal theology turned to identity politics and postmodernism. After the Jesus seminar and 911 and the war in Irak liberal theology has moved off center stage. The decline in popularity of postmodernism and lumping in identity politics with the "pc crowd" has pushed liberal theology into the background. It has no real social focus now. Some sort of ferment is taking place, a synthesis of the emergent church idea, identity politics, posternmodernism. Some segements may have gone more into a neo conservative phase.

Sources for Study

The best source for study would be to obtain The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology. This is the authority on modern theology. It is expensive, it comes in to major volumes. One volume is about doctrines, the other is about people. You can look up ideas by the name of the theologian that made them famous, or get a run down on the basic thoughts of the major theologians of the last few centuries, in the theologian volume. Or look up ideas such as "God" or "Bible" in the doctrine volume. This would be crucial for anyone seeking to really understand theology. Another very important book would the History of Christian Thought by Paul Tillich. These are lectures Tillich delivered somewhere and they give an excellent run down on all of Chrsitian theology form the first century to Tillich's own views.

on line resources:

Religion online.org has a very through list of topics linked on their site. Here's a source I love:
Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology, a fine collection of short essay each dedicated to a different major modern theologain:they have them all!
Wisdoms Children an intelligent blog, very literate, featuring major theolgoical and liberal arts thinkers. God Web, with an excellent article on Tillich and other liberal theological issues.

Last, and very probably lest, but in the interest of getting people to stop attributing to me ideas I do not espouse, my own theological credo on Doxa.

God of Process Theology is Impersonal

Atheists seem to direct their attacks at a straw man (or straw God) this is based upon the concept of a big man in the sky. Man of them literally have no concept of liberal theology and don't know that there are serious models of God that are proposed by theologians which are impersonal concepts. One of them major such ideas is called "process theology."

Process theology was invented by Alfred North Whitehead, the collaborator with Bertrand Russell for the work Principia Mathematicus which is probably the most intellectual and difficult to understand book ever written. There may be less than twelve people in the world who have read that book. It is a demonstration of the logical foundations of math. After the huge tome the reader is logically in a position to understand how it is that 1+1 = 2 is logically justified. Process theology has its roots in the Greek Pre Socrates, especially Platinus, also Hegel is a major forerunner. For process theologians God is di polar: consisting of the potential realm and the concresent realm. For process thought God is changing with creation, in the concrete pole. Here is the result of a Google search that shows the God of process is impersonal.

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God Personal, Impersonal, or None of the Above?" a sermon by ...
A popular theology amongst us is process theology, which expresses a c reative and ... The title of the sermon asks whether God is personal, impersonal, ...
www.uufairhaven.org/2005/Ser2005Feb6.htm - 16k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
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Survey of Theology 1. The Doctrine of God
First, we can say God is not the “impersonal” God of Aristotle or Spinoza: .... hard to find the God of the Old Testament in the God of Process Theology ...
www.stjohnadulted.org/The_01.htm - 94k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
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What Is Process Theology?
What Is Process Theology? by Robert B. Mellert .... It is the impersonal and unknowable side of God, the side not engaged in particulars. ...
www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=3040&C=2591 - 22k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
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Nature, Human Nature, and God - Google Books Result
by Ian G. Barbour - 2002 - Religion - 170 pages
Christianity and Process Theology Some features of God's relation to the world in process thought seem to represent the operation of an impersonal principle ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0800634772...
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Mother God Goes to Children's Church: Feminist Theology for the ...
Thus, it is a sad trajectory to watch as feminist theologians continue in their respective journeys, speaking of God ultimately in impersonal terms such as ...
www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Feminism/feminist_theology-mother_god.htm - 9k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
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ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY, WESLEYANISM, AND PROCESS THEOLOGY
For process theology, God simply makes the best out of every free ... First, the process stereotype of classical philosophy as static and impersonal ignores ...
wesley.nnu.edu/wesleyan_theology/theojrnl/11-15/15-09.htm - 65k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
by ML Peterson - Cited by 3 - Related articles
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Theology In Global Context: Essays In Honor Of Robert Cummings Neville - Google Books Result
by Robert C. Neville, Amos Yong, Peter Heltzel - 2004 - Religion - 408 pages
... naturalistic theism of Whitehead's process theology: Creativity and God. ... while Creativity, the formless impersonal ultimate is to be equated with ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0567026906...
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JSTOR: Process Theology and the Public Square
A long-standing criticism of Whitehead's process theology has been that it is too aloof, impersonal, and speculative for it to be genuinely Chris- tian. ...
links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6705(198921)51%3A2%3C305%3APTATPS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G - Similar pages - Note this
by JF Burke - 1989
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NABT and Unsupervised Evolution - a story of Theology in Education
and Biology-Theology in our Public Schools. by Craig Rusbult, Ph.D. Is natural process unsupervised? Does "natural" mean "without God"? ...
www.asa3.org/asa/education/origins/nabt.htm - 17k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
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The Encyclopedia of Christianity - Google Books Result
by Erwin Fahlbusch, Geoffrey William Bromiley ... - 1999 - Christianity
Process theologians speak, instead, of God as the personal ultimate and of creativity as the impersonal ultimate. This more pluralistic view of ideas about ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0802824161...